Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who was broadly criticized for his handling of homelessness and the police response to near-nightly protests, nevertheless pulled off a decisive reelection win Tuesday.
He captured 46% of the vote and won by a narrower general election margin than any winner in the four other fall mayoral runoffs since 1980.
He garnered wide margins among large but not outspoken sectors of voters, and his opponent, Sarah Iannarone, failed to build sizable margins in many liberal, low-income and minority-heavy areas of the city, despite explicitly appealing to those voters, an analysis of vote patterns shows.
Wheeler’s financial support from the business community and votes from older city residents and residents of Portland’s west side handed him a rare second term.
He was also helped by the one in eight voters who picked a write-in candidate instead of his opponent, a move likely fueled by a grassroots campaign for community activist Teressa Raiford.
In addition to Wheeler’s 46%, Iannarone garnered 41% and 13% went to write-in candidates.
Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone said she thinks the winning voters for incumbent Ted Wheeler wasn't a vote of confidence but of fear of the transformative change she stood for.
Iannarone said afterward that that most voters' choice of someone other than Wheeler was “an expression of dissatisfaction.”
The vote for him “wasn’t necessarily a vote of confidence, it was more a vote of conflict and fear,” Iannarone said. "It takes a lot of courage to vote for someone like me.
“Going with the status quo, going with the devil that you know, is easier for people when times are complex or there is anxiety, which Mayor Wheeler acknowledged and tapped into.”
Portland mayoral races are usually won by huge margins, said John Horvick, political director with Portland opinion research firm DHM Research. The most recent close fall runoff prior to Wheeler’s saw Vera Katz defeat Earl Blumenauer in 1992, 57% to 43%, he said. Wheeler’s 5.4 percentage point victory over Iannarone pales by comparison.
Horvick said that was as much of an indictment of Wheeler’s performance in office as Iannarone’s appeal. Wheeler was vulnerable before the pandemic largely because of his track record on the city’s homelessness response, Horvick said. The issue remains a top concern coupled with all that’s happened amid near-nightly protests for police reform and racial justice that has often resulted in property damage and sometimes in violence.
Amid widespread dissatisfaction with the mayor’s leadership in recent months, Horvick said Iannarone’s messaging to voters was questionable. He noted that the west side of the city, with a high concentration of affluent white voters, and the far east side of the city, with higher concentrations of voters of color and poverty, both supported Wheeler over Iannarone in results tabulated Tuesday.
“At the end of the day Portland is a liberal town, but it’s not that far left and there’s a ceiling for that, right now,” Horvick said. “She is really good with the liberal left Twitter crowd and that can feel big when you’re on liberal left Twitter, but that’s just not where the majority of voters are at.”
Iannarone said Wheeler’s incumbent status undercut her success in outer East Portland, even though she lives near I-205 and he lives west of the Willamette River.
“The difference between say, inner Southeast Portland and outer Southeast Portland might as well be night and day,” she said. “It’s a pretty broad geography and reaching them is challenging. As the incumbent, you have more name recognition.”
Timothy Wood, who lives in Southeast Portland, was on the fence on who to vote for about a month before the Nov. 3 ballot deadline because he felt neither candidate was a strong pick. He said he ultimately voted for Wheeler because he felt Iannarone was “too unnecessarily inflammatory” to be an effective mayor.
“My heart was with Sarah, but my head wasn’t,” Wood said. “The job is about setting the agenda and consensus building. You can have a really great policy platform but it’s no good if you can’t get at least two more votes on the council. My vote boiled down to temperament and who I thought could get more done in the city.”
Candace Avalos, who lives in Northeast Portland and chairs the Citizen Review Committee, a volunteer police oversight board, said she believed Wheeler has a lot to prove in a second term. After three straight one-term mayors, having an incumbent who was willing to stick around likely factored into some people voting for Wheeler, she said. But she wasn’t one of them.
She said she felt Iannarone did a better job of making her values clear, presented promising ideas that hadn’t been tried in Portland before and seemed more willing to make adjustments in light of public demands.
Avalos also said she was also put off by attack ads against Iannarone on behalf of Wheeler’s campaign, particularly the challenger’s use of Twitter.
“I thought it was a disingenuous take and that there were many more things of substance that you could debate your opponent on,” she said.
Many write-in votes presumably went to Raiford, founder of anti-violence nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland. She announced her 2020 mayoral run in 2017 and finished third in the May primary with 8% of the vote.
Community members promoted a write-in campaign for her afterward, although Raiford wasn’t directly involved and didn’t actively campaign.
After Wheeler won the runoff Tuesday, several people took to social media to blame Raiford for drawing votes from Iannarone, leading to her loss.
“Congrats to @Teressa_Raiford and her misguided ‘woke’ followers for giving us 4 more years of tear gas and no police accountability,” Brad Nahill said in a tweet Wednesday. “Go ahead and call me a white supremacist but I was correct that you were gonna be the spoiler.”
Raiford, who is Black, said the vitriol has made her consider not running for public office again.
“Honestly, no one is to blame for the loss other than the people who lost,” Raiford said. “The people who I know voted for me weren’t fighting against Sarah, they were fighting for themselves.”
Ted Wheeler's campaign manager said the incumbent winner plans to build bridges and represent the entire city. He is shown at City Hall on Aug. 29, 2020. (Photo by Sean Meagher / The Oregonian|OregonLive.)
Danny O’Halloran, Wheeler’s campaign manager, said Wheeler hopes to bridge divides to in his second term. He added that despite late poll numbers showing Wheeler behind, the mayor believed most voters wanted him to continue leading the city.
“They saw his experience, his steady leadership and his accomplishments and those were probably the biggest factors why people voted for him,” O’Halloran said.
Iannarone said she couldn’t ignore that misogyny may have played a role in her and Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s electoral losses.
“Commissioner Eudaly and I both had uphill battles about our likability and what we represent,” Iannarone said. “It’s something our male counterparts haven’t had to engage with, not nearly in the same way.”
She said she felt it was difficult to translate to voters visions of a future people haven’t seen. She said that’s why she felt more trust may be placed in new ballot measures than a single candidate.
“I hope it changes at some point,” she said. “We’re known as a progressive city and I would love our leadership to reflect our reputation.”
— Everton Bailey Jr.; @EvertonBailey