It’s over before it’s really begun. Sources inside the Portland Police Bureau close to Chief Mike Reese confirm the chief will announce today that he will NOT run for mayor of Portland next year.
The reason? He’s decided he can be more effective as chief of police. He also would face some serious logistical hurdles in raising money and building a campaign after starting months after the other candidates. And Occupy Portland hasn’t made that any easier for him.
Reese this morning acknowledged collecting campaign cash but said his announcement would be delayed. I’m told he hadn’t given word to Mayor Sam Adams yet and that’s why he didn’t mention his decision earlier today.
More updates as they come.
Update 4:10 PM: The chief has sent out an official statement confirming he won’t be a candidate.
After careful consideration, I’ve decided that I can best serve the community and the Portland Police Bureau by remaining the Chief of Police. I will not be a candidate for Mayor. I appreciate the kind words of support and encouragement that have been offered to me these past few weeks. It has been humbling to say the least to hear these positive comments.
Running for political office is a time-consuming and daunting task. I wish all the candidates the best as they move forward with their campaigns.
Update 6:15 PM: So what pushed Reese out of the race, instead of in—something that seemed like a lock after the Mercury broke the news the chief had opened a state fundraising account?
Sources close to the chief say it was less the bad press over the weekend—he was hammered over the pepper-spraying of protesters and for taking a poke at Occupy Portland by making an unresearched mention of a rape case—and more that he had too much work left to do as chief.
See the rest after the cut.
Occupy, and any discipline or findings from the pepper-spraying, are still hanging over the bureau. So are steep budget cuts that could include some of Reese’s cherished programs, like Project Respond and other cash for social services. There might even be layoffs.
Beyond the budget, the federal use of force investigation is incomplete, and the remainder of the 2010-2011 shooting cases (not to mention road-ragin’ Sergeant Kyle Nice’s case) also await the chief’s mark.
Reese would have had only until January or so to handle all that before having to start campaigning full time. And it was telling, amid chatter in city hall and with cops, that no one consensus replacement for Reese had emerged. Everyone had a pick, but it rarely was the same pick. Unlike, I’m told, when Mayor Adams fired Rosie Sizer in May 2010 and everyone knew Reese would be the guy to take over.
It seems likely Reese would have overcome the past weekend’s headlines, provided he didn’t make the same mistake twice. His apology showed political chops, especially for a newbie candidate. It was forthright and resonated with his critics—a textbook example of confronting a gaffe head on, taking responsibility for it, and then putting it to rest.
But a talent for handling scrutiny and actually wanting to subject yourself to it while still having another very demanding, also very heavily scrutinized job, are two different matters. And, of course, Reese lost a few crucial weeks of pre-holidays fundraising thanks to Occupy Portland.
Although, even then, he didn’t need that much to be competitive.
Polls showed him right up there with Eileen Brady—who has spent an eye-popping $176,000-plus on her race and still was essentially tied with someone who hadn’t actually been running or raising money or making campaign events only until after those polls came out. (Can someone say Brad Avakian? They have the same consultant team, even!)
Expect to see Reese one some kind of ballot, some time soon. He’s ambitious, and he can retire after June with his full pension, and maybe after having drafted a succession plan with Adams. His labor position statement, which he wrote himself, showed he’s got promise, and that he wouldn’t necessarily be a shill for the Portland Business Alliance.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to see who actually did give him money. And I’ll be even more curious as to which of the three remaining candidates (Brady, Charlie Hales, and Jefferson Smith) they had previously been giving to—or which ones they’ll start giving to.
He can only be “more effective as chief of police” if the current mayor and his successor don’t fire him. I’m not convinced that Mayor Adams hasn’t given him the “two strikes” lecture and I *know* there will be more strikes against him.
Hooray!
The politically-exploited-rape-victim lobby will be happy with this result.
I think his handling of Occupy would have been a “winner” for him in the election, right up until he tried to blame Occupy for rape victims having to sit around for assistance. Aside from that monumental fuck up, I think he’s got vast majority support from Portlanders regarding Occupy.
Wow, that guy figured out the fastest way to fuck up a political career.
Great scoop, Denis!!
“Great scoop, Denis!! “
Denis has been saying for the last 3 weeks that he’s running! That’s like, the anti-scoop.
http://www.change.org/petitions/sam-adams-…
I wonder if this petition had anything to do with this decision? 🙂
Didn’t seem to be a screaming need for his candidacy in my opinion. Seemed like a “what the heck, I’ll run” kind of move to me.
@Blabby – Well, that poll a couple of weeks ago had him rated far higher than any of the people who have been campaigning.
I’m surprised he dropped out. As Reymont notes, Reese was polling ahead of everyone, Chuck is correct that his handling of Occupy would be an asset, rather than a liability, right up until the rape thing, which probably wouldn’t have been a major issue (outside the pages of the Mercury).
While you’re my BFFF, Merc, you’re also something of a backwards political barometer – your candidates never win, your initiatives never pass, and the things that are big deals here simply aren’t to the voting public at large.
