Jo Ann Hardesty won a seat on the Portland City Council, easily defeating Loretta Smith, according to partial returns tallied Tuesday.

Given that the council is only five members, Hardesty's victory is sure to change the governing body's politics and make it even more liberal for years to come. She will replace Commissioner Dan Saltzman, a moderate and the most-tenured member of the council, who is retiring after 20 years.

"This victory tonight is Portland's victory," Hardesty said to a passionate crowd of supporters Tuesday, declaring her win a mandate for change within City Hall.

"Time for a different kind of Portland," she said. "Time for regular voices to be center at City Hall."

Hardesty's win is also historic because she will be the first ever black woman on the city council and it is the first time the council will be majority women.

Mayor Ted Wheeler has said he will assign Hardesty, 61, the portfolio of bureaus currently run by Saltzman, putting her in a position of day-to-day oversight of the city fire department, 911 center and emergency preparedness agency.

Wheeler congratulated Hardesty on her win, tweeting "I look forward to working together to promote the needs of all Portlanders, and to make Portland a more prosperous and welcoming city for all." Yet in a sign of her dissatisfaction with the status quo, Hardesty derided Wheeler in her victory speech Tuesday, referring to him as "mayor what's his name."

Hardesty will sit on the city council during a pivotal moment for Portland. The city and its leaders have been grappling with a need for more affordable housing, rising rates of homelessness and political protests that frequently erupt into street brawls, all during a time of tremendous economic growth that has not trickled down to Portland's neediest.

Commissioners Chloe Eudaly and Amanda Fritz's politics align more closely with Hardesty's than they do with that of Wheeler and Commissioner Nick Fish. If Eudaly, Fritz and Hardesty decide to vote as a bloc, they would hold sway over council policy and could even overrule the mayor, giving Hardesty unusual leverage for a first-term commissioner.

Both Hardesty and challenger Smith, a Multnomah County Commissioner, weathered accusations of poor leadership throughout the campaign that raised questions about their ability to oversee bureaus that spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Smith, who will remain a county commissioner until her term expires in January, has had eight chiefs of staff in as many years on the county board and had been the subject of a county investigation that found she may have bullied subordinates.

Hardesty was the subject of an investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting that found that while she was head of the city's NAACP chapter she steered a $10,000 project to her consulting firm without board approval and did not report the income to the IRS.

On Tuesday, Hardesty's supporters looked ahead, to a new council that they hope can better tackle the everyday worries that making Portland increasingly difficult to afford. Rent is too high, they said. Good paying jobs hard to come by.

They want Hardesty to make a difference, and made their high expectations clear.

Addressing the crowd, she ended her speech with a toast, raising a plastic cup of beer in the air. "To Portland," she said.

– Gordon R. Friedman

Tom Hallman of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed reporting.