Top mayoral candidates make their case at Metro Chamber debate

Three top contenders for the position of Portland Mayor took part in a debate this morning at the downtown Hilton. Corporate CEO Keith Wilson and city commissioners Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio spent an hour sharing why they’re the right person to lead our city. The event was sponsored by the Portland Metro Chamber (formerly Portland Business Alliance) and moderated by Ken Boddie from KOIN News.

In addition to assessing how each candidate presented themselves and their ideas to this room of business insiders, I learned how each of them wants to position themselves as the contest enters its crucial final months. Their individual styles revealed notable contrasts: Gonzalez the fighter and confident front-runner; Wilson the calm and collected technocrat outsider; and Rubio the proven policymaker and coalition-builder.

I was there to gain a deeper understanding of the the race. I also hoped there’d be some discussion of transportation policy or road safety issues (in a recent survey, 89% of Portlanders said transportation is the most important service the city provides). But there was none. And unfortunately it wasn’t really a “debate” because the candidates were not given the chance to respond to each other. Boddie would ask a question and each candidate would give their two-minute response.

And no, Boddie didn’t ask anything about the reporting this week on Rubio and Gonzalez’s shocking history of traffic violations and other motor vehicle infractions. The questions he did ask were predictable: How would you lower the tax burden? What’s your plan to create more housing? Do we need more police? How would you revitalize downtown? And so on.

One thing to keep in mind as you consider mayoral candidates is that regardless of what you think about the position’s diluted power in the new form of government, who we elect will be consequential: This first mayor in the new system will set the mold. (“They will be creating the blueprint for subsequent mayors,” is how Rubio put it at the event.)

Wilson thinks he’s the best person to do that. And he’s latched onto an anti-incumbent narrative. “We can’t accept more failures from the same city politicians that got us into this mess,” he said in his opening statement. And while Gonzalez and Rubio touted their roles influencing policy as commissioners, Wilson feels like his leadership of a large company gives him an advantage: “I’m the candidate who has the executive experience that the new mayor’s role will require,” he said in his opening statement.

The other candidate with private sector experience is Gonzalez, who looked and sounded very comfortable on stage. He was definitely having the most fun (the last two words of his opening statement were, “Giddy up!”). Gonzalez wants people to think of him as the one candidate who will have an, “unwavering commitment to safety and livability.” On several occasions Gonzalez portrayed himself as the “standard bearer for safety” and someone who took difficult positions (like ending the free distribution of tents and tarps to homeless people, which he said led to “a horrible cycle of enablement”) despite vociferous pushback from some quarters.

“That took leadership, that took backbone, that took standing up to the loud voices that have so disrupted our community,” Gonzalez said. “Sometimes people are going to disagree. Sometimes they’re going to set your family member’s car on fire because they don’t agree with your position,” he said during his closing statement. “And you power through.”

In response to a question about policing levels, Gonzalez said, “I took down the face of the defund the police movement [a reference to former Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty] in the last election. That was important in sending a message to our police officers that we’re going to stand with you.”

Unlike Gonzalez and Wilson, Rubio read almost all her responses from a script (even though candidates weren’t given answers ahead of time, the questions were so obvious it would have been easy to prep one-pagers for each topic). But what she lacked in oratory power, she made up for with direct digs at Gonzalez and a confident recounting of her productive record on Portland City Council.

“I’m the only candidate standing on the stage that has actually delivered your priorities with results… ask yourself: who of us up here has actually gotten things done for you?” Rubio said in her opening statement, trying to overcome the narrative that she’s not a business-friendly candidate. Asked for her signature accomplishment, Rubio pointed to her leadership on permit reform, where she, “Fought the entrenched culture and took on my colleagues — including Commissioner Mapps and Commissioner Gonzalez — and I was very tenacious and I got it done.”

Rubio repeatedly claimed that Gonzalez has been a “divisive” leader and that she is the better choice because her ability to build coalitions — even with people she disagrees with. “We need leaders with the temperament to work together, to sit at the table and get things done. There’s no more time for finger pointing or pontificating,” she said.

And while Gonzalez gave Rubio credit for passing various policies, he would add a “but” and say he feels council didn’t go far enough. “At a time of the complete collapse of private capital for housing in the City of Portland,” Gonzalez said, “we opted for incrementalism.”

At one point Rubio called him out on this: “Commissioner Gonzalez will say this [housing production policy] did not go far enough — but the truth is that he didn’t engage or contribute to this work when he had the chance, yet still voted for it.”

