(Left to right) Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo and Steve Novick, incumbent candidates in Portland’s District 3 council race in November 2026.
Left image: Jenny Kane for OPB; Center and right images: Eli Imadali/OPB / OPB
Early election returns in the Portland City Council race for District 3 show incumbents in the lead.
Councilors Steve Novick, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Angelita Morillo have collected the most votes shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night.
The results are still preliminary as the county elections office conducts its first rounds of tallying ranked-choice ballots — and as ballots that arrived just before 8 p.m. are counted.
This is the second year that Portland voters have elected councilors using a ranked-choice system, where three candidates win by collecting 25% of the total vote, plus one vote.
Under this system, if a voter’s first-ranked candidate doesn’t cross that vote threshold to win, their vote counts toward their next choice. And if a voter’s top candidate gets more than 25% of the votes needed to win, their extra or “surplus” votes get distributed to their second option. It won’t be clear what that threshold is until all votes are counted.
For District 3, which includes inner Southeast Portland and a small piece of Northeast neighborhoods, that meant about 21,000 votes in 2024.
There are 21 candidates vying to represent District 3 at City Hall. That includes the three incumbents along with Portland Parks & Recreation employee Kellie Torres, communications consultant Tom Sollitt and physical therapist Esther León.
Morillo previously worked for an anti-hunger organization and former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. Koyama Lane was a Portland public school teacher. Both are members of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter and are part of the self-labeled “Peacock,” a name for City Council’s progressive caucus. Novick is a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who largely represented the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s the only candidate who served as a city councilor under the previous commission form of government. Novick’s politics land roughly in the center of the council’s Democratic political spectrum.
District 3 is one of two city council districts on the ballot this November. Three council seats are up for election in Portland’s District 4. Check in on District 4 races here.
This story will be updated.
