Opa’s guide to PDX Elections 2024: Overview & Mayoral
Some thoughts and information about the upcoming election.
This election is different because we are implementing a number of changes to votingand the form for city government.
Voting: we are now going to use ranked choice voting for city position elections. There is solid evidence that ranked choice voting results in a more representative vote. It can be more confusing when you first start using it. Here’s a primer .
We’re also implementing multi-member districts, for each of the 4 districts in the city we are electing 3 city council members. Again, there’s good support for the ideal that mult-member districts improve representation, for instance here.
This combination of changes is why you’re going to get a voter guide that feels like a 1980s phone book. There are almost 120 people running for city council in Portland plus another 20ish running for mayor. We lowered the bar to running for office, that’s a good thing ultimately.
Form and roles in city government:
The big change is moving to a clear Mayor as the executive and a city council as the policy arm of elected officials. Also, there will now be a City Administrator who oversees managing city government. There’s more here. Again, I’m a fan of these changes and change isn’t always smooth or easy.
A little about me:
Why I’m pontificating on this election and why this might be helpful (that’s my goal anyway).
I’ve been fascinated and horrified by US politics and elections for 20ish years now. My old work in the pharmaceutical industry was an introduction into how politics and elections impacts our lives in ways we don’t fully grasp most of the time and also how people in office aren’t always doing things for the common good. I know I was a bit naive.
About 15 years ago I went to graduate school, got a degree in public administration and met a professor who also wanted to improve governance. We started the institute for better governance. You’ve never heard of it because we sucked at sales and the organization never really got off the ground.
My big ideal then, that I still believe in, was that if we could add the thought that we are hiring people for a job to our election discussion we would have a better chance of electing people who might be able to do the actual work. That naïveté continues what can I say.
Anyway I still mildly obsess about following politics and trying to think about how would the people running for office match up with the role we’re hiring them for. With the changes in Portland government I think that thought is more relevant than usual.
When we think about elections we usually focus almost exclusively on finding a values match in a candidate. That is of course important. And I too do that, this is where endorsements can be quite helpful. I use those endorsement that are in the voters guide as a key tool to get a picture of a candidates policy leanings and values. My personal values make the Pdx 350, Portland Teachers, other labor groups, social justice organizations relevant and then I also look at endorsements from other elected officials as a way to think about governing skills. None of these things are failsafe, but they are probably the best signals about values easily available.
Also, with the overwhelming number of people running for office the information about our election options this year is utterly inadequate.
For public information
I think these resources are as good as we have:
- Rose City Reform: Their candidate tracker has the best summary available about each candidate I have seen.
- Oregon Live & OPB have a joint project: It’s hard to follow in my opinion
- Willamette Week is doing candidate interviews, It’s disjointed and hard to follow in my opinion.
- Portland Mercury has a rundown of candidates: Easier to follow, least depth of any these newspapers.
What none of these do is a good job of giving us an informed overview. There is no polling data, to many candidates for it to make sense. So the only cutoff being used to assess who’s serious in these races is the amount of money raised.
So, I’m going to throw my thoughts on the election and the candidates I have some information on out to anyone that is interested.
Finally, for this introduction post, My priorities when looking at candidates focuses on job skill relevance and understanding the job.
Is a candidate able to demonstrate that they have a clear sense of what the role is and can they explain why they’d be good at that job? Much like a resume/interview when looking for a job, that match should emerge in an election.
For City Council Candidates
I am looking for:
- Collaborative Leadership:
some sense that this person would be good working with others. The entire job is group work, from policy development and deliberations to constituent services they will be working in groups of 3 to 12 people.
2. Values matching:
weirdly in Portland this isn’t my biggest concern. The vast majority of these candidates are US democrats and range from something like:
socialist & green party types very liberal
to
law & order / big business democrats fairly conservative
This is the area where I think endorsements are the biggest & best signal. The individual candidates voter guide pages and the newspapers do a decent job giving you endorsement info, again Rose City Reform is the best at this info.
But almost nobody who is likely to get in office is outside the realm of liberalish…
3. Policy Area of interest & relevance:
Here is where the candidates put most of their energy. Trying to establish policy credentials. I sort of hate this (the city has a number of policy wonks, as city council members they will have access academic and think tank policy wonks; the city council members don’t need to be policy wonks themselves) but there is a real value in City Council members have a sense of policy and an even bigger advantage in having council members bring a range of areas of expertise and interest where policy matters.
Here is where the fact that we each will have 3 members elected from our district offers a chance to vote for a range of areas of expertise that you think would be helpful on city council.
For MAYOR
I am looking for:
- Executive Leadership
This person is going to be driving the implementation of policy that city council develops. And maybe more importantly while the new roles get sorted out the Mayor is going to be the one who makes most of the “while we get this figured out” decisions.
2. Understanding Portland government
Since we are changing roles and since the mayor is going to have a dominant voice I think the argument for an insider this time is stronger than usual.
3. Values match Again I look at endorsements for this.
The race for Mayor has 5 candidates who have raised more than $75,000 which is the easiest way to identify the leading candidates. Among these there is a clear sense that there are 2 leading candidates, Rene Gonzales and Carmen Rubio. These two are much running as:
Law & Order Big Business Democrat: Rene Gonzales
vs
Good Government Establishment Liberal: Carmen Rubio
Then the other 3 candidates hoping people find the flaws of both Gonzales and Rubio disqualifying are Mingus Mapps, Keith Wilson & Liv Osthus
This race is easier to track, OPB has a good overview here.
I’m not going to do much more than say I’m Ranking these
1. Rubio
2. Mapps
3. Wilson
4. Osthus
5. Gonzales
6. Blank (No other candidate is viable)
I will add separate posts about the city council district races.