We used to complain that politics in Portland could be dull.

Incumbents were rarely challenged, and there was very little at stake on Election Day. Anyone elected to the City Council would be just one voice out of nine and would have little opportunity to advance any initiatives. If they behaved themselves, they might get a turn at being mayor. Yawn.

Mayor Michael Brennan gestures during a 2014 speech at a World Refugee Day event in Congress Square Park in Portland. Joel Page/Staff Photographer

Whatever you think about the 4-year-old office of elected mayor, you can’t say Portland politics are boring anymore.

On Tuesday, Ethan Strimling announced that he was going to run against Mayor Michael Brennan, saying that he has been asked to get into the race by residents who are unhappy with Brennan’s leadership style.

It’s the kind of thing candidates often say, but it was backed up the next day when four City Council members and seven members of the School Board endorsed Strimling’s run. The news conference looked more like a coup than a campaign, and that kind of rebellion against an incumbent would have been a remarkable event in any city, let alone Portland.

The question for the next three months will be how much voters care about what elected officials think. The mayor is elected by residents and not councilors, and that is the relationship that matters.

Brennan will have allies in the business and higher education communities who will likely praise his creation of regional collaboratives. He has taken strong stands on the minimum wage and aid for asylum-seeking refugees that should be popular with Portland’s electorate.

And there will be other names on the ballot, including Tom MacMillan, chairman of the Portland Green Independent Party. He is a proponent of a ballot question that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour, and will make affordable housing and livable wages the cornerstone of his campaign.

Because of the city’s ranked-choice voting system, all candidates can run for the office without anyone being considered a spoiler who splits a bloc of votes.

It will be an exciting race, and that is good, not just for entertainment value.

Local elections matter, and the more people who pay attention, the better.

The burden will be on Brennan to tell the city why he deserves a second term and on the challengers to say why they would be better. The choices voters make should set the agenda for the next four years.

We won’t know until next week how many names there will be on the ballot, but it’s safe to predict that the race won’t be boring.

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