Here’s Who the Portland City Councilors-Elect Have Hired as Top Staffers

In less than two weeks, the 12 people freshly elected to the Portland City Council will take office. They’ll be responsible for setting city policy, which will then be implemented by the city administrator.

The councilors-elect have undergone intense onboarding during the past week, including briefings by city leaders on city bureaus, discussions about the structure of City Council meetings and public records law, as well as more open-ended topics, such as facilitated discussions on everyone’s preferred communication styles.

Meanwhile, the incoming elected officials have also been hiring staff. The current City Council budgeted only one staffer apiece for each city councilor, though there’s been some pushback by councilors who want to work within their existing budget to hire more than one staffer.

Here’s who each of the 12 city councilors has hired as staff.

In District 1:

Loretta Smith hired Elijah Crawford, who worked for Rep. Janelle Bynum’s successful bid to represent Oregon’s 5th Congressional District in the November election. Crawford was born and raised in East Portland. Crawford previously held internships in the U.S. House of Representatives and for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Candace Avalos hired Jamey Evenstar, a longtime City Hall staffer who most recently worked for the city’s government transition team, and before then for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and prior to that as policy director to City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who lost her bid for reelection in 2020.

Jamie Dunphy hired Amani Kelekele, who’s been director of constituent relations at the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office since 2021. Kelekele served for a short time in 2018 as a legislative aide for Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer. Kelekele’s family were refugees from the Congo, and he spent years in the foster care system following the death of his mother. In 2014, he was convicted of one count of harassment and then shortly after convicted of burglary. (The burglary conviction was expunged in 2021 by Gov. Kate Brown.) Amani went on to get a degree in social work from Portland State University, and then went to work for Secretary of State Shemia Fagan in 2021.

Dunphy says he’s proud to hire Kelekele.

“He ended up homeless and addicted to drugs after he aged out of foster care. He ended up making some really bad life choices. He ended up in prison, ended up breaking the law. He’s spent the years since then, fighting his way back from the bottom,” Dunphy says. “He’s had his record expunged, and if somebody in our system can’t claw their way back from the very bottom to use their experience to make penance for their past choices and use their experience to inform the highest level of government, I don’t know what the point of justice is.”

Dunphy says Kelekele has “overcome more than I ever could.”

In District 2:

Dan Ryan, as WW reported earlier this month, hired former City Council candidate Kezia Wanner. Wanner ran in District 3 and has worked at the city of Portland for nearly two decades in various bureaus, hopping around every two or three years. She didn’t win a seat on the City Council, despite being endorsed by the fire, police and public-sector unions and receiving a monetary boost from a political action committee set up by the Portland Metro Chamber. She currently works for the state’s Department of Emergency Management.

Sameer Kanal has hired Lisa Freeman, a candidate for City Council in District 4. Freeman most recently worked in the city’s Community Safety Division, seeking to stem the tide of shootings across the city, and especially in East Portland. Prior to working at the city, Freeman worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, advising foreign countries undergoing government transitions.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney has not hired anyone yet.

In District 3:

Tiffany Koyama Lane hired Emory Mort, who currently serves as chief of staff to Sen. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland) and has been a longtime police accountability advocate in Portland. He also worked as chief of staff to former state Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon.

Steve Novick has hired Spencer Knowles, president of the Montavilla Neighborhood Association in Southeast Portland. Knowles is Portland born and raised, and while interning at the World Resources Institute, he met former Portland Mayor Sam Adams, and in 2020 would help run his unsuccessful campaign for City Council. Knowles has since worked as a strategic adviser to various startups, and has also worked on several local campaigns, including the unsuccessful 2022 “no” campaign to defeat the charter reform measure. Knowles most recently helped out with Novick’s City Council campaign this fall.

Angelita Morillo has hired Andre Miller, a former policy adviser to City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. Miller focused primarily on community safety efforts other than police that Hardesty championed in her first term before losing a reelection bid to Rene Gonzalez in November 2022. After Hardesty was ousted from office, Miller moved to the city’s Community Safety Division, where he does similar work.

In District 4:

Olivia Clark hired Megan Beyer in District 4. Beyer is a longtime Democratic Party staffer, having served as a legislative assistant to various state lawmakers for 11 years and then served as chief of staff to former Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey. Beyer then worked as a government affairs director for FocusPoint Communications, a political strategy company. Beyer currently works as a senior policy adviser to outgoing City Commissioner Carmen Rubio. She’s the daughter of two former state legislators—Lee Beyer, who served in both the Senate and House, and Rep. Terry Beyer.

Eric Zimmerman hired Ryan Nielsen, a political representative for the Laborers International Union of North America Local 737, a trade union that represents construction workers across the state.

Mitch Green hired Maria Sipin, who formerly sat on the advisory committee for the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, a growing pot of city tax dollars that’s aimed at increasing climate resiliency and creating jobs for people of color. Sipin also ran Green’s campaign for City Council, and prior to that worked at a nonprofit to bringing participatory budgeting to Oregon.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Maria Sipin currently sits on the PCEF committee. Sipin left the committee in late August.