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Given the revolutionary rhetoric, you might assume that Portland City Hall feels like Moscow in the summer of 1917. Not so. Instead, the mood is often collegial—even sweet—between Portland City Councilors who are DSA members and councilors who think some DSA aspirations would make the city a national laughingstock.
Councilors Angelita Morillo and Eric Zimmerman traded barbs in a contentious spring budget meeting and then went shopping together at the downtown Sephora.
Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane gave her fellow District 3 Councilor Steve Novick (often a swing vote between the two factions) a life-sized stuffed corgi so Novick could feel like he had his beloved corgi, Barley, there in his office with him. Council President Pirtle-Guiney occasionally goes into Novick’s office on high-stress days and hugs it.
Pirtle-Guiney’s chief of staff gifted tiny plastic dragon figurines to the five councilors, including Kanal, Koyama Lane and Morillo, who haphazardly paddled a dragon boat during the Rose Festival’s races.
Other relationships have soured.
One most notable is the relationship between Pirtle-Guiney and Koyama Lane. Koyama Lane, one of the socialists and the council’s resident peacemaker, publicly accused the even-keeled Pirtle-Guiney of unfairly stifling one of her budget notes in June. The two have maintained a perfunctory and delicate relationship since, speaking little outside of scheduled meetings and necessary planning calls.
That same night, after the budget session ended and councilors and staff opened the glass doors into a chilly night, Kanal wished Pirtle-Guiney a good night, according to two onlookers. When Pirtle-Guiney asked him to repeat himself, he did. Perceiving his tone as snarky, Pirtle-Guiney then shouted at Kanal, “Fuck you!”
The blowup and other tensions surfaced during the budget meetings led to chatter among the progressive members of the idea of unseating Pirtle-Guiney, whom some believe is favoring the council’s centrist members. But that’s a high bar: it would require a three-quarters majority of votes to unseat her, a tough get for a council that’s usually divided 6–6 on meaningful votes. The progressives will likely try to elect one of their caucus members to the president position at the beginning of the new year, when the seat is up.
