Rally planned to support embattled Portland Mayor Sam Adams
by Noelle Crombie, The Oregonian
Thursday January 22, 2009, 9:15 AM
Thomas Lauderdale, Pink Martini's frontman, this morning is trying to organize a rally to support Mayor Sam Adams and encourage Portland to "calm down" in the wake of a sex scandal threatening to engulf Adams' administration.
"It's been a feeding frenzy," said Lauderdale who lives in Portland. "It's all happened so fast and for some reason, Portlanders feel really hungry for blood."
City Hall appeared calm and normal this morning, with receptionists and staffers staying busy.
By 9 a.m., Commissioner Amanda Fritz was the only member of the City Council in her office. She declined to comment on the mayor's situation.
In Commissioner Randy Leonard's office, staff assistant Lisa Leddy said it had been a rough couple of days. "I'm almost afraid to answer the phone," she said. "We're getting hammered."
Reached by phone, Leonard was somber.
"The investigation is really his only hope," Leonard said. He's broken a lot of trust. But if this investigation ends up confirming what he's already stated, if it's the lie we know about and nothing else, that's his only hope."
Wade Nkrumah, Adams' spokesman, said the mayor had been scheduled to be Washington, D.C., through today, so he has no activities on his calendar. Nkrumah has not spoken to Adams, but does not expect the mayor to come to City Hall, or to appear at the council meeting this afternoon.
"He is still reaching out to stakeholders, reaching out to people he feels he needs to reach out to," Nkrumah said.
Meanwhile, a couple new sites have cropped up supporting Adams, including this Facebook group, "Support Sam Adams," which has about 300 members this morning. A pro-Adams site - "Samisstillmymayor" - is up and running, and there's also a site dedicated to recalling Adams.
Lauderdale said he has not pinned down a time for the rally, which is to be held on the steps of City Hall.
This morning, he plans to talk with Adams or members or his staff before moving ahead with plans for the event.
He said director Gus Van Sant, who like Lauderdale is openly gay and lives in Portland, said he, too, would attend a rally in support of Adams.
Lauderdale said calls for Adams to resign -- The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune and Just Out, a leading gay publication -- are rushed to judgment.
"When it comes to sex, this country is just so crazy," Lauderdale said. "Ultimately, I think that what needs to happen is the city needs to calm down. The city needs to calm down and we need to concentrate on the heavy agenda, which is before us as a city. These sex scandals are a huge, colossal waste of time and resources."
Lauderdale, an openly gay man and friend of Adams,' said he has not spoken with the mayor since the scandal broke but he has sent him text messages supporting him. He said he brought cupcakes to Adams' staff Wednesday night to cheer them up.
He said he's spoken with a lot of people who have supported the mayor. He's hoping Portlanders will come to the rally to encourage "the city to move on and move ahead and not behave rashly and irrationally."
"The thing is: people lie about sex. I mean it's the one thing that people lie about. He is not going to make this kind of mistake ever again in his life."
"I don't see this as a character problem. It was a huge lesson that unfortunately he had to learn in a very public way."
Adams has admitted that he had a sexual relationship with Beau Breedlove an 18-year-old Oregon legislative intern in the summer of 2005, that he repeatedly lied about the relationship and asked the young man to lie to help him get elected mayor.
At the request of local authorities, the state attorney general's office will investigate the case for possible wrongdoing.
Commissioner Leonard said he wouldn't participate in the rally planned for today to support Adams, saying it would be "inappropriate for council members right now to participate in that kind of thing."
He also says he refused a request from Sam's staff to let him sign onto the letter to Oregon Attorney General John Kroger.
"I had these two young men from his office looking at me like I'm a traitor," Leonard said. "But we can't do that. It can't look like a compromise. We all talk about being collegial, but this goes beyond that. We are not going to huddle together and protect Sam if he's done something wrong."
-- Anna Griffin and James Mayer contributed to this report.
-- Noelle Crombie;
noellecrombie@news.oregonian.com
And a heartwarming example of one of the comments under the story:
Quote:
Posted by SAGERAT on 01/22/09 at 10:14AM
Sam Adams may in fact represent the young Portland "metrosexuals". But the REAL Portland includes all the suburbs, the married couples with children who work in and around the Portland area and thus are affected by its policies, decisions and taxes. He most certainly does NOT represent these people. Get yourself a real mayor with a normal lifestyle and get this loser out of office.
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I hope that, ultimately, there are a lot more of us than them.
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