too bad for the recall folks Sam didn't actually break any laws. that might have helped their cause. of course, they can keep believing that Sam's evil & deviousness overwhelmed poor John Kroger's office (something the Mafia failed to do, but we know ex-Marines tend to wimp out faced with a Gay Mafia). if people want to prove Sam is unfit to be mayor, they need to get busy and propose better policies and programs for the City. then find a candidate to defeat him in 2012. whining that he's such a bad man is not how you attend to civic matters.

Q: How many Jasun Wursters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Q: Why did Jasun Wurster cross the road?

Jasun Wurster, the Easter Bunny and Hitler walk into a bar.

I'm not a funny man, but you guys get the general idea.

In actual question I'd like the Mercury to dig into: What's the deal with Wurster claiming that he's turning the signatures over to a third party without the consent of the first and second parties (the signatories and the state)? That seems hella sketchy and I would think that it'd be troding upon lawsuit territory.

Will Wurster be funneling these new found monies to his business partner like he was doing with the first recall campaign?

Good question. We called Andrew Carlstrom, city elections officer at city auditor's office to find out. "As far as I know, they can," (turn over the signatures to another party) he says, even though the signatures are not a public record, until they are turned over to the auditor's office.

So, effectively, this means there's no limit on a recall petition? "That's right," says Carlstrom. "There's not a limit on the number of recall efforts against a public official," he says.

Carlstrom says his understanding is that the Political Action Committee for the Recall 2 tried to file with the secretary of state's office as a "miscellaneous committee" but that the secretary of state's office didn't accept the petition. "The secretary of state thought that they were trying to become a chief petitioner committee, which they can't do until they file with the city," says Carlstrom. "And we have heard nothing from anyone. The only thing we know is what we've seen in local media reports."

"In order to begin the recall process they have to file a chief petitioner committee," says Don Hamilton with the Secretary of State's office. Hamilton says Wurster and Theresa McGuire tried to file as a "miscellaneous committee" last Friday, and that they filed similar papers again this morning.

"But that's not sufficient for what they need to do. A miscellaneous committee is not sufficient for beginning a recall campaign. It's a matter of filling out different forms," says Hamilton. "So we need to try to work out what it is they're trying to do."

test

Seriously. Give it a rest. If you can't even get enough signatures to get it on the ballot you can forget about winning a recall. Enough is enough and at this point you are just dragging names through mud because you're pissed.

I doubt a second recall will take off. It's probably done.

But Matt, I would point out that there are thousands of businesses in the city, most with no involvement in PBA, so to go to the leaders of PBA and ask if they "know anyone" is a bit silly. Lots of small biz owners have quite a bit of money, and many are cranks. So who knows who Jasun has talked to.

But anyway, recall is dead.

Amos, Sam Adams dragged his own name through the mud. He has many critics who range from people who were truly offended by his lack of character, to raging homophobes, and everything in between, but none of those people made him be a f**k up.

Smoke no fire. One should expect a certain looseness or creative spirit with facts from advocates, but why did the WW write this up without confirmations?

Just a reminder, as you all sprint toward instant rapport with we virtual idiots, your advertisers are left in the dust.

So, did all those who signed the origninal petition consent to having their personal information turned over to anyone BUT the city for the purpose of this recall effort? If I signed a petition, I don't think I'd be pleased if some dude called me up after it failed pestering me to sign another. Can they sell the list to marketers? Looks like ferile ground for ID theft too. The only right thing to do is either give the list to the city or destroy it.

@Blabby - Naw, I think you have it backwards. Crazy Jasun says he has lots of business signed up but won't say who. Where else would you start looking for them but the PBA? Of course they might not be members, but it's a logical starting point.

And I loved the quote by the realtor! Awesome.

Why do we have elections again? Oh yeah, that's right... Why not focus on defeating Adams in the next election rather than waste all our time with this? If there's a decent challenger I personally would oppose Adams on the basis that he's an admitted liar. But I'm sure as hell not signing any petitions for a recall in this recession, or otherwise. It's expensive, and unnecessary given that you can just vote him out soon enough.

Amos is sooo right. A recall is a two part process and they cannot even get the first half to succeed. Like it or not, the majority of Portland wants him as the Mayor. While Adams did disrupt city government when this first occurred, it is now these recall fanatics who are in control of the disruption. Let it go. You lost and he has now won twice. Three times if you count the AG's investigation. The city's in a bit of trouble these days, in case you recall guys haven't noticed, so let's concentrate on other things and let an experienced person oversee the problems at hand. He made a mistake and now so are you. Getting him out of office now is certainly not the answer to all of the problems facing us.

