On Tuesday, as I processed the jaw-dropping revelations about Portland City Commissioner and mayoral candidate Carmen Rubio’s numerous traffic violations and irresponsible motor vehicle use, another shocking item popped up on my timeline: A few days before The Oregonian story came out, Rubio was endorsed by The Street Trust.
Rubio shared the endorsement on Instagram over the weekend. In the caption Rubio wrote: “Through their dedication, we are making progress toward ending preventable deaths resulting from lax safety and inequality. With their support, I know that our city can lead the way on policy transformations and major investments to save lives… Together, we can end the public health emergency of traffic deaths and injuries.”
The endorsement was made by The Street Trust Action Fund a legally separate arm of the organization launched in 2018 that is allowed to lobby and endorse political candidates without the limitations of a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit.
“I closed the book on those times, but I haven’t forgotten the lessons I learned.”
– Carmen Rubio in a campaign email today
The timing of this endorsement by Portland’s most well-known active transportation advocacy group is notable because of the story published Monday that outlines Rubio’s driving history. According to The Oregonian, Rubio was written up for more than 150 parking and traffic violations over the past 20 years and didn’t pay them off for months and sometimes years. Rubio also had her license suspended on “at least six occasions” when she didn’t appear in court or provide payment.
In a statement to The Oregonian regarding the infractions, Rubio said, “I put my family financial and career obligations first… These are the experiences that have shaped who I am today and also make me a better leader because I have greater empathy for people who have gone through similar things.”
In an email to campaign supporters today, Rubio said said, “I want to apologize” and added, “I know that the best things to do when you make mistakes are to take responsibility, to clean up the mess and do better, and that’s what I’ve done when I paid my fines off many years ago*, I closed the book on those times, but I haven’t forgotten the lessons I learned.” (*The Oregonian reports that Rubio was cited for at least three violations since she took office as a city commissioner in 2021.)
Rubio will have another chance to explain her past at a live debate hosted by the Progreso Latino PAC. She’ll be on stage with fellow mayoral contenders Rene Gonzalez (who has serious traffic violation problems of his own) and Keith Wilson.
On Tuesday, LiUNA Local 737, a union that represents 3,000 Portland-area workers, withdrew their endorsement of Rubio, saying they were “shocked by the information” about the traffic violations.
BikePortland has reached out to The Street Trust Action Fund executive director for comment about their endorsement of Rubio but has not yet heard back.
On The TST Action Fund website, the organization shares the process they go through to choose candidates. BikePortland has also seen the questionnaire given to candidates. It’s all pretty standard fare about transportation policies and projects, except for the last question: “Is there anything we haven’t asked you that you believe we should know?”
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Regardless of if she ticks all the favorite candidate boxes of progressive values voters, it’s a terrible look when you thumb your nose at the law with a “rules for thee not for me” attitude. Maybe most damaging was this quote to OPB from her campaign:
“In a statement sent by her campaign, Rubio attributed the pattern of not paying for parking—or for tickets—to prioritizing her career over other responsibilities.” Ouch!
You’re not alone in thinking that; at least one union has pulled their endorsement of her over this issue.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/09/10/liuna-local-737-pulls-endorsement-of-carmen-rubio-following-story-about-poor-driving-record/
That quote was particularly eyeroll-inducing, given that the Oregonian article highlighted one of her infractions originating from parking illegally at the Timbers season opening game in 2022.
Well, that kind of checks out
Wow. I really hope The Street Trust rescinds their endorsement, or at least offers a clear explanation of why they would still keep their endorsement despite this disturbing history of parking and traffic violations (150 of them?!), failure to pay the citations, and having her license suspended multiple times. All this while she was a very successful, well-paid professional who could have easily paid the tickets, not to mention she could have changed her behavior well before racking up 150 infractions. This is the behavior of someone who doesn’t think the law applies to them.
