The first thing to know about this race is that Portland elections are nonpartisan. In particular, both Hardesty and Gonzalez are Democrats. So the question is, Which Democrat should fill this City Council position?

Here are the candidates’ websites, where you can learn more about them and their campaigns:

                                                            https://www.joannforportland.com/

                                                            https://reneforportland.com/

You can also see statements from each candidate on the Multnomah County Democrats site: https://multdems.org/whos-on-your-nov-2022-ballot/ . Just click on the picture for each candidate.

As background, this race is on the November ballot because Hardesty failed to obtain a 50%+1 majority in the May primary. Vote totals are here: https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2022-05_portland_com_3.pdf . As you can see, the race had 11 candidates, an unusually large number of challengers for a sitting commissioner. Eight of those candidates, plus write-ins, accounted for 10.88% of the vote. The three largest vote getters were Hardesty, 43.78%; Gonzales, 23.10%; and Mozyrsky, 22.24%. Note that the sum of the votes for the top two challengers exceeds the votes for Hardesty.

Since Hardesty is the incumbent, we can rephrase our question as, Should Hardesty be re-elected? Based on my research, the answer is clearly No.

Here is Hardesty’s Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Ann_Hardesty . In brief, her time in public life has been marked by getting into dispute after dispute. There are no accomplishments listed for her time as a state representative or as a Portland Commissioner. Hardesty’s website does list her accomplishments, so you assess the situation for yourself.

Hardesty’s primary focus is racial justice. However, that was her long-time focus as a local activist. The question is whether she is focused on anything else. As a Commissioner, Hardesty has authority over three bureaus – the Fire Bureau, the Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and the Office of Community and Civic Life. Note the criticism detailed in her Wikipedia entry that she took a month-long vacation in 2021 (with no contact allowed) during the height of the local fire season (August). Separately, the PBOT employees I have spoken with indicate she does not have much grasp of that Bureau’s operations.

Hardesty self-describes as a strong union supporter. The city employees union (AFSCME  Local 189) endorsed her in 2018. However, as far as I can tell, they did not for 2022. The fire fighters union refused to endorse her, notable because she has authority over that bureau. The police union (PPA) endorsed Rene Gonzalez in this race (see Gonzalez’ website, above). That is entirely understandable given her various conflicts with the police described in the Wikipedia article.

But separate from all this, the anecdotal information I have from SE Portland is almost complete, vocal opposition to Hardesty. The terms most commonly offered by people I’ve spoken to are “abrasive” and “abusive”. Still, I was surprised to see a conversation thread on the Next Door website where people discussed this race. There were around two dozen comments on Hardesty, the most frequent being “a hard no” on voting for her. Others were “she should never have been elected” and other words to that effect. There was one person in the entire string trying to defend Hardesty, but she found no support and considerable pushback.

As a Precinct person newly elected in May, I attended a welcoming picnic in August in Gresham attended by over 100 Multnomah County Democrats. Hardesty spoke to the group. Surely this is one of the friendliest crowds she will meet in her re-election campaign, as well as a group critical to her re-election success. When she was introduced to speak, she immediately launched into a tirade about “here’s what white people in Portland, Oregon, don’t understand about the black community”. I certainly understand that’s she’s black and I’m not. Also, while I grew up here, she grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. However, I lived in Washington, DC, for 7 years, and had considerable interaction with the black community (downtown Washington is about 80% black). Frankly, this type of misbehavior by a speaker is in my view both embarrassing and insulting.

In summary, in my research and interactions with the SE Portland community, the only support I’ve found for Jo Ann Hardesty is one person in a Next Door chat about this race.

Rene Gonzalez’ website, by contrast, focuses on the issues on which he is running and his suggestions for change. This alone is a massive improvement over Hardesty’s behavior and performance. Therefore, I strongly recommend a vote for Democrat Rene Gonzalez over Democrat Jo Ann Hardesty.

Additionally, I have concerns about Hardesty’s involvement with the proposed City Charter amendment, which will be detailed in an update to the City Charter commentary here.