Eudaly’s defeat had nothing to do with her position on the political spectrum. In fact, her advocacy for tenant’s rights, if anything, garnered her more votes than she would have otherwise received.

Likewise, her attempt to reorganize neighborhood associations to include more diverse demographic members of our community is not, as many have suggested, in and of itself something the vast majority of Portlander’s automatically reject out of hand.

It does matter, though, how you justify reorganizing neighborhood associations. Refusing to take questions at a neighborhood association meeting after insulting all of the citizens in attendance is not a winning strategy:

“"We were eager to hear what the commissioner had to say," Deal says, "but she insulted everybody in the room. She was hostile and unprofessional and basically said everybody in neighborhood associations is an old, rich white person." (Deal says she's none of the above.)” (Willamette Week, 9/11/2019)

The same holds true for Innarone.

Portlander’s are more than willing to elect a candidate that falls further to the left on the political spectrum than Wheeler…a lot further to the left.

In fact, Wheeler only won a plurality of the votes as it was -46%- well short of a majority of votes cast. That Innarone could not convince the 13% of voters who chose to write in a candidate (presumably the vast majority of whom wrote in Teressa Raiford- who is certainly to the left of Wheeler) to vote for her is the key to why she really lost, not her views that fall far to the left of Wheeler’s.

Where you fall on the political spectrum is, obviously, very important to Portland’s voters. There are electability limits if one is either too far left or too far right. However, character, honesty and respect of and to others is often too undervalued when trying to analyze why a candidate that’s correct on the issues suffers a drubbing by the voters.

Wheeler and Mapps benefited more by the voter’s perceptions of their opponent’s likableness…not by their position on the issues.