Of course, her main rival in the Mayor’s race, Rene Gonzalez, is not really any better on this front. He got seven speeding tickets, had his license suspended twice, was cited for driving while suspended (and claimed to be unaware his license had been suspended…yeah, right), was cited four times for having expired registration, and was cited for not paying MAX fare (and again, made some kind of excuse about getting confused). https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/09/09/records-show-rene-gonzalez-frequently-ticketed-for-speeding-often-failed-to-show-up-in-court-and-twice-had-license-suspended/
Any one or two of these things for either of them could be chalked up to making mistakes and learning from them, but in both cases these are clear patterns of not caring about traffic laws, failing to be accountable when caught, thinking the law doesn’t apply to them, and all of this makes me feel they should not be trusted to be Mayor.
I would encourage people to consider Keith Wilson, who is very good on transportation and homelessness issues, among other things, and doesn’t seem to have this kind of scofflaw history, and do your research on other candidates as well. With ranked-choice voting, you can give your number 1 ranked vote to the person you truly support, voting your conscience, rather than holding your nose and voting for the person you think has more name recognition or “electability” or whatever. For me, I was leaning toward voting Keith Wilson number 1 and Carmen Rubio number 2, but with this news I might just vote for Keith Wilson and leave it at that, unless anyone else comes along who might be worth giving my lower rankings to.
My hunch is that if someone comes with that kind of law-flouting history but also checks most or all of your boxes politically, you’d be inclined to look the other way and endorse them, rather than look for another candidate.
Politics can be ugly.
Rubio may check the boxes of the personal politics of Street Trust board members (or Iannarone herself, not sure who makes the endorsements), but the organization should not support someone whose policies (eliminating bike room standards, for example) and personal actions run so strongly counter to the organization’s mission.
Iannarone and Rubio are peas in a pod. Grifters both.
When Rubio is drummed out of politics over her complete feckless behavior, she will end up fronting some non profit with a big salary like Iannarone.
The Portland way.
Imagine having the mission of “The Street Trust advocates for multimodal transportation options that prioritize safety, accessibility, equity, and climate justice” and endorsing an unsafe driver and inveterate scofflaw.
I disagree. All his offenses were a decade ago, some as old as 1998.
Not only was Rubio still breaking the law as recently as a few months ago, she too has speeding tickets. And they’re considerably newer than Gonzalez’.
I agree, Primal. And why does this site, BIKE portland, never praise Gonzalez for being an ACTUAL cyclist?
Is it b/c Portland progressives don’t like him and BP doesn’t want to get on their wrong side?
Hi.
That’s untrue. I have on at least two occasions recognized Gonzalez as a regular bike rider. In fact I have some readers who got mad that I was too nice to him!!
https://bikeportland.org/2023/09/13/three-of-portlands-five-city-commissioners-attended-sunday-parkways-379398
Is Rubio’s traffic violation record available online? If Willamette Week could find out about that, why couldn’t Street Trust have also done that research?
You know Seth, that points to the back-story question I’ve been wondering about all week. Local news mostly doesn’t do investigative reporting, they receive tips. And the timing of this story, just before the election, is suspicious. This information has been findable for years, why now? Maybe someone at the Oregonian/WW thought this up on their lonesome …
It would have been pretty funny if she had said “yeah, I’ve had more than 100 traffic citations” to this
Can a person volunteer to sit through a diversion program?
This is so “on brand” for Portland non-profits.
Glad to see the Street Trust is maintaining its usual level of credibility.
Why are people still acting like they can’t vote for Keith Wilson?
Um – b/c he has never held elected office?
Would you hire someone to remove your gall bladder if that person had never completed medical school?
In elected office it really helps when you know what you’re doing.
You seem obsessed with this idea that “experience “ in elected office is somehow mandatory to be a Mayor in this form of government.
You are one of the leading whiners here about the state of the city yet are voting for more of same. Gonzalez has been a commissioner for a year.