“We need more than just complaints and criticisms,” she continued, clearly referring to Gonzalez. “We need leaders who will act.”

On that note, Gonzalez said he wants to speed housing production by “peeling back the last 10-15 years of regulatory requirements on developers.” He floated an idea to credit developers for infrastructure investments, so they aren’t hit with a “double whammy” of paying for things like new sidewalks and system development charges (SDCs).

When the question turned to how candidates would reduce unsheltered homelessness, Wilson could talk up the nonprofit he founded (Shelter Portland) which works on that exact issue. “I have a facility I opened 20 weeks ago on 82nd Avenue. I’m connecting people with services that were previously unsheltered only a few weeks ago,” he shared.

This question gave Gonzalez and Rubio yet another opportunity to define their differences.

“What my colleagues up here are unwilling to talk about is the importance of enforcement,” Gonzalez said. “We have to set expectations for our sidewalks and parks and enforce it. That sidewalk is for children to walk to school, for your parents to be able to walk to the grocery store, for all of us to enjoy. It is not for someone to sleep and use hard drugs, and we have to be unrelenting in cleaning up our sidewalks in right of ways. There is no path out of the unsheltered problem without enforcement.”

Rubio spoke directly to Gonzalez in her response, saying she agrees on the need for safe and clean streets but that, “Some of my colleagues want Portlanders to believe we have to choose between, I think you called it, ‘enablement’, and compassionate solutions — and I think that’s a false choice.” Rubio said her work to change city code to build shelters and housing more quickly could be scaled-up if she’s elected mayor.

When Boddie asked how the candidates would help downtown’s economic recovery, I hoped to hear something on the role of streets and/or public spaces. Nope. Their answers focused on giving more tax breaks to business owners, more policing of spaces to “restore livability”, and boosting the arts.

Asked if they’d support increasing the number of Portland Police Bureau officers, all three said “yes” — although Wilson qualified his answer by saying he’d focus on making existing officers more efficient by not having to arrest unhoused people so often. Gonzalez said not only would he like to see the PPB’s ranks swell to 1,200 officers (up from a current total of 908), he wants to bring back neighborhood watch programs. He called shutting down programs like that one of the “many stupid decisions made in the City of Portland for idealogical reasons.”

After Rubio said she’d support “right sizing” the PPB, she went a bit off-topic (was she trying to clean up this week’s bad PR?) and made the strongest (and really only) statement about transportation policy in the entire event:

“As mayor, in my first 100 days, I’ll commit to taking more action to combat the epidemic of traffic fatalities, because we’re not talking enough about that, and investing in safe streets. Because we should all have safe, clean streets for everyone.”

This is where I wish Boddie or another candidate could have responded. If Rubio cares so much about traffic safety, would she also commit to operating her car legally and taking responsibility for her actions while behind the wheel? That would have been an interesting exchange.

The only other comment about transportation came from Wilson. He shared a story about how, as CEO of Titan Freight, he had to make a big decision about a new safe driving program. When word came down to his drivers that they’d have to install data monitors to track speed and other safety metrics, 50 of them said they’d quit.

“I said, OK, we have the potential of losing 50 drivers or saving one life,” Wilson shared in one of his strongest moments of the event. “If our core value is truly safety, we have to lose the 50 drivers. So we implemented the system and not a single driver left.”

Wilson said that decision shows he leads with core values intact.

In his closing statement, Gonzalez also said he’ll lead with his values front-and-center. “When you elected me two years ago, I didn’t exactly hide who I was,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t pretend I was something that I’m not. I was focused on families, on businesses, on a healthy, safe, beautiful city. It can be that again… We have to reposition our city, but we don’t deviate from those core values to drive our city forward.”

Rubio’s final words of the event focused on how she’d have the “guts to make tough choices.” “We don’t have to forget who we are in order to change things… We don’t need flashy, we don’t need any more drama or division. We just need accountable and competent leaders.”

And Wilson said if his competitors could do the job, they should have more to show for it by now. “Let’s face it, my opponents had years to build a coalition and deliver results, and haven’t… They’ve wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. As a result, we’ve lost families, jobs, small businesses, and worst of all, lives.”

“If you like the way the city’s being run, then I’m not your guy,” Wilson continued. “But if you want real change, then I ask for you to vote for me… The Portland Renaissance we all want is within our reach. Together, we will repair, restore and revitalize the city that we love.”

Watch the full debate via KOIN’s YouTube channel here.