Four years after beginning his journey to city hall, Mayor
Tom Potter has announced that after a single term in office, he’s
calling it quits. Within minutes of his announcement, all eyes turned
to the candidates who’ve now been handed a major opportunity to run for
office.
When the 67-year-old Potter returned from a two-week vacation last
week sporting a scraggly beard, many believed that it signaled a nod to
retirement—the former police chief had never before been spotted
without a clean-shaven face and perfectly coiffed hair. And their
prognostications were correct; on Monday, September 10, with his wife
at his side, Potter announced that he’d be leaving office in order to
spend more time with his grandchildren.
His wife, Karin Hansen, joked that she was looking forward to going
on camping trips without having to worry about being in cell phone
range. It was a ha-ha moment during the emotionally loaded mid-morning
press conference, but on the heels of the anniversary of the in-custody
death of James Chasse, her comment took on a darker meaning. Potter was
in Europe when Chasse was killed during a run-in with Portland police,
and his then-chief of staff, Nancy Hamilton, never bothered to call the
mayor to tell him of the tragedy. It also harkened back to the death of
12-year-old Nathan Thomas in 1992, when Potter was the police chief.
The boy was accidentally shot by police; Potter was vacationing in
Mexico at the time and claimed to not be near a phone.
But those stories didn’t get much play during Potter’s retirement
announcement. Instead, he ticked off a list of accomplishments:
creating a Human Rights Commission, building a day laborer access
center, drafting the Youth Bill of Rights, etc. His victories, he said,
were in opening the doors of city hall wider to all people,
“particularly those who have been marginalized in the past because of
class or color.”
But that victory appears to stop at the electoral process. So far,
most of the potential candidates for mayor and city council are white
men, including the two men likely to seek the mayor’s office—real
estate developer Bob Ball and City Commissioner Sam Adams.
Ball was visibly excited after Potter’s announcement. He says he’ll
be making an announcement on whether to run sometime in the next month,
and in the meantime, he’s meeting potential supporters around the
city.
Adams, on the other hand, was conspicuously absent. He had a day off
planned before Potter scheduled his announcement, but the press
conference was noticeably devoid even of Adams’ staffers. Through his
chief of staff, Tom Miller, Adams says he won’t be making a decision on
his future plans for at least another week.
“The mayor’s decision, and the timeline for that decision, is his
own,” Miller says. “When Sam has a decision, he will certainly share it
immediately. Today’s decision certainly opens up an
opportunity—not just for Sam, but for anybody who might want to
run.”
Conventional wisdom held that if Potter ran for reelection, no
serious contenders were going to stand in his way. After his press
conference, though, that theory was revealed to be somewhat less than
sound. Commissioner Randy Leonard said that he would have considered
running against Potter.
“I think Portland needed a break from the Vera [Katz] years, and
Potter provided that break,” Leonard said. “His term came at the
perfect time for the city and was exactly what we needed. But after
four years, Portland needs to wake up. I don’t think the city could
have afforded another four years of slumber.”
This Thursday, September 13, is the first day for candidates to file
with the city—even though there are as many as six candidates
waiting in the wings, they’ll most likely keep waiting until Adams
makes a decision.