Jo Ann Hardesty was sworn in as a city commissioner on Wednesday, ushering in a new era for the Portland City Council in which women hold the majority of its seats for the first time and Hardesty, long a critic of City Hall, has become one of its power brokers.

Hardesty, 61, also made history as she became the first African American woman to join the council. She is its third African American member and the first since 1992.

An activist and former state representative, Hardesty rose to power defying historical norms for city council candidates, who have typically been white, male businessmen. She lives in East Portland, has scraped by on a modest income and has for years pushed from the outside for police reform – experiences that helped her connect to voters.

Now, the critic is the commissioner.

“When I look around me, I see a city filled with people with hope and I don’t take that hope lightly,” Hardesty said after taking the oath of office, administered before a crowd of supporters at City Hall by Adrienne Nelson, the first African American justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.

“I look forward to what we’re going to be able to do together as Portlanders,” Hardesty said.

Hardesty won election to the council in November when she beat then-Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith by more than 65,000 votes, a decisive victory.

The campaign was intense. Both women disagreed vehemently about how best to address Portland’s pressing homelessness crisis and weathered credible accusations of misconduct. Smith was scrutinized over a county investigation of her management and spending, and Hardesty was the subject of news coverage that detailed her use of a nonprofit to direct a $10,000 contract to herself – income she did not report to tax authorities.

Hardesty rode her activist credentials to victory on Election Night, promising to amplify outsiders’ usually muffled voices within City Hall and to bring a new tack to housing and police policy. Her platform includes mandating anti-bias and de-escalation training for police officers, reassigning officers from schools and gang enforcement teams to street patrols, giving new teeth to police oversight bodies, and supporting programs that give rental units to the homeless and tighten regulations on landlords.

Since Mayor Ted Wheeler, not she, oversees the police and housing bureaus, she would at a minimum need to line up majority votes on the council to require any of that. Hardesty has embraced that fact. “I have an office that won’t stay in the box we’ve been assigned to,” she said.

When it comes to working with Wheeler, who is also the police commissioner, Hardesty said they have more in common than they do differences. But she said she will look for others commissioners' support for her ideas when Wheeler is not supportive. “Sometimes he’ll be successful, and I hope most of the time I’m successful,” she said.

As a city commissioner, Hardesty’s day-to-day agenda stands to draw her attention far from issues of police and housing. Wheeler has said he will assign Hardesty to oversee the Portland Fire Bureau and the departments that run 911 services, emergency management and firefighters’ pensions – agencies with annual budgets exceeding $387 million. Former Commissioner Dan Saltzman, whose seat Hardesty now occupies, had been assigned the same bureaus.

Hardesty told reporters Wednesday that her vision for those bureaus includes rethinking how first responders take calls for service and whether mental health professionals can at times intervene instead of police officers or firefighters.

In another first, the city council’s more than 100-year male majority ended Wednesday. Wheeler called the day “momentous and historic” in a Twitter post, saying he “could not be more proud to sit beside these powerful, brilliant and successful women.” Whether Hardesty will form a voting block with Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Chloe Eudaly remains an open question.

In a Facebook post, Eudaly said Hardesty’s election brings a “sea change" to City Hall, declaring that “the old rules no longer apply.”

“While that may scare those used to wielding unearned and undeserved privilege and influence, it’s good news for the people of Portland,” Eudaly said. “Because now, more than ever, the people of Portland have the power.”

After taking the oath of office, Hardesty took her seat at the council dais to the left of Wheeler and began her first council meeting.

Hardesty’s first vote was perfunctory: to make Eudaly the council president, a ceremonial role that rotates between the commissioners every few months. Hardesty voted “yes.”

Her warm welcome quickly faded.

Wheeler was not 10 seconds into congratulating Hardesty as a “tireless leader” and “an effective advocate” before he was interrupted by a shouting, swearing heckler, who was eventually removed by security. Minutes later, Wheeler ordered the council chambers emptied after another man flopped on the ground after a meandering rant in which he called the commissioners “serial killers.”

“It’s kind of an interesting start,” Hardesty said.

As the commotion erupted she turned to Wheeler: "I leaned over and said to the mayor, ‘Is this normal?’ And he said, every week.”

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com

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