On May 15, Portland will vote to determine who will replace Sam Adams as mayor. Adams, who assumed office in January of 2009, made the surprising announcement in July 2011 that he would not be seeking re-election. Speculation has been rife ever since as to who will succeed him at the end of his term.
On May 15, Portland will vote to determine who will replace Sam Adams as mayor. Adams, who assumed office in January of 2009, made the surprising announcement in July 2011 that he would not be seeking re-election. Speculation has been rife ever since as to who will succeed him at the end of his term.
Several candidates have announced their campaigns in the last six months, though at this point in the race there are three front-runners for the office: Eileen Brady, Charlie Hales and Jefferson Smith, all of whom are running as democrats.
Eileen Brady is a Chicago transplant who moved to Portland after graduating from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., in 1983. She began working for Nature’s Fresh Northwest, an early player in the natural foods grocery industry.
Her greatest local claim to fame is that she co-founded the New Seasons Market chain of grocery stores that now have 12 locations in the Portland metro area. In the early- and mid-2000s, Brady was vice-president of EcoTrust, a nonprofit organization that provides support for environmental and sustainability issues. She is running primarily on her business credentials and history of advocacy.
Brady has come under fire in recent weeks for confusion over the extent of her role in founding New Seasons Market. According to newly revealed documents, Brady’s name does not appear on any of the records created when her husband, Brian Rohter, made the initial investment of $220,000. She claims that although she “was never on the payroll,” she played a crucial—if unofficial—role in the formation and management of the company.
Charlie Hales—the eldest of the three main contenders at 55—is a Virginia native who moved to Portland over 30 years ago after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1979. Hales got his start in politics as a member of his local neighborhood association board and spent a decade as a Portland City Commissioner after being elected to the city council in 1992, likely making him the candidate with the most intimate knowledge of City Hall.
For most of the last decade, Hales has been working as a spokesman for Nebraska-based HDR Inc., a company partially responsible for building streetcars across the nation. He also served as the former vice president of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland.
Hales was among the first to announce his candidacy in early 2011, even before Mayor Sam Adams announced his decision not to run for re-election. During this early stage of the process, it came out that from 2004 to 2009, Hales had registered as a resident of Washington for tax purposes, only moving back to Portland relatively shortly before he entered the race.
Jefferson Smith was born and raised in Portland, graduating from Grant High School and later University of Oregon. He received a law degree from Harvard Law School and spent some time at a firm in New York City. In 2001, Smith helped start the Oregon Bus Project, a progressive nonprofit targeted at students and young adults.
“The Bus Project is a nonprofit designed to engage young people in democracy and to work on issues that they face in the future,” Smith said. “We started almost exactly 10 years ago and have registered nearly 70,000 voters.”
Since 2008, Smith has served in the Oregon House of Representatives. He gained internet notoriety last spring for releasing a video that showed perhaps the most elaborate prank ever pulled in the history of the Oregon legislative body: Smith convinced a group of his fellow representatives to pepper their floor speeches with lines from Rick Astley’s 1987 hit single “Never Gonna Give You Up,” the recordings of which were edited and sent to the 60 members of the legislature.
Smith’s campaign has had some difficulty gaining momentum. At 38, he is the youngest of the three main candidates and can be seen as inexperienced, despite his two terms as a representative. Last September, Smith’s constancy was questioned when it was discovered that he had been suspended from the Oregon State Bar multiple times for failure to pay his dues on time.
James “Max” Brumm, 19, is struggling to gain legitimacy in the mayoral process. Brumm is currently studying at Clackamas Community College, and his platform is an improvement of Portland Parks and Recreation.
The other 14 registered candidates are Max Bauske, Samuel Belisle, Loren Charles Brown, Dave Campbell, Robert James Carron, Bill Dant, Lew Humble, Shonda Colleen Kelley, Scott McAlpine, Josh Nuttall, Blake Nieman-Davis, Scott Rose, Howie Rubin and Steve Sung.
Cameron Whitten, another young college student and Virginia transplant, has strong ties to Occupy Portland and recently declared his intention to run for mayor, although he is not yet an official candidate.
If, in the May 2012 election, no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the top two contenders will square off in the November general election.
Corrections:
1. Charlie did not “register” as a resident of Washington “for tax purposes” – he WAS a temporary resident of Stevenson, Washington while his wife’s children were in school there. He paid taxes in Oregon on all of his Oregon income.
2. Charlie was not a “spokesperson”, he was a Senior Vice President in charge of multiple transportation and urban revitalization projects.
Just FYI.