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Update, 5:30 pm Friday, May 24: With all but a handful of ballots counted, Meghan Moyer and Vadim Mozyrsky have both secured places in the November runoff. In later returns, which skew left, Moyer surged to a 6-point lead over Mozyrsky. Moyer won 47% of the vote; Mozyrsky received 39.5%. Read the latest update in Multnomah County races.
Original post, 8:20 pm Tuesday, May 21: Vadim Mozyrsky and Meghan Moyer are neck and neck in the race for Multnomah County commissioner in District 1. Administrative law judge Mozyrsky has received 42% of the vote, while Moyer, the policy director for Disability Rights Oregon, has received 44%, according to early returns on Tuesday evening.
If those results hold, it’s likely Mozyrsky and Moyer will face off in a runoff election in November. With a number of low-profile candidates garnering a couple of percentage points of vote each, it will be difficult for either Moyer or Mozyrsky to cross the 50%-plus-1 threshold needed to win the race outright.
Whoever wins will succeed County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who is finishing up her second and final term as District 1 commissioner. The district spans the west side of Portland and includes a small chunk of inner Southeast.
At the Hoxton Hotel in Old Town, supporters of three candidates on the Multnomah County ballot—district attorney candidate Nathan Vasquez, Mozyrsky, and Multnomah County District 2 candidate Jessie Burke—gathered with drinks in hand. Ten minutes prior to the first election results, each of the three candidates spoke.
“A lot of people are concerned about public safety. A lot of personal stories of tragedy. But the one refrain that I kept hearing a lot about, is that our city and county are not listening to us. That we are taxpayers, residents, rolling up our sleeves to help, but no one is listening,” Mozyrsky said. “We have three candidates in this room that been have listening for a long time.”
As an administrative law judge, Mozyrsky tends toward moderate, business-friendly politics. He ran for Portland City Council in 2022 and didn’t make it past the primary, but his support for police and promises to crack down on homeless camping landed him support from real estate brokers and top Portland businesses.
Moyer is the more progressive of the two candidates, nabbing endorsements from former Gov. Kate Brown, Oregon’s chapter of the Sierra Club, and the Portland Association of Teachers. Her campaign emphasizes affordable housing and behavioral health services.
At her election party at the Lucky Lab Pub House, Moyer said after preliminary returns came in: “We can do better and we don’t have to lose our compassion in order to fix our problems.”
The next closest candidate in early returns was Margot Wheeler, with just shy of 6% of the vote. So the race is between Mozyrsky and Moyer.