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Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan will run this year in hopes of retaining a seat on the Portland City Council, which is expanding to 12 members next year thanks to a charter reform measure passed by Portlanders in 2022.
Ryan has served on the City Council since he won a special election in 2020 after the death of City Commissioner Nick Fish and handily won a reelection bid in 2022. He will run for one of three available council seats in Portland’s newly created District 2, which covers North Portland.
Ryan was said to be mulling a run for mayor but decided against it. Three of his council colleagues—Carmen Rubio, Rene Gonzalez and Mingus Mapps—are vying for mayor.
Ryan’s signature project during his three years on the council has been the city’s tiny pod villages where homeless Portlanders live until they find permanent housing. The project got off to a slow start initially, but the city now operates, alongside Multnomah County and nonprofit partners, seven pod villages.
The former education nonprofit leader ran on a platform of police reform during the 2020 social justice protests following the murder of George Floyd. After his election, though, Ryan became a regular swing vote in matters concerning policing, housing and homelessness policy. Among those votes was 4-1 motion to ban daytime camping on city property in the fall of 2022. Over the past year, he’s voted mostly in lockstep with the moderate majority on the council comprising Gonzalez, Mapps and Mayor Ted Wheeler.
In his announcement earlier this week, Ryan said if elected again he would focus on homelessness, public safety, and housing, among other priorities.
“Courage has been my compass from day one, and I look forward to the future with hope and optimism,” Ryan said in a statement. “We will continue restoring Portland with grit and determination; we can and will become the city we all know we can be.”