Southeast Portland voters elect Steve Novick to City Council; 2nd, 3rd positions too close to call

Southeast Portland voters elected to send former City Council member Steve Novick back to City Hall. Novick, who previously served on the council from 2013 through to 2017, was leading among District 3 contenders on Tuesday night with an estimated 38% of the county's ballots tallied.

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

Novick, a lawyer, will be joined by two other representatives from District 3. As of Tuesday night, he was followed by these five candidates, in this order: Tiffany Koyama Lane, a teacher; Angelita Morillo, a lobbyist; Kezia Wanner, a director at the Oregon Department of Emergency Management; Rex Burkholder, a former Metro Councilor; and Jesse Cornett, policy director for Oregon Recovers.

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Many District 3 candidates were at pains during their campaigns to say they would cooperate with their new colleagues to get things done and prove a larger, more representative City Council can work for Portland. Starting in January, three of them will have that chance.

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.

District 3 encompasses most of Southeast Portland, stretching roughly from Interstate 84 to the city's southern border and from the Willamette River east to Interstate 205. Northeast Portland's Rose City Park and Roseway neighborhoods are also included. Reed and Eastmoreland are part of District 4.

The voting age population in District 3 is 74% white, second only to District 4 on the city's west side, according to city data. Just 3% of the District 3 voting age population is Black and 8% is Hispanic. The average household income in District 3 is the second lowest of any district, at about $83,000 a year.

Four District 3 candidates raised more than $100,000 with the city's small donor matching program. Koyama Lane led the field with more than $200,000 raised. Morillo , Novick and Cornett were the other District 3 candidates to cross the $100,000 threshold.

Ranging from far left progressives to moderate Democrats, candidates differed on policy details, but most identified the same top issues during their campaigns: homelessness, housing and public safety. Transportation, education and climate change mitigation were also frequently mentioned on the campaign trail.

Several of the candidates also pointed to specific city functions they think could be run more effectively, like finding new sites for more village-style homeless shelters – Novick suggested converting a few publicly owned golf courses – or creating less byzantine systems for collecting community feedback to bureaus.

Several, including Novick, Cornett, Morillo, Wanner , Burkholder , Cristal Azul Otero and Jon Walker , have previously worked in public service either as elected officials or government employees. Others come from the private sector. Candidates ranged in age from mid-20s to mid-70s and represented a range of racial, ethnic and gender identities.

Winners in Districts 3 will only hold their seat for two years before they must run again as part of a plan to stagger City Council races moving forward.