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Olivia Clark
Eric Zimmerman
Eli Arnold
District 4 covers all of Portland’s westside, plus a bit of Southeast Portland that includes Sellwood and Eastmoreland. It’s the most affluent of the four districts and, subsequently, leans centrist.
As in District 3, staggered elections mean that the candidates elected in District 4 will serve only two years before another election in 2026. (The winners in the next cycle will serve four years.) Nevertheless, 30 candidates are seeking three seats. Thirteen of them qualified for public funds, which suggests a broad base of support. We recommend the following six.
Olivia Clark is our first choice. This is Clark’s first bid for office, but she’s got an impressive résumé. Clark, 70, spent much of the past three decades as a go-between, first as a liaison for Gov. John Kitzhaber to cities and counties, then as a lobbyist for TriMet working the halls of the Capitol. Those who’ve worked with Clark give her high marks for honesty and expertise. Voting for her for City Council is like hiring a good general contractor for a home remodel: She’ll know the floor plan and where the pipes are as her colleagues are knocking out walls. And we like how she’s thinking about the city’s housing crisis—pledging to treat it like the wartime emergency that spurred the development of workforce housing in the 1940s.
Our second pick, Eric Zimmerman, is another longtime habitue of government halls. An Army veteran who led a platoon in Iraq, Zimmerman has since worked in the offices of Multnomah County Commissioners Diane McKeel and Julia Brim-Edwards; in between those roles, he staffed Mayor Ted Wheeler. Those officials have one thing in common: They were constant agitants to the social services stronghold in the county. That’s no accident, since Zimmerman, 40, was seeking strict enforcement of camping bans before it was cool. We wouldn’t want him running the city unchecked, but after years writing amendments to ordinances as the loyal opposition, he’s earned a spot on the dais.
Are we really going to endorse a cop? You bet. Eli Arnold has pedaled for five years as an officer in the Portland Police Bureau’s downtown bicycle squad. That’s given him a front-row Schwinn seat to observe how the city’s core has degraded. (And to let others know: Arnold proved himself a canny politician by giving news media outlets disaster tours of the city’s most blasted zones.) Our hope is he’ll come prepared with a blueprint for disrupting the open-air drug use that now smothers neighborhoods like Goose Hollow. Arnold, 44, projects a calm demeanor honed as a first responder, and we suspect he and Zimmerman will serve as useful foils for the raft of liberals we’re endorsing in Districts 1 and 3.
Those are the three candidates we’d like to see representing District 4. But you can rank up to six, and we suggest these three as your next choices.
Progressives disappointed by our top three picks should give serious consideration to Sarah Silkie. A longtime civil engineer at the Portland Water Bureau, Silkie, 50, receives high marks from former colleagues. Her mastery of city functions would prove useful on the council, and in our interview, she impressed us with nuanced answers—and we agree with her contention that the crisis-intervention initiative Portland Street Response can’t be properly evaluated until it’s operating around the clock, all over the city. Plus, she has a functional sense of humor, which isn’t as common among candidates as we’d like.
Bob Weinstein first surfaced in Portland public life as a Don Quixote fighting a lonely battle against electric scooters. But he had a secret life: He served four terms as the mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska, before moving here. That’s a record of public service the new council could use. And Weinstein, 73, while certainly on the conservative side of Portland politics, has proven less curmudgeonly and more pragmatic than we expected.
Much less common in District 4 is the POV offered by Mitch Green. He’s an energy economist formerly with the Bonneville Power Administration who’s interested in preparing the power grid to withstand the effects of climate change. A staunch progressive, Green’s got the Democratic Socialists of America’s local chapter knocking on doors for him—we wouldn’t be surprised to see him slip in on the left lane while moderates split the vote. We wouldn’t be upset, either: Green, 42, is wicked smart and willing to challenge conventional wisdom (such as the notion that Portland’s marginal tax rate is eroding the tax base).
Among the candidates who didn’t make our top six, Ciatta Thompson stands out. She works at the front desk of the downtown Marriott and speaks with clear-eyed candor about street conditions around the hotel. We hope she’ll run again. Other candidates of note include Chad Lykins, who runs a chess program for kids, and Tony Morse, an advocate for drug and alcohol recovery. Both are polished, though neither have impressed us on the campaign trail. Stan Penkin ably voices the complaints of the Pearl District, and Moses Ross did good work building consensus around a pod village in the Southwest Hills even if he gets a little preachy for our taste.
What Clark, Zimmerman and Arnold were known for in high school: Clark ran away from home. Zimmerman was track team captain. Arnold read “hard science fiction novels” and played Dungeons & Dragons.