Amos is sooo right. A recall is a two part process and they cannot even get the first half to succeed. Like it or not, the majority of Portland wants him as the Mayor. While Adams did disrupt city government when this first occurred, it is now these recall fanatics who are in control of the disruption. Let it go. You lost and he has now won twice. Three times if you count the AG's investigation. The city's in a bit of trouble these days, in case you recall folks haven't noticed, so let's concentrate on other things and let an experienced person oversee the problems at hand. He made a mistake and now so are you. Getting him out of office now is certainly not the answer to all of the problems facing us.

Sorry. Don't know how that happened and there doesn't seem to be a way to delete the second posting.

Jason claims he isn't going to be front and center on this recall, so why is he filing the paperwork for them? And since the paperwork hasn't been filed, that mean right now this group has raised zero dollars? Does that mean the $250k is sort of like how he was going to get 50,000 signatures 3 months ago, or does he actually have the donors lined up, ready to cash the checks once the paperwork is straight? And since campaign contributions are public record, within 30 days the "15-25" (funny how he doesn't know exactly how many,) businesses will become public record, so why exactly are they all hiding this week? I'm calling BS too.

This would all be a lot more interesting if Jason was majoring in marketing, but creating hype for something that is already lost seems like something they'd teach you to steer clear of in PolSci, but what do I know?

What's really getting tiresome is The Mercury's constant rewrite of the same editorial. Hardly a day has passed in the last 10 months without yet another piece from you trashing the recall, defending Sam Adams and claiming there's nothing to the criticisms but homophobia.

The reason is clear as day: Your paper's journalistic integrity --pretty slim to begin with -- went into the shitter when your management allowed your reporting to take a backseat to a reporters' desire for a cushy job at the city. Oddly enough, none of your diatribes ever seem to mention your complicity in all this.

So as long as we're going around calling bullshit on stuff, how about this: I call bullshit on the Mercury's sactimonious, predictable and self-serving editorial stance on the Sam Adams issue.

"creating hype for something that is already lost seems like something they'd teach you to steer clear of in PolSci, but what do I know?"

More than Sarah Palin

What's really getting tiresome is The WW's constant rewrite of the same editorial. Hardly a day has passed in the last 10 months without yet another piece from Nigel Jacquiss trashing Sam Adams, defending the recall and claiming there's nothing to the defense but apathy.

The reason is clear as day: Their paper's journalistic integrity --pretty slim to begin with -- went into the shitter when their management allowed their reporting to take a backseat to a reporters' desire for a second Pulitzer prize. Oddly enough, none of their diatribes ever seem to mention their complicity in all this.

So as long as we're going around calling bullshit on stuff, how about this: I call bullshit on the WW's sactimonious, predictable and self-serving editorial stance on the Sam Adams issue.

@Stu: You beat me to it. :-)

RECALL II: RECALLER

Funny stuff! If you can find a conflict of interest in the Willy Week's coverage, let's hear some more about it. Until then, you're just changing the subject, albeit in a hee-larious way.

Is it Recall 2.0 or Recall 1.1? I don't know how nerdy things like that work. Or do we just go with Recall Wars: The Recall Strikes Back?

@blackedout, I'd ball this Recall 0.98beta. The first recall was so poorly ran and managed, it was obviously only in the Alpha level of development.... Reminds me a bit of ?land in that way.

Euphonius - actually I think there's a far more blatant conflict of interest going on at WW than at the Mercury. I'm assuming you're thinking of Amy Ruiz; but she hasn't been a reporter at the Mercury at any point since this story broke, so there's no way there can be any conflict of interest in the last ten months. If anything, the Merc are even more p*ssed at her, because she left them in the lurch without a reporter with basically no notice. If you can provide us with evidence of a single person at the Mercury since the story broke who has been trying to get a job at city hall, let's hear it. Otherwise, you're just flinging sh*t at the wall in the hope that something sticks. Kind of like the recallers, with all their trumped up harassment allegations, actually.

Nigel Jackass, on the other hand, has constantly slipped references to the recall into completely unrelated stories in a transparent attempt to keep it in the news. Are you really naive enough to not question the fact that he was the one who broke the story about a possible recall redux?

