The leading mayoral candidate is who?!

Sondland Goes Trump Again

Former ambassador and former Portland hotelier Gordon Sondland once provided damaging testimony during Trump’s first impeachment hearings, but now he says he’ll vote for Trump again. Sondland, who now lives in Florida, said Portland was “economically destroyed.” [Oregonian 🔒]

Newspaper Endorsements for Mayor

The editorial boards of the Oregonian, Willamette Week, and the Portland Mercury released their endorsements this week for mayor and other local candidates. They split their vote for who to rank No. 1:

• Rene Gonzalez [Oregonian]
• Carmen Rubio [Portland Mercury]
• Keith Wilson [Willamette Week]

Poll: Mayoral Candidate Keith Wilson Is Leading

The political outsider and businessman Keith Wilson has come from being largely unknown to emerge as the leading candidate under ranked choice voting. A new poll finds him leading Rene Gonzalez, 53% to 47%, though there are still a lot of people undecided in the race. (More on ranked choice voting below.) [Oregonian 🔒]

Progressive vs. Progressive in Southeast Portland

District 3 in Southeast Portland has 30 candidates in the running, and many of them are staking out similar positions. So whose progressive bona fides will win the day? [City Cast Portland 🎧]

For the first time, Portland this year will be using ranked-choice voting to pick leaders of city government. (But read on if you’re not in Portland: Multnomah County will use ranked-choice voting starting in 2026. And if Measure 117 wins approval, all Oregon voters won’t be far behind.)

Basics for Voters

This election you get to rank up to six candidates, not just one, in the mayor’s and council district races. (You can try it out here with our poll for the best pizza spot in town. If your favorite pizza place isn’t there, well, that’s like politics: your favorite person may not be on the ballot either.)

Unlike the pizza ballot, you’ll be filling out your votes in pen on a piece of paper. So be sure to bubble in just one candidate for each ranking. (No voting for two first-place candidates.)

Tips on Strategy: Avoid ranking anyone who you don’t want to win, because your vote might eventually count toward their victory. (Think of the Don’t Rank Rene PAC, for example, that doesn’t want Rene Gonzalez to win.)

But do rank people you’d prefer to win. (If you’d rather Wilson over Gonzalez, but you’d rather this city not be governed by Carmen Rubio, don’t bubble in the oval for Rubio.)

It’s worth noting: This system is asking a lot of voters, particularly in an election year with a lot of new faces. I’m a former political reporter who follows the news, and I don’t yet know who I’m voting for, at least for council. (We’ll have more on how to figure out who to vote for in the coming days.)

Counting the Votes

So once you’ve voted for candidates, how are the votes tallied?

The goal of ranked-choice voting is to make everyone’s vote count.

“If your first choice candidate doesn't receive enough votes to win and is eliminated, your second choice still is in the running,” says Leah Benson, ranked choice voting project manager for Multnomah County Elections.

There are no more protest votes (and no more Ralph Naders and Ross Perots) that can throw elections. But it may result in an unexpected victor, who is more of a consensus candidate than the fave of the plurality of voters.

In the mayor’s race: If no candidate crosses the 50% + 1 mark, then there’s an instant runoff of sorts:

“The candidate that got the least amount of votes — the people who voted for that candidate in rank one have their votes transferred to their next highest ranked choice,” says Benson. “It’s as if there was an instant reballoting. That process continues until a winner is declared.”

(Note: that’s a reason there is no more May primary. It’ll all be taken care of in one go.)

In the district elections (where three candidates will win), a new City Councilor must cross the threshold of 25% + 1 mark. The reason for that threshold: a fourth candidate would not be able to get a full quarter of the votes by that tally.

If no one crosses the threshold at that point, the votes are redistributed again.

Watch the vote count from our pizza survey for an illustration of that process. Or check out this video from Rose City Reform. (One truly complicated part of the vote-counting process: if a candidate ends up with more votes than are need to cross the 25% + 1 threshold, the excess of the winner’s votes are distributed to the others.)

Note: if there’s no decisive winner after the first round of voting, it may take a while to know the results. When New York City first used a similar ranked choice voting in the mayoral primary in 2021, it took two weeks to determine the Democratic nominee.

“As more people turn in ballots and we count more of them, then we're able to have greater confidence in the results,” says Benson. “But we can't be certain about the results until we've counted all of the ballots.”

In case you’re wondering: Our ranked choice experiment voted Gracie's Apizza, Apizza Scholls, and Ken's Artisan Pizza as Portland’s best — despite Lovely’s 50/50 receiving more votes (than Ken’s) in the first round!