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On Aug. 11, Dan Ryan secured a 51% to 48% victory over Loretta Smith in the City Council special election runoff to replace late Commissioner Nick Fish, who died in January of abdominal cancer. Veteran election watchers say his victory can be attributed to three factors:
1. Although the electoral map shows a pretty even distribution, Ryan won large victories in what political consultants Liz Kaufman and Mark Wiener long ago dubbed "the Kremlin," because of its central power in city elections. These close-in affluent neighborhoods, such as Irvington, Alameda, Laurelhurst and Eastmoreland, and Northwest Portland perpetually draw big voter turnout. Elections data shows Ryan won decisive victories in the three Kremlin precincts with the largest turnout, while Smith's victories came mostly east of 82nd Avenue, where far fewer people voted. The turnout last week was 39.6%, significantly lower than in the May primary. That made winning the most reliable neighborhoods even more valuable.
"He won every precinct in the Kremlin," says Kaufman, who wasn't involved in the race. "It also helped that he got almost all the newspaper endorsements [except for The Skanner] because in a low-turnout race, you get older, better-informed voters."
2. Ryan worked the city's new Open and Accountable Elections system more effectively than Smith. That's a bit of a surprise, given that this was Ryan's first high-profile campaign and Smith had twice won Multnomah County Commission races and previously ran for City Council in 2018. Ryan, whose only previous electoral experience was a 2004 victory in a Portland Public Schools board race, racked up 936 contributions, about one and a half times Smith's total, which allowed him to leverage more city matching funds.
Pollster John Horvick of DHM Research notes that Ryan has spent his career asking for money for nonprofits. "He's a professional fundraiser," Horvick says. "That had to have been a huge advantage."
3. Smith focused her spending on direct mail, while Ryan spent more of his money on television. "You couldn't miss Dan," says lobbyist and KGW-TV political analyst Len Bergstein. "He was all over TV." Reed College political science professor Paul Gronke notes the star of those ads—Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who trounced Smith in 2018—may have been particularly helpful to Ryan "given how prominent a voice Hardesty is in today's political environment."
In a post-election Facebook post, Smith's campaign manager, Jerome Brooks, agreed Hardesty made a difference, saying she worked to defeat Smith out of spite and because she "wants to be able to continue to say that she's the only Black Portland city commissioner."