PORTLAND, Ore. —
Three weeks ahead of a November election that promises to be transformative for the city of Portland, five candidates for city mayor met for a live in-studio debate hosted by KGW and The Oregonian. Sharing the debate stage were Rene Gonzalez, Carmen Rubio, Keith Wilson, Mingus Mapps and Liv Østhus.
During the debate, moderators David Molko and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh asked the candidates questions in five major areas: housing and homelessness, public safety and crime, economic recovery and taxes, and ethics and leadership. There was also a lightning round section at the end. In some cases, each of the candidates were asked to answer the same question; in others, candidates were asked individual questions.
Here are some of the main takeaways from Tuesday night's debate.
Housing & homelessness
When asked to grade the city of Portland's response to homelessness — without blaming Multnomah County's contribution — candidates' answers varied, with current city commissioner Mingus Mapps giving the highest grade of a C+. He said that Portland's work on transitional housing, including Safe Rest Villages, was bearing fruit, but more work needed to be done in tandem with the county to get people into permanent housing.
Commissioner Rene Gonzalez gave a similar answer, rating the city a C for its "middle of the road" performance. He pointed to a lack of housing production.
The city earned an Incomplete grade, "on the way to a C," from Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who noted recent strides in both shelters and housing development that needed more time and more work to produce better outcomes.
Liv Østhus, author and exotic dancer, gave the city a D. She highlighted the good work of homelessness nonprofits, but said that there was a lack of coordination in the city. She indicated that she'd like to see an effort headed by the state of Oregon for a top-down strategy in fighting homelessness.
Keith Wilson, trucking company CEO and founder of Shelter Portland, gave the city the lowest grade with an F. He said that Portland has the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness in the nation "except for a few other cities," and excoriated the city's leadership for failing to treat it as a humanitarian crisis, calling it a "complete failure."
All of the candidates, with the lone exception of Østhus, supported the threat of jail time for homeless people who refuse to accept available shelter. She felt that the carceral system was an inappropriate avenue for a vulnerable population, particularly with Oregon already buckling under the weight of a public defender shortage.
Wilson spoke up to clarify that he would only support the threat of jail if shelter were made available and offered first. Gonzalez then broke in to claim that Wilson's nighttime shelter strategy would make the homelessness crisis worse and result in people dying in shelters, saying it would "bring chaos and crime" to Portland neighborhoods where the shelters would be located.
Later given a chance to defend the criticisms of his shelter plan, Wilson countered that it was a strategy that other cities in the U.S. have used effectively, saying that Portland has instead wasted hundred of millions of dollars on its current course. He described his strategy as providing for the needs of people willing to accept care, while getting people who come to the city and refuse to accept it back to wherever they came from.
“That’s not extraordinary, that’s not far-reaching,” Wilson said.
Rubio kept her focus on the production of housing, saying she'd push for a 90-day "fast pass" for development. Developers with their projects ready to go would be guaranteed the proper city permits within 90 days, she said.
For Østhus, the problem of housing and homelessness hinged on high cost of living in Portland. She called for the city to reimagine downtown, fill it with housing and make it a hub for the arts. She indicated that the city should buy up "zombie" commercial properties for housing and manage them so as to keep rent prices down.
Asked about the recent case of a homeless camp fire that spread to a nearby apartment building, Mapps acknowledged that it represented a failure of city bureaus to keep tabs on those issues. He pointed to PBOT's recent step-up of parking enforcement as proof that he'd be willing to do the unpopular thing in order to step up enforcement.
Gonzalez said he'd prioritize housing production and shelter expansion, but underlined that he's been the strongest voice for enforcement of homelessness in the city, adding that he "wants to be the strictest mayor on the West Coast" in terms of cracking down on homeless camps.
Crime and public safety
On policing, the candidates all seemed to agree that the Portland Police Bureau should at least be staffed up to its funded levels. It currently is not, with about 800 officers out of 882 funded. But each candidate had their own spin on the issue.
Mapps said that the city should have about 1,200 officers, but admitted that it didn't have anywhere near the funding to get there in the short-term. He said he thought he could hire 100 more officers in his first year, but would need to find more funding to get it up to 1,000.
Gonzalez described it as an issue of retention, pointing to attrition after the 2020 protests and riots. Though recruitment has been improving, he said that the mayor must be a strong advocate for police and stand up to "loud extremists."
Rubio said she'd work to fill vacancies, and that she would be interested in supporting a plan introduced by Chief Bob Day to scale up the force. She applauded the more diverse recruitment by the agency in recent years, which she felt was a hopeful sign.
While Wilson also supported getting the agency staffed up to funded levels, he posited that unsheltered homelessness played an outsized role in tying up existing resources. He said that half of arrests were of unsheltered people, claiming that ending unsheltered homelessness would thus reduce the workload for police.
The problem of funding for more officers would solve itself, Østhus indicated, by continuing to hire on more officers. She said that the overtime worked by the current undersized force contributed to high costs, which would come down as more officers are added.
