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On Nov. 5, the two Portland city commissioners once seen as the top contenders to become Portland’s next mayor fell flat at the ballot box. Carmen Rubio and Rene Gonzalez lost the mayor’s race by a landslide to political outsider Keith Wilson.
But not before Rubio’s backers got in one last dig at her rival on the City Council.
On Nov. 4, with the election just 24 hours away, an independent expenditure campaign set up to prop up Rubio’s candidacy dumped nearly all of its money (just $40,000) into a political action committee that bankrolled the “Don’t Rank Rene” campaign, which focused on convincing voters to do just that: not rank Gonzalez on their ranked-choice ballots.
Rubio’s IE dumped all of its money raised into a PAC called Progressive Voice for Oregon. The PAC this fall raised about $300,000, mostly from unions, including SEIU, AFSCME and the Portland Association of Teachers, and from the political arms of local nonprofits. The PAC’s biggest check, for $100,000, came from a federal PAC called Clean and Prosperous America, which supports progressive politicians and measures.
The “Don’t Rank Rene” campaign emerged about a month prior to election night. In short order, the campaign raised $345,000 to push literature and ads encouraging voters to leave Gonzalez off of their ranked-choice ballots entirely. More than a third of the contributions made to the “Don’t Rank Rene” campaign came from Progressive Voice for Oregon. (Progressive Voice spent a modest amount of money supporting the two progressive candidates running for the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Both won their races.)
It’s hard to measure the effect that the “Don’t Rank Rene” campaign had on the mayor’s race, but Gonzalez came in third, far behind Wilson but fairly close to Rubio.
To be sure, $40,000 is paltry compared to what the IE hoped to bring in for Rubio’s candidacy early on, before she was bogged down by The Oregonian’s revelations about her driver’s license suspensions and parking tickets. Nearly all of the money raised by Rubio’s IE came from one man: Dirgesh Patel, who runs an investment company that specializes in hotels and motels.
That Rubio’s IE gave all of its money to the PAC that bankrolled the “Don’t Rank Rene” is more symbolic than anything. Contributions made a day before the election are far too late to actually be spent on any advertising or campaign literature.
But that the IE chose the PAC that spent most of its energy trying to kill the candidacy of Gonzalez is notable.
Paige Richardson, the political consultant behind the IE set up for campaign, did not respond to a request for comment.