A man who made headlines in Oregon a year ago this month has left the state for Provincetown, Mass. Beau Breedlove's 2005 affair with then-City Commissioner Sam Adams — when Breedlove was 18 and Adams 41 — made Breedlove a household name in Portland. Now, Breedlove tells WW in an email today he's making a fresh start 2,600 miles from Portland at the tip of Cape Cod. Breedlove says he is "moving forward with my personal New Year's resolution to take more time to enjoy the world around me." He'll stay in touch with friends here through his new blog. (Photo by Byron Beck)

Two more business leaders have put their names—and presumably their wallets—behind the second attempt to recall Mayor Sam Adams.

Last week, WW reported that former state Sen. Avel Gordly had agreed to be the spokeswoman and chief petitioner for the second recall campaign. Today, Gordly sent out an email seeking financial support for the campaign.

That email (below) included the names of two business leaders previously identified as recall supporters—Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle and car dealer Ron Tonkin. But today's message also adds two more names to the list: Andrew Miller, the CEO of Portland-based Stimson Lumber and Peter Stott, the former CEO of Crown Pacific Partners and now the CEO of the Portland real estate firm SKB.

It is unclear how much money any of the four is going to contribute because the recall campaign has not yet begun filings with the Secretary of State's elections division. 

Former state Sen. Avel Gordly signed up for a role today as chief petitioner and spokesperson for the second attempt to recall Mayor Sam Adams.

Gordly, 62, retired from the Legislature in 2008 after 17 years of service and now teaches at Portland State University. Her new prominent role in the second recall could thrust Gordly back into the kind of partisan battles she decried as a lawmaker. But she's among a group of Portlanders who believe voters should have another chance to decide who should be mayor, given that Adams acknowledged lying about his relationship with then 18-year old Beau Breedlove in order to win the mayor's seat in 2008.

During Gordly's tenure in Salem, she earned a reputation for independence. In 2006, she left the Democratic Party and became the only lawmaker not affiliated with either major party in protest over what she saw as excessive partisanship. (She became a Democrat again in 2008 to vote for Barack Obama in the presidential primary).

Gordly joins a nascent effort that began earlier this month after the first recall campaign failed to gather the 32,183 signatures required to place a recall on the ballot.

In the last week, The Portland Tribune and The Oregonian have identified two local business leaders  -Tim Boyle, the CEO of Columbia Sportswear; and car dealer Ron Tonkin- as two of the deep pockets interested in backing a second recall campaign.

Here's a brief interview WW conducted with Gordly late Tuesday afternoon.

Jasun Wurster told WW this morning that he will turn over what he says are 30,000 signatures to a new group that will try to recall Portland Mayor Sam Adams. Today is the deadline for the Wurster-led recall effort to turn in the signatures it's gathered if it hoped to put a recall of Adams on the ballot for Portland voters. Wurster claims 700 volunteers will have gathered more than 30,000 signatures. But he says rather than turning those signatures in, he will give them to the new group, Portland Future PAC. Wurster says he has two reasons for not turning in the signatures: first,...

WW has learned that a new group calling itself Portland Future PAC will begin a second attempt to recall Portland Mayor Sam Adams. The new group will employ paid signature gatherers, a stark contrast to a recall group that has spent the past three months relying on volunteers to gather the 32,183 signatures needed to put a recall of Adams on the ballot. Portland Future PAC will begin its effort on Monday —the day that the current recall effort faces a deadline to turn in the signatures it's gathered to the city elections office. In effect, the new group will restart the clock on...

In case you've lost track of where things stand in the move to recall Mayor Sam Adams, there's a week to go and little indication the petition organizers can reach their goal of 32,000-plus valid signatures by next Monday's deadline. Yet in a world where surprises occasionally happen, there is at least this new video (delivered with a nod to the "Greetings Earthlings" style of filmmaking that's proven popular in this saga) to chew on from recall organizer Jasun Wurster. In the video, Wurster claims his group is "very close to having enough signatures." We'll know in a...

Mayor Sam Adams' first year in office has been the stuff of reality television -- with a criminal investigation, a car crash and two homes in foreclosure since January. Now comes a wannabe purveyor of reality fare, a scandal prone actor and reality TV subject Daniel Baldwin, to the Rose City -- and judging from this Tweet (hat tip to Oregon Media Central) — Adams is his kind of guy. "Hey, How about Mayor Sam Adams of Portland Oregon. This guy is the real deal. He cares about his people and backs it with his ACTIONS !!!!" Baldwin, who has a production company, plans to work...

The Recall Sam Adams campaign has reached the mid-point of its 90 day effort. How far do recall supporters have to go to reach their goal of 50,000 signatures and possibly force a recall election? Well, the answer is very far. The campaign has no official numbers at this point, Jasun Wurster, the spokesman for the group, says. But he says they have at least 7,000 at this point, 45 days into the 90-day effort. They need 32,183 valid signatures to make the ballot — which worked out to 358 a day when they started last month. "People look at the numbers and say 'Oh, they're not going...

