With the adoption of ranked-choice voting in Portland elections, voters for the first time will be able to mark their ballots for a second, third or even sixth choice for mayor.

The problem in this uninspiring race, however, is finding the enthusiasm to pick a first.

Few of the 19 candidates bring the experience, vision and leadership to merit deep consideration for the job of leading Oregon’s biggest city as it transitions to a new form of government. The two presumed frontrunners, City Commissioners Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio, have the resumes but also pack serious baggage that make them difficult to support. And while trucking company CEO Keith Wilson has emerged as a credible alternative with no known scandals, his big plan for homelessness suggests he is both oversimplifying the problem and underestimating the political barriers standing in the way.

The lack of great choices, however, doesn’t change that Portlanders will need someone to take the reins in January. In mulling their choices, voters should consider the key roles that the next mayor must fill – championing the city’s resurgence through public safety and homelessness crises; helping restructure city operations with a new 12-member City Council; and strategizing how to pay for basic services amid grim financial forecasts and a downtown that continues to struggle. Voters should choose the candidate who will push the city toward stability no matter what chaos arises and mark Gonzalez as their top pick for mayor with Rubio as their second.

Say this for Gonzalez: For better or worse, the 50-year-old attorney is crystal clear about what he stands for. Closely aligned with the city’s police and firefighters, whose unions have endorsed him, Gonzalez pushes a traditional law-and-order message. He also wants Portland to reclaim more of its public spaces from homeless camping and is committed to galvanizing Portland’s economy. He is the standard-bearer for the Portland that many residents are nostalgic for, even if they dislike his bluster, tactics or allies.

He embraces his reputation as someone who has pushed back against the region’s most progressive politicians for policies he views as damaging. That started even before he entered city politics when he organized families frustrated with Oregon’s prolonged COVID-19 closures of schools, among the nation’s longest. He defeated former Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty in 2022 for the position he now holds, in large part by emphasizing public safety and the need for more police as murders hit record highs and property crime remained rampant.

As commissioner, he has been relentless in pressuring Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson on various policies. He worked with officials from the county and city of Gresham on urging Vega Pederson to loosen an ambulance staffing requirement that was exacerbating a shortage of ambulances. And he secured a commitment from the county to halt distribution of tents and tarps until the city and county could develop a joint policy. With that agreement, Gonzalez provided the key third vote to approve a continuation of the city’s homelessness partnership with the county.

Our recommendation isn’t without significant misgivings, however. Gonzalez has alienated many progressives and advocacy organizations who are mistrustful of police and vehemently disagree with the city’s anti-camping ban. Depending on who is elected to the new City Council, that animosity could derail progress if the mayor and council can’t work collaboratively. His refusal to meet with some progressive groups, including the Service Employees International Union Local 49, due to its filing of an election complaint he considered frivolous, comes across as retributive. His rhetoric and social media postings often inflame emotions rather than advance a cool-headed argument. And he has shown incredibly poor judgment in a number of instances, from using public funds to airbrush his Wikipedia page to calling 911 on a Black woman who merely brushed past him on the MAX train after confronting him on his policies.

When asked by the editorial board in a follow-up interview, he acknowledged the video released by TriMet of the 911 incident shows a less threatening interaction than he felt in the moment, saying that with greater perspective, he might have made a different decision. The incident, he added, occurred three weeks after a family car had been set on fire in front of his house.

He also clarified that he is open to meeting with SEIU to discuss substantive issues relating to their members’ needs. His opposition, he said, is to the idea that he must seek the group’s political blessing when it had sought to tank his 2022 campaign.

And he points out that his background as an attorney whose success depended on negotiating compromises shows his ability to collaborate and reach resolutions that meet both sides’ needs. The fact that he was the third vote to keep Portland in its partnership with the county, he said, is evidence of that ability to be productive as well as protective of the city’s interests.

Gonzalez very well might not be our pick in another election. But at this moment, when the city faces so many unknowns – governmental, economic and social – the clarity of his vision and willingness to challenge Portland’s lackadaisical culture make him the best of a group of flawed candidates.

