PORTLAND, Ore. — The 2024 election is about five weeks away, and the candidates in Portland's mayoral race are entering the home stretch ahead of what will likely be the city's biggest-ever contest in terms of the number of seats on the ballot.
The winners will be the first to hold office under Portland's new form of government, with the new mayor in particular likely to play an outsized role in setting the tone for how the new system will function. Mayoral candidates and current city commissioners Carmen Rubio and Rene Gonzalez were guests on this week's episode of Straight Talk.
Both candidates have appeared on the program before, and so has fellow commissioner and mayoral candidate Mingus Mapps, plus mayoral hopefuls Keith Wilson and Liv Osthus. All of them continue to hone their messages in the final weeks before the election, and Rubio and Gonzalez in particular have had to fend off new reports about problematic driving records.
Returning to Straight Talk this week, Rubio touted her record on climate and housing issues, particularly her role as a city commissioner in tackling the wonky-yet-critical challenge of reforming the city's permitting system, often cited as a significant impediment to the speed of housing production.
"It was an intractable problem for many decades that many different commissioners tried to tackle, and they were unsuccessful," she said. "And so when I was able to have control of the bureau, or oversee the bureau, I had the authority to actually say, 'Hey, we're going to try this.' And then I had to build the coalition along to get it done."
She also addressed recent reports that she accumulated more than 150 parking tickets and other traffic violations, often failing to pay the fines on time, and had her license suspended six times. Rubio also recently made headlines for an incident in which she allegedly scraped the bumper of another car while pulling into a parking space but then walked away without leaving a note.
She admitted she should have left a note, and said the earlier violations came at a time when she was exceptionally busy with her nonprofit work and family responsibilities, and that she has since paid off all her outstanding fines, but she also apologized and said she "wished desperately that I had made different choices back then."
"This is what happened, and I have to live with the consequences of those choices," she said.