PORTLAND, Ore — The majority of voters in Oregon City supported recalling Mayor Dan Holladay in the Nov. 10 special election, according to unofficial county results.
As of 8:17 p.m. on Tuesday, 68% of voters supported recalling the mayor, when a majority vote is needed for the recall. All the ballots that still need to be counted have signature issues that voters must resolve before Nov. 24.
As of Tuesday evening, 52% of the 26,262 eligible voters in Oregon City turned out for the election, compared to the 83% of the 308,112 eligible voters in Clackamas County. Still, election officials said this was a high turnout for this type of election.
Holladay — who was slated to continue his second term through 2022 — will be temporarily replaced by Rachel Lyles Smith, Oregon City commission president. She will lead city meetings until January, when the commission will select a new president. The city will officially elect a new mayor in March 2021.
The recall comes after a long string of controversies for the mayor. In April, Holladay urged businesses to reopen in violation of Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home order. His colleagues on city council chastised him over it.
Then in June, according to Oregonian/Oregon Live reporting, critics said he downplayed police brutality against Black people on the NextDoor app amid protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. He said Black people being killed by police was "hardly an epidemic."
People criticized Mayor Holladay again when he took to social media and questioned why "protests, riots, looting and vandalism" were allowed in Portland but small towns couldn't have Fourth of July firework events. He walked out of an emergency meeting city commissioners were holding to address his comments.
A group started a recall petition this summer and collected enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Holladay had a chance to resign but refused to, forcing the issue into a special election.
The recall campaign manager Adam Marl told KGW, "The citizens deserve to have a responsible government, a government that is guided by ethics, and morals and accountability. And right now in Oregon City, we don't have that."