The Multnomah County District Attorney's office won't prosecute Portland journalist Lee Perlman for allegedly scribbling on one of the petitions to recall Mayor Sam Adams. Chief Deputy District Attorney Rod Underhill told WW this morning there's insufficient evidence to prove Perlman caused "substantial inconvenience" to the recall campaign — the standard prosecutors would need to meet to support charging Perlman with criminal mischief. "The signatures are still valid as we understand them," Underhill says. "Can you describe to me the substantial inconvenience? There has to be...

Beau Breedlove may not be the only person with a political connection to pose this year on the cover of Unzipped magazine. The gay porn magazine now wants Levi Johnston on its cover, saying it would be "thrilled" to have the father of Sarah Palin's grandson. And apparently Johnston, who's become a gay icon, is apparently interested in posing nude "if the money's right." Hat tip to Gawker. In case Johnston wants to see what he might look like ...

Portland Police this morning arrested Lee Perlman, the reporter for the Hollywood Star News who allegedly defaced a petition to recall Mayor Sam Adams last week. The charge Perlman faces is criminal mischief (PDF) in the third degree, a misdemeanor. Reached by phone last week, Perlman offered no clear explanation for his actions, saying over and over again that he had "sloppy handwriting." He did, however, offer a story about goats. "Jimmy Doolittle, the famous flying ace, said that his biggest recreational activity was mountain goat hunting," Perlman told WW. "They said, 'You...

Lee Perlman, a prolific reporter for the Hollywood Star News and other local publications, tangled with volunteers who were gathering signatures for the campaign to recall Mayor Sam Adams on Thursday, according to two volunteers. Around 11 am, volunteer Gaye Harris says a man approached her in the parking lot of Albina Community Bank on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and acted as if he wanted to sign the petition. Instead, he scribbled across the recall petition (see below). Was he trying to disqualify the signatures? Hard to say. Volunteers took note of his license plate and a...

If you're between the ages of 45 and 65 and a Portland resident, you might be getting call soon from the Recall Sam Adams Committee. Chief recall petitioner Jasun Wurster says the committee is getting ready to sign a contract with a company that will call an estimated 50,000 Portlanders in that age bracket in hopes of finding volunteers to gather signatures on recall petitions. "A lot of these people are just entering retirement and have a lot of disposable time," Wurster says of the target audience. Wurster estimates the contract will cost the campaign account about $4,000. The...

The Community to Recall Sam Adams opened its new office at 421 N. Broadway St., on Monday afternoon. Organizers weren't greeted with a huge crowd or even a crowd as big as the one they produced at Nick's Coney Island restaurant in May. But those who did attend the open house represented diverse interests. Melissa Shinn, for example, lives in Gresham but has a daughter who is a Portland police officer. Or, she was a Portland police officer until Chief Rosie Sizer fired her in 2008 for lying about a medical condition. Last week, City Council modified that decision as part of a...

American Property Management, which is owned by real-estate titan Joe Weston, has just given a $795.83 in-kind contribution to the Community to Recall Sam Adams, according to Orestar.  The contribution from American Property Management makes Weston the most prominent financial contributor so far to the recall campaign. Jasun Wurster of the campaign to recall Mayor Sam Adams says the in-kind contribution is for office space at 421 N. Broadway St. The recall campaign will have to pay $5 a month, Wurster says. "We are really, really happy they have made it possible for us to have a...

Jasun Wurster provoked an almost teary response from Commissioner Randy Leonard this morning after Wurster, head of the campaign to recall Mayor Sam Adams, addressed City Council earlier today. Wurster has addressed council many times during the public comment period at the beginning of the regular Wednesday morning session. His three minutes of testimony are typically earnest displays of his ideas about good government. This morning he cut to the chase. "Randy, please stop being Sam's mouthpiece," Wurster said. "Sam, just resign." Leonard, who's not known for keeping his...

Wade Nkrumah, who resigned in January as Mayor Sam Adams' spokesman, has followed through with his promise to file a lawsuit against the city over comments the mayor made right after Nkrumah announced his resignation. Nkrumah's suit (PDF), filed today in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeks $162,489 in economic damages that Nkrumah claims he is owed after he says Adams damaged his business reputation by saying Nkrumah resigned because the job was “not what he signed up for in terms of stress.” Nkrumah says instead that he resigned from the spokesman’s job because the mayor had...

In this letter to Just Out, former Mayor Tom Potter may have breathed some life into the effort to recall his successor, Mayor Sam Adams. Potter, a former police chief, may not have lit the city on fire during his one term that ended in 2008. But he retained a strong reputation for integrity. And he has also, until now, refrained from commenting extensively (he did announce his support for the recall on Facebook) on Adams' dalliance with then-teenaged legislative intern Beau Breedlove. That reticence makes Potter's decision to speak now all the more noteworthy. Here's an excerpt...