We also recommend voters rank Rubio, 50, as their second choice. Rubio has landed some significant achievements since her election to the City Council in 2020, most notably her restructuring of the poorly-designed and implemented Portland Clean Energy Fund into a defined climate action plan with support from the business community and environmental groups. She also led the difficult work of melding permitting responsibilities held by multiple city bureaus into one unified agency – one of the reasons housing development in Portland has become so needlessly time-consuming and expensive.

Her ability to foster compromise without fireworks distinguishes her from her main opponent and shows she has made the shift from being a special-interest champion to a citywide leader – a progression that trips up many who come from the advocacy world.

But we cannot recommend her as voters’ top choice. Not only does she offer a fuzzy vision for what she would seek to do, she comes up profoundly short in the single most important attribute our next mayor must have: Personal accountability.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Shane Dixon Kavanaugh reported, Rubio has an appalling history of ignoring parking tickets, skipping court dates and letting unpaid debts go to collections agencies – at least 100 times in the past 20 years. She has had her license suspended six times, but appeared to still drive, based on additional parking tickets issued during those suspensions. Then, last month, she damaged a parked Tesla as she pulled her car into a neighboring spot and walked away without leaving a note, despite admitting she knew she bumped it. Video from the Tesla’s security system shows Rubio glance at the car before walking past – never stopping to check for damage as any conscientious person would. It was the Tesla owner, notified automatically by her car, who left a note on Rubio’s vehicle asking her to call her back.

In various forums, Rubio has sought to minimize her conduct about both the tickets and the Tesla. She blamed heavy parking enforcement near her former nonprofit office as a reason she was ticketed so often – even though dozens of the parking violations occurred elsewhere in the city. She appeared to regularly skip paying for parking at all, with more than 50 of her tickets issued for not displaying a parking meter receipt in the car window, as the city required at the time. And when asked about the Tesla incident in a TV interview, she accused the Tesla owners of trying to extort her.

While Gonzalez has his own parking and traffic history, it does not compare in scope or degree to Rubio’s flagrant flouting of the law.

As Rubio herself noted in the endorsement interview, the mayor will “help to set the culture of the new city and the tone of the new city government.” That culture must have accountability as a cornerstone. The next mayor must be able to demand, instill and personally demonstrate that commitment. As an editorial board, we have repeatedly called out how the lack of accountability in state and local government leads to poor public service, wasted taxpayer dollars and diminished public trust – none of which Portland can spare. While Rubio makes a case to be on Portlanders’ ballots, she should not be the first choice.

We also considered the candidacy of Wilson, 60, who has gained traction in recent weeks as some former Rubio fans have looked for other candidates to support. And the affable Portland native who runs a fossil-fuel free trucking company and founded the Shelter Portland nonprofit, offers a compelling alternative. Wilson’s love for Portland is evident and his concern for those who are homeless is genuine. He has grown his company by leading with his values of environmental stewardship and commitment to safety. And he has been working tirelessly to meet Portlanders, share his vision and study up on the challenges facing the next mayor.

But at this moment of the city’s transition, Wilson doesn’t have the expertise and understanding of the city bureaucracy to guide a City Council of newcomers to a new way of governing. Even his top priority – opening a network of night-time homeless shelters at churches and other community groups – seems to gloss over the complexity of problems facing people who are homeless. While on the surface, it appears to solve the issue of providing shelter, it does not provide stability – the key for engaging people with services and moving people permanently off the street.

We also weighed City Commissioner Mingus Mapps’ bid for mayor, but concluded he offered neither the record nor the vision this city needs. We enthusiastically endorsed Mapps, 56, for City Council in 2020, when he campaigned on a pledge to work for changing the city’s commission form of government. But we were disappointed that he had not kept tabs on the measure developed by the city charter commission, which he ultimately opposed. He also tried to block Rubio’s efforts to consolidate permitting functions under one agency, arguing instead for continuing the multi-bureau process that has universally been panned for its costly inefficiencies. Even in responding to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s questionnaire, he offered generic and often shallow answers that failed to show the expertise or insight of someone who has been in office for nearly four years.

The city and its residents are about to embrace a new form of government with much to figure out. Voters’ best pick to guide the journey is Gonzalez.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board