Personally I'm just waiting for someone to TRY buying me off. Nobody's even had the bloody decency to OFFER since this all went off. It's downright rude.

@MattDavis

I offer you 2 cans of peas, an old road atlas, and I'll go to Fred Meyer and buy you a can of Spotted Dick to write an expose on Jasun Wurster's sex life...you know...just to see how he likes it. What say you?

I don't doubt that that's true, Matt.

Stu: You might have a perfectly valid compaint about Nigel, but what you're describing isn't a conflict of interest. It's a major stretch to say that keeping the story alive is, in itself, a conflict, unless you think that without this story, news would dry up and WW would lay off it's entire news staff.

Amy was the Mercury's reporter at City Hall and was working on many stories on various issues relating to the Mayor --Beau being only one of them --while submitting a resume and going through interviews for a very high-paying job in the Mayor's office.

Your comment suggests that her superiors at the Mercury were unaware that this was going on. If that's true her integrity is in serious question, but we don't know whether it's true, because the Mercury has never said either way. If they were in the dark about it, they would surely say so, because their objectivity as journalists hangs in the balance.

Instead, they've said nothing about this issue, and have actually used their platform to obfuscate and change the subject. This makes it a *continuing* conflict of interest, even with Amy long gone. Their silence confirms their complicity and makes suspect every statement they make about this story.

It was patently obvious that Amy J Ruiz was using the Merc news editor post to brown nose her future boss. Trying to "golly shucks we didn't know" out of that is like watching a cat try and bury a turd on a sidewalk.

I love watching cats try to bury a turd on the sidewalk.

And I find assymetrical warfare interesting too. Like the daily catfight that goes on between Marty Feldman, my three-legged cat/ AKA Jackie Chan, and Picaresca/ AKA the Tankard Cat. Marty dominates EVERY time, always winds up holding her down in his tripod of claws, latched on to her neck with his teeth, her fur all over the floor.

Sort of like what's going to happen to this guy, Sam Adams, or whatever he's called. History.

Funny, gonetorio....some how this guy, Sam Adams, has made it through twice. I truly hope you're not a betting man/woman, cuz those are some odds there.

I remember quite well. The sum total of the Mercury's "investigative reporting" on the Ruiz matter was interviewing Tom Miller and reprinting his claim that he hired Ruiz without even consulting Sam. You can google all day long and never find a Mercury article that explores the impact of Ruiz's duplicity on the paper's news coverage.

The larger point is that the Mayor and the Mercury have a common interest here. The Mercury's 10-month editorial stance of "nothing to see here, no scandal, move along now..." is as transparently self-serving as the Mayor's various lies have been. Both would like nothing more than for the community to forget all about their ethical breaches.

And the implication of Stu's above post is that the Mercury's issues somehow parallel similar ones at the Willamette Week, and that deserves a rebuttal. Whatever you may think of them, I guarantee if a WW reporter acted similarly, Mark Zusman would be out front, taking every imaginable step to protect his paper's reputation as a credible news source.

The Mercury makes no such pretense. It brushes off the topic with snide comments like the one Matt posted above. What he really means when trying to be funny is that readers should look to the Mercury when they want to know what dj is spinning records at what club Friday night, but the "news" stories are all pretty much a joke that nobody sould expect a whole lot from.

Oh, and Matt, quoting Anna Griffin as recommending we move on, is a little pat, since she is an obviously love-blind partisan. After all, she left a calling card and a note to Bob Ball demanding he apologize to her hero, Sam Adams, back when Adams was in a full-tilt boil about how people were being homophobic and discriminating against him because they were asking questions about his relationship with a certain boy.

I wonder, with that kind of behavior, how the O lets her comment on Adams at all now, but she does, with missives with titles like "Mayor back at work, as he should be".

Man, I like a lesbian who can't stand Sam Adams. Like the 6 foot tall very large Amazon I met at the Greek festival, who already signed and said, "non-straight people can't stand him either". I was hoping Anna would morph there, but sadly, she can't seem to make the break.

And the recall effort isn't about homophobia?

A big difference between the Mercury and the WW is that the Mercury doesn't pretend that they're completely objective and free of personal opinions. They never have. Whether you think that's good journalistic standards or not is up to you, but at least they get points for honesty.

