Nice piece, Sarah. Developer support for Hales might be about more than the CRC. Hales, when he was on City Council, lobbied hard for Portland Streetcar funding and associated downtown and inner eastside development. He's more of a known quantity to developers, in terms of having steered money to construction, than Smith has had an opportunity to be.

And I wonder if Smith's championing of East Portland is a turn-off to development interests -- in their eyes, there's probably more money to be made in the traditional urban core than there is in, say, Gateway.

*Democratic

Justin, East Portland is the next frontier of development, thanks in part to eastside streetcar. There's not a lot more in the CBD that's ripe for development, but inner east is ready to go.

Hales is anything but a known quantity. One day he's a Republican, the next a Democrat. One day he's the lobbyist for the homebuilders, the next thing he's a resident of Washington who votes in Oregon. It's a fucking mess.

He's a serial liar. Google "Charlie Hales lies" and you'll get a sense that he tries to be everything to everyone.

Smith may be ADHD, but he's much more the known quantity: a Portland progressive with a proven leadership of getting shit (outside his personal life) done.

More of the unions whose members are city employees endorsed Smith (Laborers 483 as well as AFSCME) though Smith's willingness to spitball giving their jobs to untrained volunteers to fill potholes at the OLCV must be giving the Laborers a little heartburn. But SEIU 503 which also represents public workers, just not city ones, endorsed Hales, as did SEIU 49 which organizes janitors who work for contractors with whom the City often contracts. Hales is to a substantial degree the PDC candidate, which makes me distrust him, but Smith mumbles a lot and is rarely clear about what he thinks or will do in specific terms, which makes me distrust him. I may not vote at all.