Portland’s 2024 City Council election was like nothing the city had ever experienced: 12 open seats for a new legislative body split into four districts, 98 candidates and a brand-new ranked choice voting system. Candidates had little direction on how to run a successful campaign and learned what worked — or didn’t — on the fly.

Two years later, half of the seats are back on the ballot. This time, candidates have a recent election to study, but they still can’t be sure what the lessons are.

“I mean, let’s be real,” said Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane, who is running to keep her District 3 seat in Southeast Portland. “No one knows how it will turn out.”

OPB spoke with more than a dozen candidates, campaign advocacy groups, academics and other local politics watchers about the Nov. 3 council election. Some have strong hunches about how the races will play out.

But across those conversations, uncertainty ruled the day.

“I’m taking absolutely nothing for granted,” said Councilor Eric Zimmerman, who hopes to continue representing District 4, in Portland’s west side. “I’m not sleeping easy.”

The first time around

The voter-approved changes to Portland’s government were adopted in 2022, but became fully realized in the November 2024 election.

The city was split into four geographic districts, each electing three councilors — a change that nearly tripled the size of the City Council. With every single council seat and the mayor’s race on the ballot, nearly 100 people threw their hat in the ring. This made it harder for anyone to stand out.

Those candidates were elected using a form of ranked choice voting extremely rare in the U.S., in which voters rank up to six of their district candidates in order of preference on the same ballot. Under that system, if a voter’s first-ranked candidate doesn’t have enough support to win, their vote counts toward their next choice. And if a candidate gets more than enough support to win (more than 25% of the vote), their extra or “surplus” votes get distributed to that voter’s second option.

Instead of competing against each other, the district candidates were incentivized to support like-minded competitors to earn voters’ second or third ballot rank.

The resulting council was more demographically representative of Portland and ideologically balanced — an issue that has led to several deadlocked votes in council meetings. To Portland State University political science professor Melody Valdini, this means the government overhaul worked as planned.

“Our City Council now, for better or worse, is more representative of Portland,” Valdini said. “It doesn’t always make things easier when a lot of different voices are heard in government.”

“But now you have a City Council that is divided and represents the divisions in Portland. I see this as a success story.”

The incumbent factor

This year’s council election is different in several ways: only six of the 12 seats are on the ballot, fewer people are running for office and voters are slightly more familiar with how to vote under the new system. But perhaps the biggest difference this time is that voters have incumbents to evaluate. All six city councilors in Districts 3 and 4 are running for reelection.

Doug Moore, executive director for political action committee United for Portland, has spent the past two years closely analyzing the 2024 election results to advise campaigns this time around.

In City Hall, incumbents have always had an edge over their competitors, because they have name recognition and a track record to point to. But Moore says the structure of Portland’s ranked choice system makes it even more difficult for incumbents to lose.

That’s because candidates need only to win 25% of the total vote, plus one vote, to win one of their district’s three seats. In the 2024 race, that meant around 21,000 votes in District 3 and 19,000 votes in District 4.

“Even candidates who have made egregious errors in judgment are able to muster up more than 25% of the vote in elections,” said Moore.

United for Portland is the top funder behind Ditch Mitch, a new campaign to unseat District 4 incumbent Councilor Mitch Green. The group recently purchased several billboards across Portland, criticizing Green for missing a property tax payment last year.

Green, the district’s most left-leaning councilor, has faced criticism over several recent missteps, including the unpaid taxes, a backyard fire during a burn ban and resurfaced posts criticizing the Portland police. Yet these controversies might not ruffle his die-hard supporters, who believe Green has carried out his commitments while in office.

Green is focused on keeping that group of fans — who he expects is more than 25% of his constituency — happy.

“I’m always hopeful that I can demonstrate to every single voter that my politics is in the best interest of the district as a whole,” said Green, who is the only District 4 councilor affiliated with the local Democratic Socialist of America chapter. “But I don’t know if I need to.”

But Koyama Lane, another DSA member, says she’s not counting on her core supporters alone.

“I don’t think anyone should ever run a campaign thinking that it’s going to be easy,” said Koyama Lane. “You want to knock on as many doors as you can and connect to as many voters as possible.”

That could be especially true in District 3, where Koyama Lane and fellow DSA incumbent Angelita Morillo share many of the same supporters. In 2024, the two campaigned closely, sharing events and fliers and encouraging voters to rank them both.

This time, Koyama Lane said she’s doing more solo campaigning, which gives her more room to emphasize her individual priorities and accomplishments. She’ll still campaign alongside Morillo and other DSA-aligned candidates, but she’s not sure whether District 3 voters will still eagerly elect two candidates from the same political camp.

“We’ll know more after election day,” she said.

A battle within ideological lanes

Political allies like Morillo and Koyama Lane may pose the biggest threat to each other this November.

“I think incumbents are in a very strong position,” said John Horvick of the Lake Oswego-based polling firm DHM Research. “But the ones who are vulnerable are vulnerable to someone from their own ideological ledger.”

