In 2022 it appeared the political winds in Portland, Oregon, one of the US’s most progressive cities, were beginning to shift. Residents who had grown frustrated over the city’s approach to homelessness rejected the incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty – the first Black woman to serve on the city council – in favor of the “law-and-order” Democrat Rene Gonzalez, who pledged to back an expanded police force and “clean up” Portland.
But this month, as swaths of the US electorate moved to the right, the Pacific north-west city took a markedly different approach. Residents elected the most diverse city council in Portland history, opting for more progressives, and rejected Gonzalez as mayoral candidate. Instead, they chose Keith Wilson, a businessperson who has never before held office and has promised to end unsheltered homelessness in a year.
Wilson had large leads over his competitors in the election, the first in which the city used ranked-choice voting and in the latest results was leading the second place candidate 60% to 40%.
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The most conservative candidates for mayor and the county board, who took hardline stances, lost, Richard Clucas, a political science professor at Portland State University, pointed out.
“Both were defeated significantly because Portland remains a very progressive city despite what people may have heard elsewhere,” Clucas said.
The results came as the city was in the midst of what officials have described as a “once-in-a-generation” change to its government system and major voting reforms. This month, for the first time ever, Portland used ranked-choice voting to elect a mayor and a larger, more representative city council. The new officials will have different roles as Portland moves from a commission form of government to one overseen by a city administrator.
Voters approved the overhaul two years ago – the same year Gonzalez won – as the city of 630,000 people grappled with a declining downtown, rising homelessness, a fentanyl crisis, growing public drug use and a sluggish recovery from the pandemic. Voters appeared to take out their dissatisfaction with crime, homelessness and drug use on Hardesty, the most progressive member of city council, said Ben Gaskins, a political science professor Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
Some have speculated the city was beginning to recoil from its progressive values, particularly after voters in the county ousted the progressive district attorney for a challenger endorsed by police groups. That came shortly after Oregon moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect scrapping the state’s groundbreaking drug decriminalization law.
Claims the city is turning away from progressivism are significantly overstated, Gaskins said – instead, the shifts indicate an electorate that is more focused on tactical concerns rather than ideological ones.
Gonzalez was widely considered a frontrunner in this year’s mayoral race. Calling it a “make-or-break election”, the commissioner said that as mayor he would add hundreds of officers to city streets and stop “enabling the humanitarian crisis on our streets by ending the distribution of tents and drug kits”.
Wilson, who serves as the chief executive of a trucking company and founded a non-profit to expand shelter capacity and ultimately end homelessness, made the issue the center of his campaign, pledging to reform the city’s approach to alleviating the crisis. He insisted the issue could be addressed with “care and compassion”, the Oregonian reported, and said he would increase the number of night-time walk-in emergency shelters available in churches and community centers.
That approach appealed to city voters, Clucas said, over harsher remedies. “They don’t simply want a crackdown, arrests and other things; they want to find some way to compassionately address it.”
At a debate in October, Wilson said he would give city leaders an F for their efforts to address homelessness, according to the Oregonian. “Letting people suffer and die on our streets is unacceptable … I believe that every person in Portland deserves a bed every night,” he said.
The progressive Carmen Rubio, a city council member, was also a frontrunner in the race. But she lost endorsements after reporting from the Oregonian revealed that she had received about 150 parking and traffic violations since 2004, many of which she failed to pay for months and years, and that she had her license suspended multiple times.
Gonzalez’s campaign was hurt by reporting from the Willamette Week that showed the “public safety champion” had also received seven speeding tickets between 1998 and 2013, and had his license suspended twice.
Wilson was once considered a long-shot candidate, but he was probably bolstered by the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, experts said.
His position as a businessperson coming from outside the political system allowed him to be a “compromise candidate”, Gaskins said. Wilson fit the gap of someone who is progressive but still represents a change to the status quo, he said.
“I think the fact Keith Wilson was able to win shows Portland wants someone who is clearly on the left but who is focused on policy solutions and getting things done versus just being the most ideologically pure candidate in the race,” he said.
“He is a candidate of this particular moment.”
In an acceptance speech last week, Wilson pledged to build trust and take advantage of a “transformative opportunity”.
“It’s time to end unsheltered homelessness and open drug use, and it’s time to restore public safety in Portland,” he said. “Voters aren’t interested in pointing fingers. They just want us to get things done.”
Along with Wilson, residents also elected 12 city councillors, nearly half of whom are people of color, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported – a remarkable shift given that just seven years ago, only two people of color had ever been elected to city government. At least four of the new councillors identify as LGBTQ+, the outlet reported, and five received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Portland.
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