Mapps a bit more and Rubio has the most experience so I assume she must be your choice since “experience”, whatever that means, is your only metric.
Holding elected office does not mean you know what you’re doing – case in point, the current Portland city council. One of Portland’s most popular mayors never held office before becoming mayor (Bud Clark).
Would I hire someone who hasn’t completed medical school to remove my gall bladder? No, but it turns out politics and medicine are different fields so sort of a moot point.
Knowing what you’re doing can take many forms, and I don’t think that prior elected office experience is deterministic of that
Wilson has demonstrated ability in managing people and organizations, which will be the primary duty of the new mayor. None of the other candidates have at all comparable experience.
Gonzalez didn’t hold elected office before being a councilor, and then he failed miserably as a councilor. Same with Mapps.
Wilson has a strong working knowledge of city government from the work that he has done. The new Mayor’s role will be different for everyone, and is more suitable for someone with a clear vision, a strong point for Wilson.
I’ll probably rank Rubio 2nd for her experience and not being a disaster like Mapps and Gonzalez.
Its possible that Rubio will get enough 2nd place votes to win.
Why would anyone vote for her?
The reason to vote for her now is the same reason as before. She has gotten a whole lot done on the city council. I can’t name anyone who has accomplished as much.
She spearheaded Housing Regulatory Reform. I don’t have the background to have a real informed opinion about how many of those changes were good and necessary. but gee whiz, the city has been trying to do something about building code problems for 35 years — and she did it!
Also, she got behind the grassroots push to ban gas-powered leaf blowers. That’s a big deal for me, I hate those things.
She has an excellent staff. Until this disclosure about her tickets, she was no-drama, just quietly got a whole lot done. No bull-in-the-china-shop antics for her.
Yes but there was the disclosure and she is a SELFISH ENTITLED CARHEAD.
I can’t imagine living a life with such disregard for laws and rules.
Since she got 150 tickets I assumed she parked illegally thousands of times.
She apparently is so dumb or lazy she can’t find a Bus or the Max to get her around, let alone walking or cycling when her license is suspended.
She should resign from her current position let alone seek a new one.
Yeah, it’s too bad that “following laws” can’t be added to her resume. Makes you wonder what other laws, besides car related, she breaks routinely???
Trump got things done, too. Do we ignore everything else about him?
Policy-wise, all he accomplished was an enormous tax cut for the wealthy, and putting millions of women’s health at risk by ending Roe v. Wade.
What he did to the social fabric of this country, and our standing around the world? I think Harris did a good job of describing that on Tuesday.
BTW, I never said I was ranking Rubio.
Credit where credit is due: Trump also got Operation Warp Speed underway, which saved a huge number of lives. Then there was the unprecedented stimulus. Also, his tax cuts had the (possibly unintended) side effect of greatly reducing the impact of the home mortgage tax deduction (something housing progressives had been seeking for years).
I know the predictable people will call me a MAGA extremist for this post, but those things really happened.
oh yeah, and that bit about injecting bleach …
Any president would have got the vaccine and the stimulus.
Trumps absolute stupidity made the epidemic worse.
His tax cuts are awful and hopefully won’t be extended.
I won’t call you a MAGA extremist, just flat out wrong.
Remember, the vaccine was discovered by a small German company, BioNTech, and was scaled up and distributed by Pfizer. Our scientific/medical bureaucracy at the federal level would have performed well under any president. They managed to work around Trump. He provided only bad leadership. Remember how Republicans wouldn’t mask-up? They politicized public health. First thing Trump did after they saved him from his bout with covid was defiantly whip his mask off.
Of course Trump didn’t invent the vaccine! And I’m not asserting he was a great president — he was terrible. I know it hurts to say anything good about the guy, but he gets credit for the accomplishments that happened on his watch. That’s just how it works.
Perhaps. But he is the one who did.
But you are right? Your last entry amounted to a love letter to her.. if an “editor” with censorship privileges is going to opine politically, you might as well be honest about it.