Horvick and others don’t expect voters to dramatically change the current ideological breakdown of their districts. In District 3, Morillo and Koyama Lane have the more progressive voters’ support, while Councilor Steve Novick represents the slightly more moderate wing. In District 4, Green occupies the progressive lane, while Zimmerman and Olivia Clark are more moderate.

That’s why Zimmerman is getting nervous.

Several moderate advocacy groups are campaigning against Green by backing Eli Arnold, a police officer, who shares a lot of the same views and supporters as Zimmerman.

These groups also want Zimmerman to remain in office. But based on Horvick’s analysis, that may be impossible. That’s because Zimmerman and Arnold are competing for the same pool of voters, unless one tries to court Green’s more progressive voters.

“I don’t know how the math works on that,” said Zimmerman. “It’s an interesting position to be in.”

Zimmerman has reason to worry. Arnold also ran for District 4 in 2024, and ended up getting more first-ranked votes than Zimmerman. Zimmerman only won because he pulled in enough second- and third-choice rankings.

This year, Arnold is trying to broaden his appeal. He said he regrets campaigning with a narrow focus on public safety in 2024. He said he wants to show a different side this time around, one that appeals to more left-leaning voters.

“I didn’t get a chance to really communicate to more progressive voters, where we actually have alignment,” said Arnold, pointing to his support of climate programs and free public transit. “I don’t see myself neatly fitting into a lane.”

District 3 candidate Kellie Torres is taking a similar approach. Rather than challenge Novick, who shares her more moderate politics, Torres said she is appealing across the political spectrum.

“I think that it’s not the smart approach to have a narrow constituency,” said Torres, who currently works for Portland Parks and Recreation. “So I’m completely doing the opposite of that.”

Andrés Oswill, a board member for the political action committee Portland for All, also doesn’t believe the political lanes of each district are set in stone.

“I think the voters don’t think in City Council blocks,” said Oswill. “They think about the issues that are important to them and who’s being responsive. And if two out of the three electeds aren’t aligned with the majority of their district, then I would expect to see the composition shift.”

Cash on hand

The amount of money candidates can spend has also changed the race.

Most city candidates participate in Portland’s Small Donor Election program, which matches the first $25 of all individual donations to candidates 10-to-1, effectively turning a $25 donation into $275. Candidates can only rely on that program if they pledge to only accept individual donations under $350.

In 2023, the city scaled back the program because there were too many candidates and not enough money to go around. Instead of earning up to $300,000 in public matching funds, candidates were limited to $120,000.

“The primary goal of a campaign is really to let voters know that you exist and who you are and what you stand for and how that aligns with what they value,” said Oswill. “When campaigns don’t have enough funding, they aren’t able to do that.”

This year, the program is back to being fully funded. Candidates are able to tap into that $300,000 max. And it’s making an impact.

“I’ve been able to hire campaign staff and pay them a real living wage, where two years ago, it was really mostly volunteer run,” said Koyama Lane, who has collected $200,000 in public matching dollars so far — the most of any candidate.

Arnold has also hired staff, which he couldn’t do before. Green and Zimmerman say they’re pouring much of that money into campaign mailers and social media ads, costs that are essential to running a campaign.

District 3 Councilor Novick said the extra cash is “enough to run a reasonable campaign — and win.”

“But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still some independent expenditures chiming in,” he added.

Independent expenditure campaigns are PACs that are allowed to collect and spend money on ads to support or oppose candidates, as long as they don’t coordinate directly with a candidate. They played a significant role in the 2024 election by helping financially limit candidates, because there are no campaign limits to the size of donations independent expenditure campaigns can collect.

These campaigns don’t appear to be stepping back this year. Groups like United for Portland and Go Portland Go, which also support moderate council candidates, have begun bolstering their campaign coffers. PACs that back progressive candidates, like Portland Voter Guide and Portland for All, say they are also gearing up for a fight.

The takeaway

There’s still much Portland candidates don’t know about how the city’s second ranked choice council election will work. But one lesson from 2024 is clear: Candidates can’t assume that being a voter’s second or third choice will be enough.

“One of the lessons we did learn from that first election is that you do have to get enough number one ranks to win,” said Jamey Evenstar, a District 4 candidate and former chief of staff to District 1 Councilor Candace Avalos. “It’s not going to be enough for you to be a mention on a ballot in second, third or fourth place.”

That logic is based on the 2024 election results, where nearly every councilor who won received the most first-choice votes. Zimmerman was the only winner who relied on what’s called “vote transfers” — or votes coming from people ranked above him on the ballot who were eliminated or won — to win.

Yet Evenstar, who worked in the city office that oversaw the new government reforms before joining Avalos’ staff, said there’s still too much uncertainty to draw firm conclusions from one highly unusual election.

“There’s so much still left unanswered,” she said. “I wouldn’t ascribe too much to the outcomes of that first election. There’s still a lot of opportunities for us to push the envelope and shape what future elections could look like.”

It could be years until a City Council election feels at all predictable. Until then, candidates are heading into November with the same thing they had two years ago: plenty of questions.

“I’m taking the perspective of: we will rest on November 4th,” Zimmerman said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/25/uncertainty-unknowns-candidates-portland-second-ranked-choice-city-council-election/