Hanging on by a thread

The Portland City Council race involving Jo Ann "With the Bullhorn" Hardesty brings us some good news and some bad news this morning.

First the bad news, and not unexpected: Hardesty survived the primary and will be one of two names on the ballot in November.

Now the good news: So far, she's gotten about 41 percent of the vote. Her two main challengers, Rene Gonzalez and Vadim Mozyrsky, have about 48 percent between them. And so for Hardesty to keep her job, she'll have to get almost all of the other votes, or convince a goodly number of people who voted for Gonzo and Mozy, essentially rejecting her, to change their minds.

The interesting question is which of the two guys is going to be her general election opponent. As of a half hour ago, the state showed Gonzalez 928 votes ahead. There are still plenty of votes to be counted. Multnomah got my ballot yesterday in the late afternoon, and apparently they still haven't processed it. They told me they got it, but they haven't said yet that they counted it.

There are also a few hundred Portland voters in Clackamas County, where the election is in utter chaos.

Can the new, made-over Hardesty maintain her responsible-adult image for another five and a half months – enough so to pick up so many votes she didn't get? To me it seems unlikely. But with so many people being perfectly fine with her pitiful on-the-job performance, you never know.