PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland City Commissioner Mingus Mapps announced Wednesday that he is planning to run for mayor in 2024. A news release from his campaign pointed to crime, homelessness and the drug crisis as major issues he intends to tackle.
"I am asking Portlanders to hold on to hope. Portland’s problems are solvable, but we must have the courage to admit when policies have failed and be willing to have the courage to change. I have the values, vision, leadership, and judgment to lead that change," Mapps said in a statement.
The announcement comes two days after Mapps filed a Notice of Intent with the city's Small Donor Elections program. He's the only candidate to register with the program so far in any of the Portland races on the ballot in 2024, although he's sure to have lots of company before too long.
The November 2024 election will facilitate Portland's transition the new system of government that the city's voters approved in 2022, which means every elected office in the city will be up for grabs all at once, setting up the switchover at the start of 2025.
Under the current system, the mayor and four commissioners collectively serve as the city council and also individually manage city bureaus. The new system will hand administrative duties to a professional city manager overseen by the mayor, with a 12-member city council in charge of setting policy.
Some of the existing commissioners' terms will be cut off two years early by the transition, but Mapps was elected in 2020, so his current term in office would have ended at the end of 2024 regardless.
The same goes for current Mayor Ted Wheeler, who was reelected in 2020 and has not yet said whether he intends to run for a third term. If he does run, he would be the first Portland mayor since Vera Katz to seek a third term.
Portland's new system of government includes the use of ranked-choice voting for elections, including the mayor's office, so voters will be asked to rank the candidates in order of preference rather than voting for just one.
That means there will no longer be a mayoral primary election in May 2024; all mayoral candidates will appear on the November 2024 ballot, with the ranked-choice votes functioning as an instant runoff system.
The city council races will also be decided using ranked-choice voting, but it will look different because the councilors will be elected by district rather than at-large like the mayor. Each of the four districts will use ranked-choice voting to select three winners from a single race.