The WW has never admitted to that. it's just one of the many editorial problems that are piling up over there (see also: allowing lobbyists to rate lawmakers). They seem to have gone from serious investigative reporting to positioning themselves in case the Oregonian goes bust. They have targeted a different readership (and judging by their article comments, with some success). But in doing so, they've lost everything that made them relevant in the first place.

I don't see (and you don't say...) any potential gain for the Mercury from this story going away. They could, if you're a conspiracy theorist, gain from the Ruiz angle going away; but that has always been tangential since there is zero evidence of Adams' involvement in her hiring (and a hell of a lot of people have been looking for it). Even the recallers don't go on about Ruiz, they know it's not the reason for the recall.

But hey, if you can't find one way to kick out the man whose policies you hate (since defeating him in an election failed, recalling failed, attacking his personal life failed, etc etc) - please keep trying to look for other ways, there's nothing so amusing to watch as the desperation of his enemies... It amused us no end when you tried it on Vera Katz a few years back...

Euphonius said: "while submitting a resume and going through interviews for a very high-paying job in the Mayor's office."

You need to get out more. She is a mid level policy person, making a fairly average wage for someone with her experience and qualifications. It was a raise from her newspaper job, but only because newspapers are folding left and right and so newspaper employees make s**t for wages. Quite frankly, if she was being bought off, she should have known that and held out for some real money.

@ephonius re: Amy Ruiz and The Mercury's complicity.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/no…

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…

Really... Matt seemed pretty pissed off at Amy at the time. He wouldn't fucking stop posting about this boring ass shit.

So please kindly shut the fuck up until such time as you know anything about the topics that you're talking about.

We are certainly all about recalling Adams for his homophobic smear campaign against Ball and Breedlove. Among many, many other reasons, like the fact that he presides over one of the least effective government bodies known to the world outside of, say, Somalia.
Unquestionably.

"presides over one of the least effective government bodies known to the world outside of, say, Somalia."

I take it you want to recall the President too? Last I checked he had a solid majority in the House, a super majority in the Senate and he still can't get his healthcare bill to pass.

Effective politicians are bullies and assholes. You put 100 Amanda Fritz's in the Senate and they'd still be debating the merits of appointing Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury to this very day.

This is what is hilarious about Portland politics...people bitch about things never getting done but get pissed at the politicians who want to get something done and love those that like to talk about things more than actually do anything.

"presides over one of the least effective government bodies known to the world outside of, say, Somalia."

You know who had a really effective government? Mussolini. He made have been a ruthless dictator, but he made the trains run on time. I'm fairly sure that isn't what you are going for here...

(You can't claim Godwin's law on that.)

Wait...gonetorio, I thought all you recall backers claim the recall is about "the lie." Yet, now you say that it's about a "smear campaign."
You mean like the smear campaign that the Oregonian, WW, Just Out, your recall, et al ran against Sam Adams?

blownspeaker

I always try to stay civil, but you are testing me and I am tempted to ask you if there is some issue, imposed or innate, clouding your perception.
The lie was the smear campaign.
Jesus.

And Blacked out, I have read Macchiavelli too. Doesn't mean the past is destiny.
Try reading Ted Halstead (The Radical Center) or Zogby's most recent book. The times they are a'changing.

And if you don't believe me, read The White Tiger. India will never be the same.

It's the "Among many, many other reasons" bit that bothers me. If you want to recall him based on a serious ethics transgression, I can cope with that. I disagree with you on how serious it was, but that's besides the point - that's what recalls are for. But if you're trying to recall him because you don't like his policies, or the way he runs city hall - that's bull. That's what elections are for. Crying like a baby because the election didn't go your way, and trying every trick in the book (no matter how much an abuse of democracy it may be) to change the outcome, is disgusting.

If Adams runs again, and comes up against a decent opponent this time (as in, not Dozono for one), then you can try to persuade us that we should vote against him. That's democracy. What you're attempting has more in common with the Honduran coup d'etat.

"The times they are a'changing."

This is becoming a lot more clear. You're simply naive. You probably vote for 3rd party candidates on matter of principle too don't you?

The day the type A personalities lose power to the type B personalities is the day I eat my own shoe. Barney Frank would eat you for breakfast.

Actually, Blacked out, I am still nursing a very intractable homicidal ideation abut the entire group of people who voted for Nader in Florida in 2000.

