PORTLAND, Ore. — Trucking CEO and political outsider Keith Wilson will become Portland's next mayor, The Oregonian projected Wednesday evening. Wilson took a commanding lead in initial results on election night, and the race call came after he retained that lead following an update Wednesday that added tens of thousands of ballots to the tally.
Wilson was initially seen as a longshot candidate, but he emerged as a consensus choice on election night. Wednesday's tabulation re-run played out the same way; Wilson started in first place and remained there all the way through as the race narrowed down to him and current City Commissioner Carmen Rubio, finishing with roughly 62% to Rubio's 38%.
Wilson announced that he will give a public acceptance speech at 12:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon at the Charles Jordan Community Center in North Portland, also issuing a statement Wednesday night to acknowledge that he'd been proclaimed the winner.
"Voters in every corner of our city have made their voices heard: They want change and for local leadership to work together to solve the issues our community faces," Wilson said, in part. "There will be challenges ahead, but I can promise you this: I’ll approach this job with humility and lead on our shared values.
"Throughout the campaign, I’ve often said the same thing: nothing about us without us. Our new form of government is more diverse, more representative, and more consensus-based than ever before. Voters approved our reimagined city council structure to better represent our people and our values. I’m looking forward to fostering working relationships and friendships in the new city council to repair, restore, and revitalize the city we all love."
Rubio and City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez, who finished third, both announced Wednesday evening that they had called Wilson to congratulate him.
"My hope for him is that he enters city hall with a desire to listen and learn from those who have been working hard to get Portland back on its feet," Rubio said in a statement. "We have made progress over the last few years, and we need to keep moving forward. We don’t have another minute or dollar to waste when it comes to ending homelessness, creating a safe and inclusive city, supporting our small businesses, or addressing the other major challenges we face."
"I look forward to seeing him lead with the energy and dedication Portland needs, and I know we all want to see this city thrive," Gonzalez said in a statement.
The 2024 election was Portland's first time using ranked-choice voting, where voters were asked to rank their top six candidates in order of preference for each race. The votes are then tabulated in a process that narrows down the field of candidates by eliminating the ones with the fewest votes one by one and transferring their votes to whoever each voter ranked next-highest on their ballot.
Multnomah County is handling the ranked-choice counting and tabulation for Portland voters, and the county has pledged to release updated vote totals in batches once per day until the count is complete. The initial results Tuesday evening included just over 170,000 ballots in the race for mayor, and the total grew to about 218,000 after Wednesday's addition. As of Wednesday evening, the county's turnout dashboard page showed about 345,000 ballots returned in Portland.
The tabulation process gets re-run from scratch after each new batch of ballots is added to the results, so candidates who were eliminated during previous runs, such as Gonzalez and City Commissioner Mingus Mapps, will all be back in contention at the start of the next one.
The results won't become final until the process is run one more time after every vote has been counted, some races may be called earlier if media outlets crunch the numbers and conclude that a candidate has amassed a large enough share of high-ranking votes to guarantee victory — which is what happened for Wilson on Wednesday night.