Tuesday’s midterm elections ushered in a historic blue wave across the United States, with Democrats picking up seats even in historically conservative states like South Carolina and Texas. In many cases, voters didn’t settle for moderation, with the left flank of the Democratic Party netting historic gains in federal, state, and local elections.
Here in Portland, voters reelected all six incumbent City Council members whose seats were up for grabs this year. The results came as a relief to all the incumbent councilors, but carried particular weight for the City Council’s most left-wing members, who faced significant opposition campaigns. Progressives also nabbed victories at the county and state levels.
At the White Owl Social Club, where Portland’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter hosted its election night party, local leftists claimed victory as soon as the early results rolled in. To them, the results show Portlanders are willing to stick it out with their democratic socialist councilors, despite well-funded efforts to unseat them.
“You don’t need to do any more polls, corporate lobbyists,” Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane, a DSA member representing District 3, said in a victory speech Tuesday night. “We know that Portland loves socialism.”
The large crowd, packed tight on the bar’s patio, erupted.
Before local election numbers came in at 8 pm, partygoers had the choice between several screens showing other results across the country. One projector focused only on DSA-endorsed candidates across the US, while a smaller TV aired now-ubiquitous leftist commentator Hasan Piker’s election night stream on mute. Elsewhere, a mainstream news broadcast channel showed details of the Democratic Party’s blue wave.
“We’re libbing out,” Olivia Katbi, former Portland DSA co-chair and party emcee, joked to the audience, referring to the Democratic Party’s success.
While some votes are still being tallied, current elections data shows District 3 voters overwhelmingly voted in support of Koyama Lane and fellow DSA member Angelita Morillo, along with their colleague Councilor Steve Novick, who occupies a comparatively more moderate lane. In District 4, DSA Councilor Mitch Green easily cruised to victory alongside his moderate colleagues Councilors Olivia Clark and Eric Zimmerman.
This year’s general election was only the second under Portland’s new form of government. Under the current City Council structure, Portlanders are divided into four geographic districts, each of which is represented by three councilors. Portlanders use ranked choice voting to elect their three representatives.
Councilors in Districts 3 and 4—representing southeast Portland and the west side—were up for reelection. While councilors will typically serve four year terms, the six councilors up for reelection this year just served two years, in order to stagger Council elections going forward.
Reactions to Tuesday’s city election results have been varied. Some commentators have speculated they demonstrate, more than anything else, that Portland’s new form of government favors incumbents. They worry voters won’t be able to hold councilors accountable at the ballot box going forward. But the ranked choice voting results show each of the six councilors received a significant number of first place votes in their districts, raising another possibility—that Portlanders actually like their representatives, including the DSA members, and want to see them in office longer than two years.
In his speech at the DSA party, Green said Portland’s “business lobby and old guard power brokers” have tried to push “the idea that Portland can’t dream big, can’t have a strong socialist progressive movement.”
“Tonight’s just the beginning. It wasn’t a fluke. We have won,” Green said.
Billboards and people power
In 2024, voters elected 12 people to serve on Portland’s newly expanded City Council. Since entering office in 2025, the Council’s six most progressive members—including Green, Koyama Lane, and Morillo—have faced criticism for a perceived unwillingness to compromise.
The progressive bloc has sometimes found itself at an impasse with the other, more moderate half of the Council, with each sticking to their side. More often, however, the majority of councilors agree to pass legislation. Data shows 6-6 stalemates have been rare, mostly occurring during Council president elections and budget negotiations.
The DSA-affiliated councilors have faced particular pushback from the city’s business and landlord lobbyists and the police union. Through a tangle of political action committees, pro-business groups and advocates contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars for ads attacking progressives and propping up their preferred candidates.
Existing groups like United for Portland Action Fund, a PAC affiliated with the Portland Metro Chamber, and new organizations Go Portland Go, Go PDX, and Unity PAC came out strongly against the DSA councilors. Green faced a particularly intense opposition campaign in District 4, with his face plastered on several negative billboards calling on voters to “Ditch Mitch.”
But it was unclear exactly how this strategy was going to work. Most of the pro-business groups coalesced around District 3 candidate Kellie Torres, a Portland Parks & Recreation employee and former chief of staff to Councilor Dan Ryan. Some of them endorsed District 4 candidate Eli Arnold, a local bike cop who ran a competitive City Council race in 2024. While both received substantial financial backing and some high-profile endorsements (Torres was Mayor Keith Wilson’s pick), they each came in a distant fourth place in their respective districts.
To the DSA councilors, this was evidence money and establishment endorsements aren’t everything.
