For a guy who wants to take over city hall’s third-floor mayor’s
office—and who wants to assign bureaus, oversee the city budget,
run a few bureaus, and provide overall leadership for the
city—Sho Dozono’s campaign has been woefully short on
specifics.
Until now.
On May 2, the day ballots went out—and months after he started
campaigning—Dozono released his “commitment to you for my first
100 days in office,” upping the ante in the mayor’s race.
The new campaign specifics were a useful distraction for
Dozono, who had a week of bad press surrounding the more than $18,000
in back rent, taxes, and fees that his downtown restaurant Bush Garden
owed the city (following a bizarre and clumsy press conference on April
30 where Dozono blamed the city for his business woes, his company paid
the debt).
Dozono made 10 pledges, including filling 92 vacant maintenance
positions in the city’s Department of Transportation, dedicating “three
of my staff to economic development and business creation,” and sitting
down with East Portlanders.
A few of his pledges mimicked ones that his opponent, Sam Adams, has
been making for months, like creating scholarships for “higher
education and trade industries,” an idea ripped right from Adams’
three-point platform. And Dozono’s East Portland pledge drew from Mayor
Tom Potter’s recent opposition to Adams’ Sauvie Island Bridge reuse
proposal: Dozono talks about making “good on the promises… for
sidewalks, paved streets, sewers, and programs that can provide a
future for everyone, instead of advantages for the few.”
Two of Dozono’s pledges take direct aim at Adams: His call for a $50
million rainy day fund (Adams supports a rainy day fund, but has so far
floated a $5 million figure), and a promise to “stop the Burnside-Couch
couplet,” a project Adams is pushing.
In less wonky election season news, several campaigns are reporting
problems with stolen lawn signs.
This weekend, says city council candidate Jim Middaugh, “there was
definitely an uptick in reports from our supporters” that signs had
been taken. “I was biking the other day and someone pulled up alongside
me and said ‘my sign was taken,'” says Middaugh, who pulls a bike
trailer adorned with signs. Earlier in the campaign, a Dozono banner on
the City Liquidators building near the Morrison Bridge was reportedly
torn down.
Robert Wilson, a volunteer answering the phones at Amanda Fritz’s
campaign office, says they’ve had a few signs swiped as well. “We kind
of chalk it up to people stealing to get the metal” for scrap,
he adds.
But Jeff Towle, who lives at NE 33rd and Knott and had planted a Sam
Adams sign in his yard, says someone tore it apart, taking the plastic
sign but leaving the metal frame behind. “I talked to the Adams
campaign, and they’ve said that dozens of signs have gone
missing,” he says.
In Linnton, Dan Dishongh was on the treadmill on the third floor of
his home, when he saw a man walk up to the two signs on his property
and “he just grabbed the sign and wadded it up and put it in his
pocket,” also leaving the metal behind. “It’s pretty lowdown and
dirty.”