So, while I would like to be a part of a movement that will draw smart democrats and smart republicans away from their rotting party tits, no, I do not vote for 3rd parties on principle.

Gonetorio:

I'm having trouble finding anything I have posted here that would cause anyone to become less than civil.

Is it because I'm asking why people going after a gay man, simply because he's a gay man, refuse to accept it for the homophobic act that it is?

Is it because I'm asking why, if lying politicians are truly at the heart of the recall, then why aren't other politicians -- those who have lied about much greater things than who they had legal, consensual sex with -- being recalled?

Is it because I'm wondering why you seem to take issue with a supposed "smear campaign" by Adams against two people (one of which seems to have ridden said "smear campaign" straight to the bank, what with magazine photoshoots and talk show appearances), itself nothing more than a response to an actual attempt at a smear campaign by Ball, yet have no problem with a major smear campaign, from the Oregonian, the WW, Just Out, the Sam Adams recall, etc, against Sam Adams?

If you have a problem with people asking you questions about the inaccuracies and hypocrisy of a recall which you adamantly and vocally support, and of which you seem to be one of the top financial contributors, then maybe you shouldn't be a part of it.

@blownspeakers
Playing the sexual orientation card over and over won't change the fact that the only reason Sam got off the hook is because his "alleged" victim happens to be a convicted felon. If you're going to accuse WW of a smear campaign, you might want to read their Pulitzer-winning article about the Neil Goldschmidt scandal. This only points to the distinct possibility that your pro-Sam stance is merely a desire to push this under the rug so that whatever special interest you may have isn't threatened by a recall. Speaking of hypocrisy, if you think pursuing minors is natural homosexual behavior, I recommend looking in the mirror the next time you want to see a homophobe.

Attacking rather than answering the questions posed, gonetorio? I would say such a stance is merely a desire to push this under the rug so that whatever special interest you may have isn't threatened by people who don't support a recall.

As for waving the WW's Pulitzer around, this has already been discussed above.
To quote Stu:
"What's really getting tiresome is The WW's constant rewrite of the same editorial. Hardly a day has passed in the last 10 months without yet another piece from Nigel Jacquiss trashing Sam Adams, defending the recall and claiming there's nothing to the defense but apathy.

The reason is clear as day: Their paper's journalistic integrity --pretty slim to begin with -- went into the shitter when their management allowed their reporting to take a backseat to a reporters' desire for a second Pulitzer prize. Oddly enough, none of their diatribes ever seem to mention their complicity in all this.

So as long as we're going around calling bullshit on stuff, how about this: I call bullshit on the WW's sactimonious, predictable and self-serving editorial stance on the Sam Adams issue."

and, again quoting Stu:
"Nigel Jacquiss, on the other hand, has constantly slipped references to the recall into completely unrelated stories in a transparent attempt to keep it in the news. Are you really naive enough to not question the fact that he was the one who broke the story about a possible recall redux?"

Also your statement ("If you're going to accuse WW of a smear campaign, you might want to read their Pulitzer-winning article about the Neil Goldschmidt scandal") does little more than claim that Jacquiss is justified in his Adams smear campaign *simply* because he holds a Pulitzer, that truth and journalistic integretity shouldn't come into play whatsoever so long as a Pulitzer is held over it.
Such a stance would cheapen and diminish a Pulitzer prize to the point of irrelevancy. Thus making your above comment pointless.

As for the whole "sex with a minor" point -- when did Sam Adams have sex with a minor? Please show me where he was charged with such a crime.
And I never said that sex with minors was natural homosexual behaviour. Nor did I say it was natural heterosexual behaviour. However, I get the feeling that those thoughts were projected on me by someone who holds those claims to be true.

to one guy who said he was willing to finance the whole campaign himself," says Wurster.

Who wants to bet that guy doesn't live in Portland?

Oh please.

Adams had sexual contact with Breedlove when he was a minor. Only very naive people or partisans don't believe this. High-level city staffers told the AG investigators that the morning after the security guard found them in the bathroom, everyone in Adams' office was nervous and jittery and whispering about it. "Something very not OK had happened with the intern in the bathroom." Or something to that effect. Go read the report.

Even one of Adams' staff started crying during one of the interviews with the AG's team and told them to do some investigating about trips she thought they took to the state of Washington, etc.

But seriously, go ahead and keep believing that Adams was mentoring Beau until he turned eighteen.