Credit: Illustration by Logan Gilles

If you’re following Portland’s mayoral primary, the Internet has given you a lovingly wrapped present.

The backstory on the mayoral dance-off, according to Reddit:

This is why I love this city: in what other town will you get to see the four major candidates for mayor in a dance-off, grooving to ‘Don’t Stop till You Get Enough’ by Michael Jackson.

I was at the Working Families Party last night. At one point, Cameron Whitten called all the other candidates on to the dance floor. And so there they were: Charlie Hales, Jefferson Smith, Eileen Brady, and Cameron Whitten, all bopping around. At one point, Jefferson even did a cartwheel.

In other news: Cameron Whitten just won our endorsement. We’re officially canceling our endorsement interviews.

And in even more other news, the Internet was less than kind to Eileen Brady, noting her well-traveled line, repeated yesterday on OPB, that the eviction of Occupy Portland on November 13-14 was “the best of Portland.”

occupy-brady.jpg
  • Illustration by Logan Gilles

This does have one major problem: The pepper-spraying came a couple of days later, at Occupy’s November 17 anti-bank protest. But it speaks to the disconnect occupiers feel when they hear a candidate say something like that. (Weirdly, I think the cops might also agree with occupiers about that disconnect, albeit for a different reason.) Here’s what the actual eviction looked like:

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

6 replies on “News You Can Use: Jefferson Smith Is a Competent Dancer”

  3. I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Eileen Brady cloaking herself with the mantel of Occupy. Cameron Whitten seems to me to have a better understanding of political activism and civil resistance at the age of 21 than Ms. Brady. I could be wrong, but it looks like the lesson she was taught after her teenage arrest 40 years ago was to straighten up and fly right. That may have gained her millions of dollars in the “private” sector but it won’t earn her my vote for public service.

  5. As someone who has worked for Charlie Hales, do you know how deeply grateful I am you don’t have video of him dancing? The guy is a great boss, and a really decent human being (really – he says “I love you” to his children every time they talk, thank you to every volunteer, and he pulls out chairs for ladies), but he CAN NOT dance. He’ll try, though, and it ain’t pretty.

  6. I had been leaning Brady up until the article on her in WW – now the MERC has me considering voting for her again.
    The restraint used by the police that day to rid the city of ‘occupy’ was commendable.

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