Outgoing Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez on election night, when he lost a campaign for mayor. He says city police have moved too slowly to investigate a car fire outside his home.
Brandon Swanson / OPB
Days before leaving office, Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez is threatening to sue the city — accusing his employer of failing to swiftly investigate threats against elected officials that could lead to violence.
In a tort claim filed on Dec. 20, Gonzalez points to how police have been unable to identify a suspect in an alleged arson at his house nearly a year ago, despite someone using an anonymous website taking credit for it. On Jan. 12, Gonzalez reported that his father’s Honda Accord had been set on fire on the street outside his Eastmoreland house. At the time, the Portland Police Bureau said the fire appeared to be “intentionally set.” Police have not made an arrest.
But Gonzalez’s frustration is not with the police, it’s with the city’s overall slow response to threats made against him on the campaign trail.
“It took too long for the city to take sufficient steps to prevent arson,” Gonzalez told OPB, “It is no way a criticism of investigators.”
Gonzalez said that the city should be more proactive to protect politicians from potential threats before they happen, especially if those politicians had received threats in the past.
“My campaign experienced plenty of vandalism before I arrived at City Hall,” Gonzalez said. In 2021, someone broke several windows at Gonzalez’s campaign offices.
In his tort claim, a legal filing that is the first step someone takes before a lawsuit, Gonzalez notes that an “anarchist/antifa” website claimed responsibility for the alleged arson. “Website claimed arson was driven by policies adopted in capacity as city commissioner,” he writes.
In an interview with OPB, Gonzalez said he hopes to resolve the claim without needing to sue, and that he is simply seeking reimbursement for the items lost in the fire. He said the fire destroyed a ring, worth $1,000, and a $200 dress in a garment bag. He does not have an estimated cost of his father’s totaled car. He told OPB he had requested reimbursement from the city shortly after the fire, but never heard back.
“So, as I was winding down my office this month, I reached out to the city attorney about this outstanding claim,” he said. “They suggested just filing a claim to get it processed.”
Gonzalez, who lost a bid for mayor in November, used this personal experience to hit on a bigger issue he identified in his filing: That the city has been “too slow to respond to increased threats… against elected officials” over the past four years. Gonzalez has been in office two years, but referenced 2020 protests outside the homes of City Commissioner Dan Ryan and Mayor Ted Wheeler in an interview with OPB.
“From my vantage point, for our democracy to function, a responsibility of the city is to make sure its electeds are protected, not intimidated through these threats and sometimes flat out terror,” Gonzalez said. “It can have a chilling effect on democracy.”
The city provided Gonzalez with a security detail after the alleged arson. But he said he would have preferred having that security before the incident took place. It was warranted, he said, because of the number of threats he received while campaigning for office.
“If you want effective leadership, you need to take these threats seriously,” he said.
Gonzalez has raised concerns about threats against elected officials several times during his final public meetings as a city commissioner. At a Dec. 10 meeting, he seconded a comment made by outgoing Mayor Ted Wheeler suggesting the media should do more in-depth reporting on Portland’s 2020 protests, suggesting journalists should more deeply investigate instances of “political violence” against local elected officials.
“I don’t think that story has ever particularly been told,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez has repeatedly raised concerns about his safety as a public official while in Portland City Hall, pointing to instances in which a staff member was assaulted outside his office and when protesters tried to disrupt a campaign event. He also called 9-1-1 in late January to report being physically “accosted” by someone who criticized his politics while riding TriMet light rail. It’s not clear in the security footage of the incident if the woman Gonzalez accused of touching him ever did.
A tort claim doesn’t always lead to a lawsuit. Often, the claimant never moves forward with a suit, or the entity they’re accusing agrees to settle the issue out of court. Gonzalez said he hopes to avoid a suit.
Similar legal claims by elected officials against the city have led to minor payouts in the past. In August 2023, former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty received $5,000 from the city — and a written apology from Wheeler — to settle a lawsuit she had filed related to her being falsely implicated of committing a hit-and-run. Hardesty received a much larger settlement a month later to resolve a separate lawsuit against the police officers’ union and two officers.
This wasn’t Gonzalez’s only legal action involving the city before leaving office. A day before submitting the tort claim, Gonzalez filed a document with Multnomah County Circuit Court requesting a judge examine a ruling made by the Portland City Auditor’s Office against his campaign committee.
The auditor’s office announced in October that Gonzalez’s campaign had violated city campaign finance rules by using taxpayer money to edit his Wikipedia page. At the time, Gonzalez claimed the decision was motivated by a personal relationship between someone in the auditor’s office and an activist who opposed Gonzalez’s leadership.
In the Dec. 19 court filing, Gonzalez suggests he was retaliated against by the auditor’s office, and asks a judge to review the evidence and decide whether to impose civil penalties against the city.
Gonzalez’s last day in office is Tuesday.