You took advice for the mayor from

Current and former elected officials and government employees
Social activists
The puppeteer private firm that funnels taxpayer money to their own projects.

This is why this city is clueless and returning to the backwater of a dirty, wanna-be big city of failed artists.

I wanted to love you Portland, I tried.

Advices.... hah!
I long for the day when he no longer represents our city- when we have a Mayor who can pay his own bills in a timely manner. To have a Mayor that seems to care for the city and its' people as opposed to serving his own ego and legacy. To have a Mayor who doesn't confuse mentoring with cruising. To have a Mayor that didn't appear to hop on every bandwagon that runs his way. To have a Mayor who didn't look to every event as a photo-opportunity.
To have a Mayor that our own President Obama would be willing to meet with when he visits PDX.
A Mayor to make us proud.
Sam Adams isn't that Mayor. He will not be given a 2nd term. Just watch...

A recent study commisioned by Portland's business community found we're less like, oh, Seattle and insted are more "like Pittsburgh or Cleveland."

Find the typos!

"Some invoke his spat with Multnomah County, which almost killed the Sellwood Bridge rebuild."

This is a ridiculous statement.

"After a surge of African American gang shootings this summer, Adams was criticized in front of TV cameras for a lack of engagement."

I think you either mean "officer-involved shootings" or "gang shootings." The gang shootings this summer in my neighborhood were Asian gangs.

Also, Sam has never used VOE to run. But really, I'm glad we have the deep wisdom of 6-month Portlander Rob Sadowsky to give it to us straight.

Re the introduction to this article in the print version - Portland really needs an original slogan - "The City That Works" is Chicago's slogan, and "At least we're not Detroit" is Cleveland's slogan, at least according to a popular YouTube video.

I think Eric Fruits' criticisms are spot-on. Portland is deteriorating in the opposite way from Detroit - its problems are too many people chasing too a stable-to-slightly declining job base, rather than the jobs disappearing en masse.

Portland also has a weak educational base compared to Pittsburgh or Cleveland - both of those (admittedly older) cities have world-class educational and scientific institutions such as Carnegie-Mellon University (software, sciences, and the arts), UPittsburgh (very good college, excellent medical school), Case Western Reserve, and the Cleveland Clinic.

Another major difference between midwestern industrial cities and Portland is the price of real estate - the tiny ranch house my wife and I own north of Alberta is worth more than than my dad's house in middle-class suburban Pittsburgh - and his house is three times bigger. Portland's salaries haven't kept up with the explosion of housing prices, though.

Wow, I've always known that you kids at The Mercury are a bunch of cock-suckers, but who knew you could fluff so tuff.

This was excellent, and I for one am sick of the Oregonian giving Dave Lister space to write his crappy diatribes, err, "op-eds," about everything that Sam is doing wrong as a thinly veiled groundwork for a 2012 campaign.

I admit that I haven't always agreed with Adams' policies, but whoa, the guy is a workaholic who seems to have (post-scandal) dived right into a series of ridiculously serious political controversies in a town with a high unemployment and a media that wants to see him annihilated.

He blew the bike plan up when he took the 20 million in sewer "savings"(we don't actually know if that money will ever materialize) and linked it with bike lanes. People in Portland are now going to be hyper-vigilant about any more cash getting diverted to bikes. I hope that 20 mil was worth vilifying the plan to most of the city. Nice work.

We have better things to spend our money on anyways, so I'm glad he did it. If I was a bike proponent I would be pretty miffed though.

I'd give Sam a "B" grade so far. Yes, he's made mistakes (the communication issues allowing people to mischaracterize the bioswales a 'sewer money for bikes' is among his worst moments), but who hasn't? The economy isn't his fault; and making an enemy of the Oregonian is more likely to help than hinder him in the minds of a great many Portlanders. There's probably only two people out there who would stand a chance against him if he runs again; Bragdon and Novick. And we don't know if either will run (I suspect not). So he should get on with making decisions, worry a bit less about appearances and trying to appease the unappeasables, and the rest will take care of itself.

The biggest potential weaknesses for him right now are the CRC (easy campaign fodder for an opponent), jobs (because even though it's not his fault there's plenty of people stupid enough to blame him for it), and the cops. Standing up to the police union needs to be priority #1.

As I see it, his biggest weakness is his own charachter.
And he is wishy-washy to boot. Remember when he was running for Mayor and he wanted to 'recycle' the Sauvie Island Bridge, costing much much more than to simply build a new one over I-405? When he realized it wasn't a winner with the public he dropped it. Much like his views on a Convention Center Hotel... Memorial Colusium....
It seems he can't even keep his own financial house in order, and yet he controls our cities purse-strings. His bankruptcy...etc etc...
I remember the photo of him last winter, with the snow-shovel, after we got a bit of snow.
Shameless photo opportunity. Again.
Oregonian bashing seems too common in this paper. Let's not forget that the O endorsed Adams too.
I wonder if Adams has apologized to Robert Ball yet?
Obama refused to meet with the guy here. What does that tell you....?

Education is out of his hands. It's just a soundbite issue for him, always has been. Lew F. is dead on about gun violence having roots in economic devastation. Being a business booster is not an economic strategy, especially when your development strategy is rampantly pro-gentrification, aggravating the economic strife faced by Portland's working and minority communities.

My sincere advice to Sam: redeem yourself. Forget about a second term. Spend the next 2 years reining in PDC and bucking their cronies in the Gerding Edlen/Hoffman Construction/Homer Williams development mafia. Expose their urban renewal shell game for the upward redistribution of wealth it is. Shame them for siphoning tax money away from schools and mental health services. What have you got to lose?

Promote housing and urban development policy that works with, not against your economic policy, a policy that should not be focused exclusively on a high-tech, professional job sector, but also on blue collar, living wage jobs for Portland's working families who aren't going to suddenly disappear or turn "green collar," but are going to continue to do most of the living and working and paying and dying in this broken-down timber town.

Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Be a weasel and a pawn for rich bastards who'll never let you into their circles anyway, and that's how you'll be remembered.

Run again, Sam Adams! You're a survivor! :)