There's a mayoral race taking place in the city of Portland to replace outgoing mayor Ted Wheeler. Wheeler announced last year that he would not be running for reelection. The two leading candidates in the race are Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio, both of whom are city council members looking to move up to the top job. 

Gonzalez and Rubio couldn't be more different, especially on homelessness and public safety, which remain top issues of concern to voters in Portland. Gonzalez has adopted a law & order approach which is unusual in the city.

Since taking office, he's won over a swath of conservative voters with a hard-line stance on homelessness and drug use, while alienating progressives who claim his policies have harmed vulnerable Portlanders...

During his tenure on council, he led the charge to ban public drug use, after the mayor backed off previous efforts to do so.

Gonzalez led the council in voting to amend city code, pending a change in state law that would allow the city to criminalize the use of drugs in public.

The other leading candidate, Rubio, has been tacking to the right lately but her campaign hasn't been setting the world on fire.

Despite a gradual shift to the center that has pleased business leaders, close observers of the mayor’s race say Rubio hasn’t found a message that resonates with voters with the immediacy of her rival, Rene Gonzalez, who pledges zero tolerance for drug markets and sidewalk camping. In her public appearances, Rubio speaks with little vigor or emotion. Peering over a lectern at barely 5 feet tall, she often reads from an iPad in stilted sentences. She and her supporters struggle to boil her message down to talking points. Perhaps that’s why The Oregonian’s report last week that her driver’s license has been suspended six times hit Rubio so hard—it could define her...

One political consultant, speaking on the condition of anonymity, calls Rubio’s campaign “utterly underwhelming.”

Both leading candidates have had their share of problems on the campaign trail but Rubio's chances may have hit a major pothole a couple weeks ago when it was revealed that she is arguably one of the city's worst drivers.

Carmen Rubio, a Portland city commissioner and one of the leading candidates for mayor, has racked up more than 150 parking and traffic violations over the last two decades, failing to pay most of them for months or sometimes years, records show...

On at least six occasions, a judge suspended Rubio’s driver’s license after she failed to pay the citation fine or appear in court, including a five-month suspension in 2015 when she was 41 years old and earning more than $100,000 a year as the executive director of a Portland nonprofit.

Multnomah County courts also referred Rubio’s unpaid parking tickets to a collection agency at least 100 times, records indicate.

Admittedly, many of these tickets were in the past but Rubio's attempts to spin all of this as lessons learned when she was younger came to a crashing halt when she was caught on video hitting a parked car last week. Unfortunately for her, the car she dinged was a Tesla and cameras caught the incident, after which Rubio just walked away without even leaving a note.

The damage to the other car was evident but Rubio claimed she didn't see anything.

Rubio appeared to quickly survey the damaged area of the Tesla as she left the Portland-area lot where she and the other driver had parked, video footage captured by the Tesla’s security system shows. Based on the photos and video, the damage was clearly evident.

“Your first thought is, ‘Who does something like that?’” said the Tesla owner, a Clackamas County resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “Who doesn’t leave a note?”

Rubio, in a statement, acknowledged that when she pulled into the parking spot, “I felt my car bump or lift slightly. Concerned, I checked for damage to the neighboring car, a Tesla. Seeing none, I went to my appointment.” Her lengthy statement also noted she apologized repeatedly after the Tesla owner reached out to her.

The Tesla owner immediately saw the damage and left a note on Rubio's car saying she had video of her walking away. Rubio called less than an hour later and apologized and offered to hand over her insurance information. At this point the Tesla owner had her name and Googled it. She was very surprised to learn the woman who'd dinged her car was a leading candidate for mayor and that she had a record of 150 parking and traffic violations. Rubio told the woman and her husband that she felt so bad she was on the verge of dropping out of the race.

“I can’t tell you how humiliated I am and I’m really sorry,” Rubio said on a recorded call. “I feel very embarrassed that during one of the worst weeks of my career, I was careless enough to be flustered and not paying as close attention as I should have been. Believe me, I feel worthless right now.”

“I would just rather drop out of my race, honestly,” she continued. “Believe me, I will not be driving for the foreseeable future.”

But of course she didn't drop out and is still a leading contender for mayor. A local news station caught up with her.

“Look, I’m human, and I make mistakes, too, so I’m just moving forward, taking accountability and moving forward,” Rubio said.

She definitely makes mistakes, a whole lot of them. I guess we'll see if Portland wants to elect someone who walks away from an accident and then lies about it when caught.