“Love letter,” really? I must be hiding my feelings pretty well. I covered Housing Regulatory Reform closely, I probably wrote 5 or 6 articles about it, and was impressed to see how much Rubio got done, although I don’t have a background in development, so I can’t judge the outcome.
Here’s the thing, if you’ve got a candidate who you really don’t want to win, you need to express that in your ballot by ranking other candidates above them.
You’re unaware of her backroom deal with Zenith? She and Ryan put us all at risk for many years to come with that one.
Yep.
Lisa,
After seeing your comment above I can understand why your blog entries are so biased and non journalistic. You might want to run your articles through an anti-bias AI filter.
We’re talking about Mayor of Portland here, not a US Senator…I don’t think it should be a pre-requisite that someone has held elected office. This is like the “entry-level” position” of politics.
No, entry level elected office is something like park district board or city council. Mayor is the next tier above that.
Maybe it’s because Wilson is the CEO for a big trucking company? What’s his take on faster roads for his trucks and eliminating the Portland bottleneck on I-5?
https://titanfs.com/services/
If someone can’t manage the legal and ethical responsibilities of car ownership how can they be considered capable of running a city?
Weirdly enough the vast majority of Portlanders seem to do a better job at it. Rubio is definitely in the top 1% of parking offenders.
Remember that Iannarone defended tents blocking the sidewalks on Safe Routes to School. Wrap your head around that.
Sadly the Street Trust hasn’t been relevant since before it rebranded from the BTA.
Portland Performative Progressivism trumps The Law and The Common Good.
“Sadly the Street Trust hasn’t been relevant since before it rebranded from the BTA.”
Finally. Thank you for naming one of the elephants in the room.
Street Trust not only rebranded, they re-missioned as well, dumping grassroots activism in favor of more — so much more — lobbying.
Lobbying is a necessary evil, I suppose, but it does tend to alienate anyone without that level of reach or influence — and becomes its own self-perpetuating elitism in a way.
Color me disillusioned, even now.
SO much hubris.
Well said. The Street Trust has become little more than a vehicle for Iannarone to dabble in politics.
Keith Wilson it is.
You know he owns a trucking company right? 🙂
At least Gonzalez takes public transit and rides his bike.
https://bikeportland.org/2023/09/13/three-of-portlands-five-city-commissioners-attended-sunday-parkways-379398
He owns a trucking company that is taking the lead on low fossil fuel use and road safety. Is it perfect? No, but he has demonstrated that he can advocate for bike, walking, and transit infrastructure while speaking the language that sells it to the freight lobby – one of the biggest and most influential groups in Oregon transportation politics.
Has he ended his melodramatic moratorium on riding public transit? I thought he was too disgusted by the chance that the public might dare talk to him.
It looks like you’re saying that someone who owns a trucking company is at the other end of some scale from someone who takes public transit or rides his bike.
Is there something wrong with owning (or even just working at) a trucking company?
Even if there were, people still ride their bikes or buses to bad companies.
The opposite is true, too. Oregon Public Broadcasting does excellent environmental reporting, but their parking lot has its share of big trucks and SUVs, and it recently took out its required bike parking rack for several years.
I don’t see your logic.
LiUNA Local 737 did the right thing pulling their endorsement of Rubio. Will The Street Trust and Sarah Inarone do the right thing or stay doubled down on their hypocrisy?
Have Oregon Walks and Bike Loud PDX made endorsements? They usually behave just like The Street Trust. I’d be interested to see if they will stand with Inarone on this.
Oregon Walks and Bike Loud are 501c3s and as such cannot endorse candidates.
Street trust will probably double down on their endorsement
Rubio could be a strong supporter of cycling AND a scofflaw. Both things could be true.
We know she is the latter, for sure, but we don’t know about the former. My guess is that she is a performative supporter of cycling, like so many other Portland pols (looking at you, Mingus Mapps, but not at you, Rene Gonzalez, who is an ACTUAL cyclist).
