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It was clear Tuesday night that Portland Commissioner Steve Novick would face a runoff election in November. Now it's becoming clearer who he'll be running against.
Affordable-housing activist and Reading Frenzy bookstore owner Chloe Eudaly has been nudging closer to a City Council runoff spot all day—and she has now overtaken architect Stuart Emmons by 57 votes in Multmonah County.
Eudaly has 21,275 votes. Emmons has 21,218 votes.
But the boundaries of Portland stretch into other counties—Washington and Clackamas counties. The latest totals from those two counties, combined, show Emmons with a 58-vote lead over Eudaly.
That means Emmons still leads Eudaly—by one vote.
Still, the race seems to be breaking Eudaly's way.
Eudaly, a vocal critic of the city's housing policies and advocate for rent control, has been boosted by late returns, which tend to skew younger and more left-wing.
Just 10 percent of ballots remain to be counted in Multnomah County. The next update is at 7:30 pm. This is fun as heck.
UPDATE, 5:07 pm: Eudaly says her campaign manager tells her as many as 15,000 votes remain to be counted.
"It's pretty nutty," she says. "I feel optimistic because the ballots left are ballots turned in at last minute, and those tend to skew younger and more progressive. But it could still go either way."
Eudaly says Novick's failure to win ouright in May shows voters want somebody else.
"I think what we're learning from this is that people are dissatisfied with our elected leaders and want some change," Eudaly says. "We'll see what kind of change might be coming."
UPDATE, 8 pm: Chloe Eudaly no longer trails Stuart Emmons by one vote. Instead, she leads by 954.
The latest returns from Multnomah County show Eudaly moving into a 1,012-vote lead over Emmons for a place in the November runoff against Steve Novick. (She has 23,244 votes to Emmons' 22,232.)
Combined with totals from Washington and Clackamas counties, that gives Eudaly a lead that seems likely to withstand a recount.
Willamette Week