Portland — The City Council failed to elect a new council president on Jan. 7 after repeated roll-call votes produced 6-6 splits between the incumbent and a challenger, and members recessed the contest to continue the following day.

The council adopted an election procedure early in the meeting and then moved to nominations. Councillor Loretta Smith nominated the incumbent, identified in the record as Council President Pertel Guinea; Councillor Dunphy nominated Councilor Sameer Kanal. Each nominee addressed the body, offering competing rulings about the president’s role: continuity and steadiness versus rotating leadership and institutional reform.

“Those hundreds of emails and briefings over the course of the last year … came through our adamance that council be partners in leading this city,” the incumbent said in remarks defending her first-year record and promising to continue prioritizing transparency and oversight. The challenger, repeating a theme from his remarks, said he wanted “to empower the council as an institution” and to use committee structure and scheduled work sessions to give councilors and the public more predictable opportunities to shape policy.

Debate among councilors focused less on the nominees’ biographies than on how the president’s office should operate. Detractors called for clearer, distributed leadership and steps to prevent perceived concentration of agenda power; supporters of the incumbent credited her with keeping council operations running through a turbulent first year. Several councilors publicly criticized an informal group repeatedly referenced in the debate as the “Peacock” caucus and said its existence had caused perceptions of uneven access to power — an accusation some members urged should be addressed, and others rejected as unfair.

Councillors also pressed nominees on practical governance matters such as whether committee chairs are sufficiently empowered, how the council should use time-certain items, and how to preserve the council’s ability to exercise oversight of administration activity. City legal staff clarified that the charter and code require a majority of councilors present to elect the president, meaning a majority of those in attendance — not necessarily seven — constitutes the threshold.

After at least six rounds of voting during which the clerk repeatedly announced 6-6 tallies for the two leading nominees, the council entered extended discussion about process and temperament, and ultimately recessed the election to reconvene the next day. No candidate secured the majority required to be declared elected before the recess.

The meeting included a procedural motion earlier in the morning to adopt the election procedure; that motion passed unanimously in a separate roll-call vote.

The stalemate leaves council leadership uncertain for the short term and pushes several governance questions into the coming weeks, including proposals to revise committee structure and to explore regular internal forums (described by several members as an “airing of grievances”) to address process complaints publicly. The council scheduled the election to continue at the previously posted time tomorrow.

The council did not take final action on any ordinance or budget matter in the course of the election debate; members said a number of follow-up governance items will be scheduled for future meetings.