Each of the candidates broadly indicated that they supported the Portland Street Response program, which offers an unarmed response for calls involving non-violent behavioral health issues. Most of them indicated that they'd like to see the program fully-funded and able to provide 24/7 coverage for the city, which was supposed to be accomplished several years ago.
Østhus made the point that PSR has been hampered not only by a lack of staffing, but by limitations on how they can operate. Currently they are barred from transporting anyone they respond to, among other constraining factors, meaning that those responsibilities are still left to police, paramedics or firefighters.
The city "would have to bargain" for that to change, Gonzalez said, most likely referencing the Portland police union, which has endorsed his campaign and had a large role in negotiating what PSR is permitted to do. He reiterated something he's said before, that PSR might be more at home within the county-helmed Joint Office of Homeless Services instead of being a city program.
As commissioner in charge of the Portland Fire Bureau, Gonzalez has also been over top of PSR for the last several years.
Rubio and Mapps largely agreed that PSR should be fully-funded and receive the resources necessary to close the loop, so that it's part of a more coordinated network of first responders and can help people get whatever help they need.
Wilson envisioned PSR as something else, a replacement for the CHIERS team that disbanded when Portland lost its sole sobering station at the beginning of 2020. He suggested that PSR should be transporting people found intoxicated on drugs to a new sobering center, which has yet to open. He called that a failure of Mayor Ted Wheeler more so than a failure of the county, which is now ostensibly working toward that goal.
Economic recovery and taxes
All of the candidates seemed to agree that Portlanders are overtaxed for the services they receive, and several citied conversion of empty office space in the central city into housing as something the city should pursue as office workers continue to leave the area.
Gonzalez and Mapps each suggested that Prosper Portland, the city's economic and urban development agency, should be retooled into something more ambitious. Gonzalez added that city workers should be made to work downtown, in person, to help populate the area.
Østhus cited these issues as the ones that prompted her to run. She said that costs were too high, but that the city should focus on making downtown a hub for the arts and a place where people could affordably live and work. She rejected the idea that remote office workers living elsewhere in the city should be made to commute in.
Rubio highlighted some of the work she spearheaded on Portland City Council as a good start for giving businesses a better landscape, though more would need to be done to continue those efforts.
Ethics and leadership
Each candidate faced pointed questions about either their lack of experience in public office (Wilson and Østhus), their controversies as elected officials (Gonzalez and Rubio), or their faltering campaign fundraising efforts (Mapps).
Asked about her long history of racking up parking tickets, leading to license suspensions and unpaid fines, alongside a more recent parking incident. Rubio said she was sorry and embarrassed, that said she'd paid the fines off years ago "for most of those things" and had since gotten caught up. She hoped voters would believe in her enough to give her a chance to build trust with them.
Despite her lack of experience, Østhus said that she was skilled at listening and connecting with people, and she'd be a good representative for the city and collaborator with both the new city council and Multnomah County. She said she's been a fast learner in politicking.
Mapps attributed his flagging campaign to an early start and being busy with the business of the city, including a campaign to pass the Fixing Our Streets measure in order to fund PBOT's maintenance work.
Responding to a question about his use of public funds to facilitate edits to his Wikipedia page, Gonzalez attributed the need to a "tremendous amount of misinformation online" and people misconstruing his positions. He said he didn't regret it. That led to a tense exchange with moderator Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, who reported on the story for The Oregonian.
"Just for clarification, you're fine with sticking taxpayers with that bill?" Kavanaugh asked.
"I'm fine training my staff. And Shane, unfortunately your article was inaccurate in describing the original utilization of those funds, you had to correct it under a threat of a libel suit from the contractor," Gonzalez said.
"I'm going to respectfully disagree with your characterization there, Mr. Gonzalez," Kavanaugh said.
"I disagree with ... you were threatened with libel," Gonzalez insisted. "I've seen the email, I'm happy to share it with ... "
As moderator David Molko broke in to move on, Kavanaugh snorted and shook his head.
Before the final lightning round, several candidates had a chance to talk about the role of the new mayor and what their vision would be.
Mapps described the new city council as setting up broad policies for the mayor and city administrator to implement. Because the mayor is elected citywide, he said he'd have a citywide vision and move to end street camping by the end of his first year, make progress toward safer streets, as well as moving forward on climate and equity goals.
On a similar question, Gonzalez said that he'd like to see the city change how it does community engagement and have committees within Portland City Council work to find "shared facts" on difficult issues, even if people disagree on policy. He said that the mayor should work toward finding common ground and "control what you can control," using the still-substantial authority of the office.
Rubio said that the mayor must be building relationships and working with the new city council, bridging divides and sitting down with people they might disagree with to find common ground.
"We will find that we probably have very similar or the same values, but we can disagree on strategy and negotiate that strategy," Rubio said. "And with all due respect to my colleagues, some of my colleagues running in this race won't even meet with people that disagree with them. That is something that the mayor cannot do."