“Frankly, they tried to throw so much money in these races, and those people are in the dust. They could not buy a seat in District 3 or District 4. They weren’t able to do that only because of all of the people that showed up for the movement,” Morillo said in a speech Tuesday night. “We had people fighting like hell for us, because we fight like hell for you.”
In a statement to the Mercury Tuesday night, Jeff Swickard—the auto dealership magnate and downtown real estate investor who gave big to pro-business PACs—focused on the positive.
“It was a really exciting night for Democrats, both in Oregon and across the country,” Swickard said, highlighting Governor Tina Kotek’s win as a piece of happy news. “I know we don’t all agree politically, and that’s okay. My hope is that our elected leaders will focus on bringing businesses, jobs, and people back to downtown Portland. A thriving downtown benefits everyone, and I think we have a real opportunity to make that happen.”
Other DSA skeptics were more pessimistic about what the results meant for Portland. A post-election newsletter from Partnership for Progress, an organization run by Bob Weinstein and Vadim Mozyrsky, expressed concern about the city’s new form of government in action. (Weinstein didn’t respond to the Mercury’s request for comment.)
The Partnership for Progress article asked if the city’s new election system offers elected officials “something closer to lifetime appointment.”
“Elections are supposed to be an opportunity for voters to change their government, not merely rearrange preferences while preserving the same leadership,” the newsletter said. Mozyrsky and Weinstein are both former candidates for local office who ran more conservative campaigns relative to their peers.
For several years prior to the 2024 election, Portlanders trended toward change at the ballot box, often opting to oust commissioners after just one term. But that was a shift from Portlanders’ historic voting behavior, which often favored incumbents. It’s not clear from just one election how voters will behave in the future.
The night’s progressive wins extended beyond Portland City Council. Voters also veered left in their choices for Multnomah County leadership, opting for two candidates endorsed by the progressive Working Families Party (WFP). In the somewhat-crowded race for Multnomah County Board of Commissioners District 2, progressive-endorsed Bri Williams pulled ahead of Serena Cruz, a former county commissioner preferred by more moderate groups.
The real twist came in the race for Multnomah County chair, where current County Commissioner Shannon Singleton won against fellow County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards and former Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who served on the board of commissioners until 2025.
Brim-Edwards, endorsed by the Oregonian editorial board, three of Oregon’s US representatives, and every mayor in Multnomah County, was long seen as the person to beat. She had a financial advantage in the race, too, with PACs Go PDX and United for Portland helping fund billboard ads across the city.
But a host of negative headlines in recent weeks helped make room for Singleton, a WFP-endorsed candidate who many local progressive politicians and organizations favored for chair.
Both Singleton and Williams are seen as particularly strong advocates for Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program, which has faced establishment pushback in recent years.
“People were voting for authentic politicians who are actually making promises to deliver for working class folks,” Annie Naranjo-Rivera, state director of the Oregon WFP, told the Mercury in a post-election debrief Thursday. “It was a huge victory for regular people that we were able to break through the noise of [megadonor] spending with actual boots on the ground and people power.”
Past, present, and future
Speeches at Tuesday night’s DSA party were focused on the future, which they think is bright for democratic socialism.
In his speech, Green said the night’s results show the old way of doing politics in Portland is dead.
“There’s a wager that power brokers make every time. They bet [progressive wins] are a fluke, and that really, at the end of the day, money and backroom deals are what wins the day,” Green said. “They also bet that once you’re in City Hall, you’ll be so ready to accept the lukewarm embrace of their craven politics that you’ll say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m one of you.’”
They bet wrong, he said, on both counts.
But councilors also reflected on the past, gesturing to one notable party attendee as a representation of how far Portland has come.
Former Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was elected to City Council in 2018, becoming the first Black woman to serve on the body. Hardesty, a progressive advocate for racial justice and police reform, faced immense, often personal, criticism and attacks while she was on the City Council. She was ultimately ousted by the controversial former Commissioner Rene Gonzalez in 2022.
On Tuesday night, Hardesty mingled among the crowd of elected officials and advocates, grinning as the results rolled in for local races. Later, Koyama Lane and Morillo both pointed to Hardesty as someone who paved the way for current progressive victories.
Morillo, who worked in Hardesty’s office, talked about the attacks levied on her former boss when she was in City Hall.
“I saw behind the scenes of everything she went through leading our city as the progressive champion who was there all by herself, and it was incredibly difficult,” Morillo said. “I often think about Commissioner Hardesty when I think about what the new form of government has done for us, because none of us are sitting there alone. We have progressive champions fighting alongside us, and we’re not targeted alone.”
The Mercury’s Jeremiah Hayden contributed reporting to this story.