TRANSLATION: Adams gave him the ultimatum to either resign from being Chief and run for mayor or remain as Chief and give up the race, but no running for mayor while Chief as long as I’m still accountable.
As if the Adams’ legacy isn’t on the rocks enough already.
@ Commenty Colin:
“…your candidates never win, your initiatives never pass, and the things that are big deals here simply aren’t to the voting public at large.”
While “never” is quite a stretch, I’m proud that our record runs counter to the herd. I sleep very easily thankyouverymuch.
Good for him. Now I won’t have to specifically make it my mission to remind people any time his name came up that he was the rotten little fuck who decided to try to smear a political movement with a funny li’l story about a lady who couldn’t find a cop.
I mean, I’ll do it; he just won’t be running for office anymore…
This really became a tactical decision on the part of the police chief and one that he arrived at only after great consideration was given relative to how much time he’d have to devote to the position and how little time he’d have left to go fuck himself. I, for one, applaud his careful concern for the latter.
@ Steve, I’m not saying apologize for it – if I were a fan of the dumbfuck herd and their dumbfuck favorite media outlets and the dumbfuck things they find important, then I wouldn’t be here.
Occupy’s clearly a big deal to the Mercury (and it’s readers/obsessive commenters), but if anyone’s suggesting Occupy/rape thing played a large role in Reese’s decision not to run,* I’m just suggesting we step back from our own echo chamber for a moment and consider the wider community.
* (… for the election that takes place almost a full year from now)
Ha! I knew it!
(Though apparently I forget to mention that I knew it in my comments here. Sometimes I’m just a little too shy.)
@CC: I think you’ll find it’s the Oregonian, this time, that’s been crowing about the rape gaffe bringing him down
If you’ve read my update, you’ll notice I did some reporting and actually got a bead on some of Reese’s real—non-Occupy—reasons for not running. Yes, he made a mistake, and it *did* resonate widely, based on my conversations with political types, not just here. But he helped himself tremendously with his apology.
So, no, that wouldn’t have done him in. And it’s not why he’s not decided to take the plunge.
I am still SO PROUD of our Jesse Cornett endorsement. Man, that hurt. But it was the right thing to do. The other papers just endorsed Saltzman because they knew he’d win, and they didn’t want to have to deal with his staff after endorsing his opponent. Whereas we endorsed the guy who couldn’t even run a bar for six months. But he had the right position on excessive force and police accountability. Goddammit. Also: I’m pleased Reese dropped out. The rape stuff shows he’s no politician. In some ways I think it shows how courageous he is that he dropped out, actually. Like, he did the right thing even though it might be embarrassing in the short term. Didn’t let people talk him into it when it didn’t feel right. Good work.
Jon Isaacs is Eileen’s campaign director, and he had no part of the Avakian campaign. he was with Kardon’s group for a short time but not only left them early but never worked on that campaign.
and at the time the poll was taken that included Reese, he’d been on every nightly newscast for a week, was getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of free media. the #1 story in Portland. and they ran the poll in the midst of that. nonetheless, Eileen was tied with him & ahead of the other two. and now she is the clear front-runner.
(i work part-time for Jon on the Eileen campaign, but i do have these facts right.)
So now it’s back to a guy who lives in Washington, the non-union, “I’ll ride my bike on the waterfront, signs be damned” grocery store owner and the guy who can’t keep his license to practice law from expiration and has his father represent him at speeding ticket hearings. Between this race and the Republican presidential class, 2012 is shaping up as the year of the unelectable.
I wonder if Channing Frye would consider a run at mayor.
@ Denis, then I just don’t get this “things left undone” business. It sounds too much like “more time with my family.” His political stock is at its peak, and there won’t be another mayoral election season for four more years.
Given that the only time you hear about the police is when they fuck something up, it seems to me (admittedly, a guy unlike yourself who breathes this stuff every day) that Top Cop resumes rarely age like wine.
Further, I would think that Reese’s support would mean that the next mayor will rightly view the chief as a looming political threat and seek to marginalize/fire/push into retirement as soon as it was politically possible.
Thank goodness he’s not running.
I’d like to be the first to call for a write-in campaign for Mike Reese (that’s MIKE REESE). And if you think I’m just trying to split the pepper-spray fan-club vote, I will neither confirm nor deny it.
@Mike — Portland is a proving ground for the heads of Mickey Mouse police departments you might want to contact Mark A. Kroeker for some advise. It seems being brutal in Portland can be a career builder not a career killer.
P.S. start you charity and learn Arabic NOW!
Colin, this is an ALT-weekly, where the ALTERNATIVE kids hang out and sneak cigs and talk about how they totally heard a Bauhaus record this one time. Like totally NOT the majority!!
Interesting that he announced this right after Obama’s announcement of no deal made within the “supercongress” over budget cuts. Not that he would be tied to the Feds in any way, but some city project money does come from the top.
btw, RAIFORD FOR COMMISH!