This November, half of Portland’s city councilors will be up for re-election. In order to spare us the stress of electing 12 councilors at once, the City of Portland decided to stagger elections and they chose Districts 3 and 4 to go first (District 1 and 2 elections will be November 2028).
In District 3, five candidates have thrown their hat in the ring so far. Tom Sollitt was the first candidate to file and he’s got a solid head start when it comes to campaigning. He’s got a website, an Instagram presence, and he’s already hung out with us at Bike Happy Hour. From what I’ve seen and heard so far, Sollitt is a legit candidate who’s got a shot to win over a lot of fans. He’s exceedingly humble (there’s not even a portrait of him on his website that I could find!), he shows up everywhere, has made his campaign his full-time job, and he’s a student of the game. Sollitt has been attending City Council meetings and reading city plans.
On Thursday, Sollitt came over to The Shed for an interview. During our conversation, he shared a bit about his background. An an adoptee from Korea, he grew up with a family in Corvallis and enjoyed its compact urban form and campus from childhood through college (and still rides the same bike he did back then). He returned to South Korea to teach English and started a business doing marketing for Korean businesses before moving to his current home near Laurelhurst Park.
After living abroad for seven years, Sollitt found it difficult to re-integrate in his new city. “My personal network had almost completely disappeared,” he shared with me during the interview. “So I started from scratch.” This difficult experienced fueled Sollitt’s passion to make it easier for others and it shaped his political platform. “I know how hard it is to kind of build up a network from ground zero, and I think it doesn’t need to be that hard.”
In this interview, Sollitt and I touched on several important topics:
- how he gets around his neighborhood (by foot, mostly)
- how his community organizing work via Asian American Town inspired his political platform
- challenges with how the Portland Bureau of Transportation conducts project outreach
- the PBOT funding crisis, taxes, and why the city should lean more directly on individual Portlanders to get things done
- whether a “business candidate” (a title he embraces) can also stand for progressive transportation policy
- the 82nd Avenue Transit Project
- how to deal with all the cars people want to park near new apartment buildings along busy commercial corridors like Sandy and Belmont
- his idea for more “park and ride” lots
- whether he supports a protected bike lane on Sandy
- Vision Zero
- Waymo robotaxis
- and more!
Listen to the interview in the player above or on YouTube.
You can learn more about Sollitt and connect to his campaign on his website or via Instagram.
