District 4 voters elect moderate Olivia Clark to City Council; second and third place too close to call

Retired policy director Olivia Clark secured a spot on the Portland City Council on Tuesday night, easily reaching the 25% vote threshold during preliminary rounds of ranked-choice rounds to represent District 4 .

Energy economist Mitch Green and high-ranking Multnomah County staffer Eric Zimmerman were in second and third place after 30 rounds of voting, but with just 38% of the votes tallied, their races remained too close to call.

Thirty candidates competed to represent District 4, which encompasses all of Portland's west side and a handful of neighborhoods in Southeast Portland.

Votes will continue to be tallied in the coming days. That means the vote totals could change, but The Oregonian/OregonLive projects that Clark's total won't drop below the 25% plus one vote threshold needed to secure a seat on the new 12-person City Council.

Of the remaining 27 contenders in District 4, these three placed next after Clark, Green and Zimmerman, making one of them the most likely to potentially move into the second and third slots: police officer Eli Arnold, Chad Lykins, the founder of an after-school chess program, and Bob Weinstein, the former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska.

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The change to electing three City Council members from each of four geographic districts, expanding the panel from five members, is among a trio of dramatic government and election reforms voters approved two years ago.

The others include ending the practice of having individual council members oversee particular city bureaus and giving that job to professional city administrators. Under the new system, the mayor will only cast a vote on city policies if the City Council ties and won't have veto power.

The precise ranked-choice method that Portland is using to select multiple candidates in a single district is not used in any other major U.S. city.

Clark, who lives in the Johns Landing neighborhood, has said she wants to expand both Portland Street Response and the number of police that the city is able to hire, as well as streamline the city's notoriously complicated permitting process for new developments.

Green has said he would like for Portland to be a leader in clean energy development and, like Clark, he wants to simplify permitting for development. He has also advocated for a laser focus on core city functions like the Portland Bureau of Transportation, public safety and parks.

Zimmerman, who currently serves as the chief of staff to Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, has named increasing the Portland Police Bureau's neighborhood response team as a top priority. And he said the city should focus on opening another round of temporary alternative shelter sites and large pod shelters.

District 4 includes both downtown Portland and Old Town, each epicenters of the region's homelessness crisis, as well as the leafy enclaves of the West Hills, home to many of the city's wealthiest residents. It encompasses almost all of Portland's major universities and hospitals, most of its flagship cultural centers and also includes the Southeast Portland neighborhoods around Reed College, including Eastmoreland and Sellwood.

The voting age population in District 4 is 77% white, the highest in the city, according to city data. Just 2.6% of the District 4 voting age population is Black and 7% is Hispanic. The median household income in District 4 is the highest in the city, at about $94,000 a year.

Five District 4 candidates raised more than $100,000 with the city's small donor matching program. Clark led the field with $176,000 raised. Green raised $139,000. Lykins raised $126,000, while environmental advocate Sarah Silkie raised $103,000 and retired construction management consultant Stan Penkin raised $101,000. Political consultant and neighborhood advocate Moses Ross was next with $99,600.

As befits a district that traditionally leans slightly more to the center than the rest of the city, many District 4 candidates staked out relatively moderate political ground, particularly on the hot-button issue of the best strategy to house the homeless. But progressive voters had plenty of choices on their ballots, too, including Green, Lykins, Silkie and government transition specialist Lisa Freeman.

Only one of the District 4 candidates has ever previously been elected to public office: Weinstein, who was the mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska. Candidates ranged in age from their late 20s to mid-70s and represented a range of racial, ethnic and gender identities, though the District 4 field was the least diverse among any district citywide. Twenty three of the District 4 hopefuls are men, six are women and one identifies as non-binary.

— Julia Silverman covers K-12 education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at Follow her on X.com at