Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone is heating up the race to be the city’s next leader with a challenge to incumbent Mayor Ted Wheeler.
In a letter to Wheeler, Iannarone’s campaign asked the mayor to join her on stage for six debates before the May 2020 primary.
Each debate, as envisioned by Iannarone, would be focused on an issue any Portland mayor would need to address: environmental justice and climate change; housing affordability and homelessness; police accountability and public safety; inequality and poverty; good government and civil society; and health.
"The City of Portland is facing so many serious challenges and the people of Portland deserve sustained focus and real solutions to these problems," wrote Iannarone's campaign manager Gregory McKelvey, in Monday's letter.
The line may sound familiar to those closely following candidates’ opening forays into debate season.
In 2015, Wheeler dropped an identical opening sentence when challenging then-Mayor Charlie Hales to a dozen debates.
That letter, issued in late September of that year, was left unanswered. Hales bowed out of the race just a month later.
But Iannarone’s challenge comes with something Wheeler’s did not: a hard deadline.
The letter asks that Wheeler’s campaign respond by Monday, Dec. 16.
Amy Rathfelder, Wheeler’s deputy campaign manager, said while staff was internally hammering out logistics to see what the mayor’s schedule would allow for, they were “definitely interested.”
That means, as of Tuesday, the debates are on. But who will get an invitation to discuss the issues of the day remains uncertain.
Iannarone's challenge was extended only to Wheeler. According to the city auditor, seven Portlanders have ticked all the boxes they need to appear on the ballot.
Some, like Iannarone, are already deep into the fundraising stage. Others appear to have yet to start.
Iannarone’s campaign said they want to keep future debates limited to “viable candidates” to avoid overcrowding the stage and stretching viewers’ bandwidth for local politics.
“Just as adding a lot of voices to the Democratic debate doesn’t necessarily make the conversation better, I think it’s important we have people who are putting forth actual ideas, putting forth campaigns that have a chance to win,” said McKelvey.
Wheeler’s campaign, meanwhile, appears to have adopted a more-the-merrier approach.
“We weren’t the ones sending the invite, but we’d want to be as representative as possible,” said Rathfelder.
Iannarone, in a prepared comment, said the campaign was looking forward to discussing the standard for participation with Wheeler, along with the local partners hosting the future debates.