I was never going to vote for Rubio anyway, but I do thank her for supplying the hilarious quote about how her hundreds of parking violations make her a better pol b/c she knows what troubled people are going through. That’s the same kind of rhetoric that enables the problems we see all around Portland.
If Rubio is a supporter of cycling, she has done an amazing job of hiding it.
I’m no angel, but I’ve NEVER had a parking or speeding ticket in the over 40 years of driving I’ve done.
The difference between her and I, I follow laws, she flaunts them as she thinks she’s above them.
Both things could be true. But in this case they are not. Rubio is weak on bike parking. See https://bikeportland.org/2023/07/25/commissioner-rubio-wants-to-cut-bike-parking-requirements-to-boost-housing-production-377518
The cynical part of me thinks that a lot of folks will take 150 tickets as an achievement on Rubio’s part. The carbrain that infects our society makes drivers think they should be able to drive as fast as they want and park wherever they want. I went to quite a few protests in 2020, and talking to people a big source of their “Defund Police” attitude stemmed from the fact that they had gotten a speeding and/or parking ticket they thought was unfair.
The board doesn’t have to make an endorsement, and it’s not like anyone’s vote is depending on it. This is just politics over policy.
if she paid them so fing what?
It shows a total disregard to the laws of this community, and she should never ever hold public office as she’s a poor example to the community. Nor should any of the other law breakers that have come out in the news recently.
She should be held up as an example of someone you should NOT emulate.
Half the original article is about how she didn’t pay them though. More than 100 tickets being sent to collections means she didn’t pay them. Having her license suspended six times means she didn’t pay them. Having her car impounded twice means she didn’t pay them.
It’s also like… sure for a handful of tickets? I get it, stuff happens. But 130 is outrageous. Even over a ten year period, that’s more than one a month. I don’t think I could get that many tickets in Portland unless I specifically tried to, and even then I’m not certain.
It’s the pattern of behavior that is disturbing. The question is “Why didn’t she pay them on time?”
She actively avoided accountability – that’s the issue.
Your standards are pathetically low.
A reason that LiUNA Local 737 pulled their endorsement so quickly is that they represent highway and roadwork laborers. I would think that group, especially traffic flaggers, would take a very dim view of scofflaw drivers as such drivers are a direct threat. See https://www.liuna.org/highwayandroadwork
I am disappointed that the Street Trust has not already withdrawn their Rubio endorsement. Scofflaw drivers affect the Street Trust’s membership directly, too. The Street Trust should not be supporting one.
But I am not surprised that Street Trust has not yet withdrawn that endorsement, nor will I be surprised if they fail to do so. From The Street Trust’s web page at https://www.thestreettrust.org/impact/, “Approximately 40% of our funding comes from Government Contracts with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, the Oregon Department of Transportation, and Metro.” Local 737 has labor law and a collective bargaining agreements; they can afford to be critical of the elected officials in the governments that hire them. On the other hand, if the Street Trust rocks the boat too much, like being too critical of a candidate who subsequently could get elected, they risk losing a significant portion of their income.
Because of this apparent conflict of interest and what I see as their general ineffectiveness, I let my membership with the Street Trust lapse some years ago. So they won’t listen to me if I demand they withdraw their Rubio endorsement. Perhaps if you are still a member of the Street Trust, and you don’t mind potentially wasting your time, an email or a phone call demanding they withdraw the Rubio endorsement is something you could do.
Pepperidge farm remembers Iannarone’s gushing thanks towards ODOT during a traffic safety rally spurred, in part, by the killing of Sarah Pliner on one of ODOT’s many deadly highways.
Where does the other 60% come from? Does anyone actually give them money?
Also at https://www.thestreettrust.org/impact/
they say, “Individuals, special events, and private foundations each provide approximately 20% of our funding.”
That level of disregard for her community should disqualify her.