For aspiring wonks and politicos, city hall can be a hard nut to
crack. Elected leaders are extremely persnickety about who they’ll hire
on to be part of their staff—after all, if a staffer does a bad
job or pisses off the public, the only person who’ll be held
responsible is the politician, who can get booted out of office.
Because of that, potential staffers typically need to meet a wide
range of criteria—they’ve got to be politically savvy, well
educated, experienced in dealing with the public and the press,
ambitious, and, typically, connected to local political
establishment.
In a town like Portland, this laundry list applies to, oh, about 80
percent of the population, which is why—sometimes—it’s the
small things that make a difference for applicants.
When Lisa Leddy was applying for the receptionist position in
City Commissioner Randy Leonard‘s office a couple months ago,
her prospects apparently hinged on one question.
“Who’s your favorite comedian?” Leonard asked during her
interview.
“Andy Kaufman,” Leddy replied.
“You’re hired.”
It takes a special kind of person to enjoy the antics of a dead
comedian who became famous by wrasslin’ women, and it’s no surprise
that Leonard’s office would become a haven for such likeminded people.
He is, after all, the kind of person who will jump at the opportunity
to surround himself in butter and have his picture taken for the cover
of an alternative weekly.
There was even a little bit of a Kaufman parallel when Leonard faced
off against suburban Rose Parade crashers earlier this year. Leonard,
lashing out against people who tape off their spaces at the expense of
families who actually show up to wait for the parade, indirectly
maligned some residents of neighboring cities, calling them a mixture
of “Lars Larson and Tony Soprano.” When Andy Kaufman faced down pro
wrestler Jerry Lawler, he dragged Southerners into the mess,
badmouthing them as uneducated, unsophisticated nitwits. But that’s
where the similarities end—Leonard resolved his dispute with an
apology and a ride in Gresham’s Teddy Bear Parade; Kaufman resolved his
by getting his neck snapped in the wrestling ring.
Speaking of wrasslin’, Mayor Tom Potter has signaled that he may be
ready to step into the ring for his last year as mayor—over
putting fluoride in Portland’s water! During an otherwise
mind-numbingly council work session with the Public Utility Review
Board, Potter asked, almost naively, “Have you guys ever considered the
issue of fluoridation?” It immediately garnered chuckles; the city and
state have been arguing about fluoride for decades. The board nervously
agreed to look into it.