PORTLAND, Ore. — Portlanders will face a large number of decisions on the ballot in November, but one of the most of important and consequential will be choosing the city's next mayor. Whoever wins will take office right when the city switches to a brand new form of government, one completely different from the one Portland has used for more than a century.
The new mayor will immediately be tasked with hiring Portland's first permanent city administrator, and they'll also help set the city's agenda and set the tone for the culture of the new city government. So far, there are three leading candidates in terms of money raised, and they're all current Portland city commissioners: Rene Gonzalez, Mingus Mapps and Carmen Rubio.
Gonzalez was a guest on this week's episode of "Straight Talk" to discuss how he plans to tackle Portland's challenges with crime, homelessness, addiction and ambulance response times. Public safety and livability were a key part of his campaign when he was elected to the city council in November 2022, and he said he's maintaining that focus in his mayoral campaign.
"We went from very safe to average overnight, and that's been brutal for Portlanders," he said. "That was a big part of our identity. You could walk to the neighborhood grocery store or to a restaurant and feel safe, that your children could bike to the park. And all of that has been implicated in recent years."
Addiction and homelessness
Lawmakers are currently working on a bill that would modify Measure 110 to re-criminalize drug use, and Gonzalez said he supports that effort. There have been disagreements between Democratic and Republican lawmakers about how severe the charges and punishments should be, but Gonzalez said he thinks a commitment to prosecuting offenses matters more than the specific classification level of the offense.
Asked how he would tackle Portland's homelessness crisis as mayor, Gonzalez pointed to some of the policies he's already enacted while overseeing the Portland Fire & Rescue, such as halting distribution of tents, tarps and drug kits — efforts that he argued were well-intentioned but enabling destructive behavior. He said he would take it further as mayor by doubling down on building shelters and finding ways to add services to them.
Gonzalez inherited the fledgling Portland Street Response program when he took charge of the fire bureau, but some of his decisions for the program have been controversial, including a hiring freeze that delayed a planned citywide expansion of the program and a reported proposal to cut $3 million from its budget.
When asked about those decisions, Gonzalez said the $3 million cut idea was part of a budget exercise for the mayor's office, but he supports the program and still wants to see it expand. Portland Street Response was created using a lot of one-time dollars, such as American Rescue Plan funding, he added, so he's been trying to create a new permanent funding structure.
Changes for first responders
Current Portland Police Chief Bob Day is serving on an interim basis, so one of the new mayor's first tasks in 2025 will be to select a new permanent chief. Gonzalez said if he wins the mayor's seat, he'll be looking for someone who "has experience managing a police department in a liberal city" with high expectations for police accountability.
"While there are some tried and true methods of law enforcement, we have to continue to innovate," he said. "And partially, that's to avoid some of the bad behaviors in the past by certain types of policing (and) over-policing in certain communities. We have to be much more targeted when we're looking at the things that are more negative in our community."
Multnomah County has been struggling with subpar ambulance response times due to staffing shortages at provider AMR, and Gonzalez said he supports AMR's proposed solution of requiring only one paramedic per ambulance instead of two. The crisis spills over to impact Portland Fire & Rescue, he said, because if an ambulance isn't available for a medical emergency, a fire crew will have to handle it solo and take the patient to the hospital.
He pointed to the fire bureau's Community Health, Assess and Treat (CHAT) pilot program, which devotes one team in a regular SUV to respond to overdose, as an example of how to take pressure off paramedics and firefighters.
Threats and harassment
Gonzalez made headlines last month when he announced that he would temporarily stop riding public transit because of incident on a MAX train in which a woman confronted him about his policies — although video of the incident didn't seem to show him being physically accosted in the way he had described.
When asked about that, Gonzalez said the MAX incident came after a series of unsettling moments, starting when someone set a relative's car on fire outside his house a few weeks earlier. There have also been threats made against his campaign, and a staffer was assaulted, he said.
"It was an aggregation of all of those," he said. "I am multi-modal. I've been a big MAX user. I will be again in the future. This is less about the MAX train and more about what my staff, my family, what I as an elected and candidate have experienced in recent weeks."
He speculated that his campaign has attracted threats and harassment due to his "being very direct" on public safety issues, and said he wanted to see Portland "collectively as a community" do more to condemn harassment and threats against elected officials.
"Straight Talk" airs Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. "Straight Talk" is also available as a podcast.