Portland Mayor's Race Social Media Standings

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Photographer/blogger Corey Templeton of the Portland Daily Photo blog [2] has put together an infographic showing the current Twitter followers and Facebook likes for the fifteen Portland mayoral candidates (click the image to enlarge).

Michael Brennan, David Marshall, and Ethan Strimling all have strong showings, likely due to their high name recognition after having held other political offices.

One surprise is the online strength of Jed Rathband, who has less political experience but is obviously running an engaging social media campaign.

Another is the online weakness of current mayor Nick Mavodones, whom this graph shows to have only 29 Twitter followers and no official Facebook presence.

Sixteen candidates submitted signatures to the town clerk before the deadline, but Republican Erick Bennet was found to not have submitted the 300 valid signatures necessary to make it on the ballot. The conservative Republican has pledged [3] to run as a write-in candidate.

(You can see my quick takes on most of the candidates here [4]).

According to the Portland Press Herald, candidates have already begun fundraising [5] for the race, with Strimling and Rathband raising around $30,000 and $20,000 respectively.

One candidate has also already had a mini scandal. Last week, Ralph Carmona sent out a news release announcing the endorsement of former Portland mayor Esther Clenott. As one of the first significant endorsements in the race, it got picked up in several local papers.

Now however, Clenott is denying that she ever gave Carmona an offical endorsement and the campaign has removed [6] the release from their website.