Poll: Smith shows big lead in council contest

Frontrunner will need to capture undecided voters to win in May 15 primary election.

In her run for Portland City Council, Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith's polling shows she is leading her five opponents by a large margin, the Portland Tribune has learned.

But as voters mull their ballots, whether Smith can overcome her controversial record in office and use her sizable campaign war chest to win an outright majority in the May primary remains an open question.

According to knowledgeable sources, about a month ago Smith's pollster showed her garnering as much as 33 percent of the vote and her nearest rival Jo Ann Hardesty at 11 percent, but nearly half of likely voters were undecided.

To garner a majority vote and avoid what could be a challenging runoff, Smith would have to win at least one-third of the undecideds — despite newspapers such as The Oregonian and Willamette Week having already endorsed her chief opponent, Hardesty, an activist and former lawmaker.

In the polling, City Hall staffer Andrea Valderrama placed third, followed by the trio of neighborhood activist Felicia Williams, architect Stuart Emmons, and Lew Humble, a retired mechanic who frequently runs in local races.

Smith's substantial lead shows her political acumen and drive, observers say. But if Portland's past is prologue, the positions she's taken could hurt her at the polls.

Though Smith has run as the anti-establishment candidate, she's also espoused positions that align her with downtown development interests, the Portland police union and the state's powerful road-building lobby — groups whose support has alienated progressives in past Portland elections.

Her shake-up-the-status-quo message is similar to how Donald Trump won the presidency, says Jim Moore, a political analyst and Pacific University professor who heads the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation.

"She's saying she's an outsider to power," Moore said. "That's a powerful message. I think she's been surfing that pretty well."

Smith has overcome past accusations that she bullied staff and misused county resources, in part by taking full advantage of the power of incumbency as a county commissioner. Over the past couple of years she's frequently called press conferences and put out press releases on issues such as the selling of never-used Wapato jail.

She's also built a sizable fundraising edge. Smith has raised more than $260,000 since last year, compared to $160,000 raised by Hardesty, the next-highest total.

Smith has received campaign contributions from county contractors, businesspeople and unions she's worked with while in office, such as $3,000 from ousted former Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton and his wife. Other contributions reflect her political positions, including money from the Oregon Trucking Association and the Portland Business Alliance.

Those positions place her on what historically has been politically dicey ground in Portland, that of a pro-business moderate:

• She fought an effort by reformers to install campaign contribution limits at the county level, arguing it would hurt her and other minority candidates' ability to forge relationships with wealthy donors who could fund the path to higher office. Those contribution limits won overwhelmingly in Portland.

• Her alliance with downtown business interests, some neighborhood activists and the Portland Police Association, who want to use the Wapato jail site for homeless services, has caused concerns among homeless advocates that the repurposed jail would enable a crackdown on the homeless downtown.

• Smith is the only candidate in the race who supports the plan to widen part of Interstate 5, which critics say will only add to congestion in the long run. Like-minded activists were successful years ago in blocking the proposed Mt. Hood Freeway in Southeast Portland.

In the past, pro-business hasn't always played well in liberal Portland.

In 2004, a political unknown, former police Chief Tom Potter, destroyed City Commissioner Jim Francesconi in the race for mayor despite being significantly outfunded. Francesconi's ties to business interests funding his record-breaking war chest became a major campaign issue.

In 2006, incumbent City Commissioner Erik Sten vanquished challenger Ginny Burdick, a state Senator, in part by highlighting her alliance with downtown business interests.

The 2016 mayoral election provides somewhat of a counterpoint, in that Ted Wheeler was elected mayor despite backing from downtown business interests. But he also had a broad coalition behind him.

Moore finds the Sten-Burdick race is most illustrative. He says the lesson there is that pollsters — some of whom had been picking Burdick — were wrong about how the undecideds would break.

Since this race will be decided by the undecideds, it's impossible to say how things will end up, Moore said.

"However, with her money, Loretta's the only one who can really talk to them. That gives her a big advantage."