Octavio Gonzalez was with friends and supporters at an election “watch party” in Tigard on Nov. 8, 2022, when the results for his quest for a seat on the Tualatin City Council began to roll in.
Those first 8:10 p.m. numbers showed he was behind by a solid margin.
“And we’re like, ‘OK, that’s it.’ We hung out there an hour more and we all left,” said Gonzalez, who ran against Kelly Horsford, a registered nurse and stay-at-home mom.
As disappointing as it was, Gonzalez, who had previously lost a campaign for a board position in the Tigard-Tualatin School District in 2021, knew the difficulty of coming back from a deficit “because typically, like the school board, we knew right away.”
But as the days progressed, and more votes began to be counted, Gonzalez’s margin of defeat grew slimmer for a candidate who neither sought official endorsements nor courted the support of elected officials.
Those later votes came in large part because of a small portion of Tualatin that falls within neighboring Clackamas County. More specifically, it encompasses the Fox Hill subdivision where Gonzalez has lived for the last 11 years.
Gonzalez said when he looked at the Nov. 19, election results, it showed him losing in Washington County by a slim margin with Horsford at 4,305 to Gonzalez’s 4,266 votes. But it was Clackamas County voters who ensured his victory with a vote of 780 to 595 at that time.
However, it wouldn’t be until Nov. 22 that he definitely determined the numbers were in his favor and that there was no need for a recount. He said he didn’t get an official call to let him know he won.
Rather, “It’s more like the mayor had called me and said, ‘Octavio, I think you got it,’” Gonzalez recalled.
Sworn into office last week, along with both María Reyes and Bridget Brooks — who were returned to their council seats after uncontested races — Gonzalez said he believes his policy of seeking no endorsements may have played a part in his victory.
“And who knows — people were looking for change, probably. I’m a registered independent,” said Gonzalez, an account manager for Pacific Landscape Management.
When Gonzalez ran for the Tigard-Tualatin school board in 2021, he was not happy with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s continued shutdowns of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and unhappy about the direction the school district was taking.
Even though he didn’t win that race — Board Chair Tristan Irvin defeated him — the fact he came pretty close to winning made him think about taking another shot at politics.
“It’s much easier to run for a second campaign when you already have supporters, have a little bit of a ground team, you know, people who already know you when you decide to run again. You can just say, ‘Hey, I need some help with the signs,’” said Gonzalez. “That makes a huge difference.”
Gonzalez is now serving his second term on the school district’s budget committee, although he and wife Heidi home-school their children.
Born in Mexico and having emigrated to the United States when he was young, Gonzalez said he’s looking forward to his new position in an effort “to bring a little bit of that perspective into policies just because I understand what you go through when you first come to the United States.”
“I became a citizen just before I ran for school board,” said Gonzalez. “I took my oath on Feb. 16 (2021), and I registered for the school board on March 5.”
Becoming a U.S. citizen was a huge part of his motivation to run for office as well.
“There’s definitely a lot of members in our community that look like me,” said Gonzalez, adding those numbers are present in Tualatin’s local schools as well.
The U.S. 2020 Census shows that the Hispanic or Latino population is 21.5% in Tualatin.
Gonzalez will be the second person born in Latin America elected to the Tualatin City Council, with Councilor Reyes, who was first elected in 2018, having immigrated to the United States from Honduras.
During his campaign, Gonzalez said he really didn’t interact or ask for support from city institutions as well.
“I didn’t reach out to the Chamber (of Commerce). I didn’t interact with the council. I was out there talking to the people, knocking on doors,” he said.
Reflecting on another reason that may have ensured a seat on the Tualatin City Council, Gonzalez said it may have been his activity during the February 2021 ice storm, which city officials have previously said caused the most damage to Tualatin trees since a devastating 1995 storm.
“All the pear trees (in Fox Hill) all came crashing down. I mean, it was horrible. It was everywhere,” recalled Gonzalez. Already taking care of homeowner associations as part of his duties at Pacific Landscape Management, Gonzalez said he saw contractors coming into the community and begin “price-gouging” for cleanup services.
What he said he did next was approach his homeowners association, telling them he planned to send his team out to help and that he planned to cover the costs up to a certain amount but would welcome donations, specifically for dumping fees.
Luckily, he was informed he could take the debris to Browns Ferry Park, where residents were encouraged to dump tree branches during the storm.
Bilingual, Gonzalez said he is an example of living the immigrant experience, coming from a family of seven where his parents were migrant workers. He also identifies with those students he sees interpreting for their parents in local schools.
“I know the experiences that our Hispanic people are going when they come to America, which is different than their experiences when they’re living in Mexico,” he said, adding that he wants to be able to make those parents who don’t speak English aware of resources available to them.
“But so many of the kids who are bilingual are pulled out of the school to help parents translate, and sometimes on serious subjects, and that’s a big motivation for me because I remember being that kid and it doesn’t have to be like that,” Gonzalez remarked.
Another reason for running, which Gonzalez said may prove a little more controversial, is that he wants to be a voice out there when it comes to talk about inequity and similar topics, saying he wants to “calm down to all that rhetoric of racism and white privilege and all the various things that are permeating right now.”
“I don’t see the exaggerated message that you see out there — police officers, inequities in communities, targeting minority people,” he said, adding that he objects to those who don’t represent people of color and act like they do.
“I don’t see race. I don’t see that Caucasian people are aggressively trying to hold minorities down. I don’t see that,” Gonzalez added. “No one’s holding me down. No one is looking for me.”
As far as issues facing Tualatin specifically, Gonzalez points to the city’s plans to implement its middle housing — adding duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, cottage clusters, and townhouses — as required by the Oregon Legislature in order to accommodate more housing as cities butt up against the urban growth boundary.
Gonzalez said he will also be looking out for business concerns as well, pointing out that when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, businesses didn’t initially have a choice of whether or not to stay open.
At the same time, Gonzalez said he is supportive of the recently passed city parks bond measure and hopes to lend his expertise to future planning of parks when it comes to conservation issues. He also thinks Tualatin could use more sports fields.
Gonzalez has been married to his high school sweetheart for the last 26 years — he’s known his wife Heidi since he was in the sixth grade — and the couple are the parents of two children, Santos and Helyna.