Now that the Recall Sam Adams Committee has begun to collect the 32,183 signatures needed to get a recall question on the ballot, May We Interrupt Your Day wanted to know how the Sam Adams situation has shaken out on the street. In this episode we ask: "Would you support a recall vote for Mayor Sam Adams?"

May We Interrupt Your Day, July 13, 2009 from Shawn O'Bryant on Vimeo.

Blogger Jack Bogdanski alerted readers today of an alleged poll that appears to be aimed at gauging and perhaps rallying support for embattled Mayor Sam Adams. WW spoke to the person who tipped Bogdanski to the poll. That person requested anonymity but reiterated that the questions seemed to be directed at strengthening public perception of the mayor, who races a recall effort that kicked off earlier this week. It remains unclear exactly who is behind the poll. Mayoral spokesman Roy Kaufmann proved to be less than a fountain of information when asked about it. "State election law...

Aiming to pull off the first successful recall in Portland since 1952, the group trying to recall Mayor Sam Adams filed its paperwork (PDF) today with the city clerk. The law requires would-be recallers to wait six months after a person takes elected office to start gathering signatures. And chief petitioner Jasun Wurster told a gaggle of TV cameras and reporters this morning that he hopes now to start mobilizing hundreds of signature-gathering volunteers once the city auditor approves the paperwork. The group hopes to collect 50,000 signatures over the next 90 days — to...

Here’s Part 5 of WW’s June 30 interview with Attorney General John Kroger. In this segment, Kroger discusses the political fallout for him from his report, as well as what lessons he's learned from reporters' reaction to the investigation's conclusions.

Here’s Part 4 of WW’s June 30 interview with Attorney General John Kroger. In this segment, Kroger discusses Mayor Sam Adams’ computer as well as the decision not to put anyone under oath. Check back throughout the week for new video installments of WW’s interview with Kroger.

Here's Part III of WW's June 30 interview with Attorney General John Kroger. In this segment, Kroger discusses the ethics of Mayor Sam Adams' attorneys as well as the conflicting accounts told by Adams and Beau Breedlove (Since WW's interview earlier this week with Kroger, Breedlove has given his own interview with KGW in which he asks what his motive would be to lie) Check back throughout the week for new video installments of WW's interview with Kroger.

Here's Part II of WW's June 30 interview with Attorney General John Kroger. In this segment, Kroger discusses Mayor Sam Adams' level of cooperation with the investigation along with Beau Breedlove's motives (Since WW's interview earlier this week with Kroger, Breedlove has given his own interview with KGW in which he asks what his motive would be to lie) Check back throughout the week for new video installments of WW's interview with Kroger.

Beau Breedlove tells KGW that Mayor Sam Adams lied about whether or not the two kissed in a City Hall bathroom before Breedlove turned 18, and that he's angry at the mayor for leaving him to look like the liar in the situation In his first interview since Attorney General John Kroger released his report last week about the Adams-Breedlove affair, Breedlove insists his story about the incident never changed. Breedlove says Adams and his attorneys worked to get a statement from Breedlove that omitted the alleged kissing between Adams and Breedlove when Breedlove was 17 (The age of...

Here's Part I of WW's June 30 interview with Attorney General John Kroger. In this segment, Kroger discusses the credibility of Beau Breedlove and whether investigators believe Breedlove is telling the truth. Check back throughout the week for new video installments of this interview.

Once again today, members of the City Club of Portland declined to ask a high-profile speaker a single question about the biggest local news story of the year. Attorney General John Kroger told the crowd at the Governor Hotel he'd taken pains to address his recently completed investigation of Mayor Sam Adams during his lunchtime talk for members of the civic group. He included the topic in his speech, he said, because the Adams-Breedlove affair and its fallout is "very important for the future of Portland." But not one City Club member mentioned the Adams investigation during a...

Just a reminder that this work week that started with Attorney General John Kroger's press conference to discuss his long-awaited investigative report into Mayor Sam Adams, will end Friday with Kroger making another high-profile appearance in a speech at the City Club of Portland. In light of the new information from the documents dumps that have now followed Kroger's Monday press conference, we're happy to take questions here that you think Kroger should be asked this Friday. Fire away.

Attorney General John Kroger today released additional documents — multiple preliminary drafts of the final investigative report into the relationship between Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove. These earlier drafts contain scathing assessments about the mayor's credibility; his veracity and investigators' unhappiness about the mayor's reluctance to cooperate with the investigation. Those criticisms were then either removed from the final report or substantially watered down. For instance, in various drafts there is a section labeled "Adams admits to lying about the...

The Attorney General's office just released a log (PDF) of text messages between Beau Breedlove and Mayor Sam Adams. The texts in the document span one week beginning Jan. 20, the day Adams held a news conference in which he publicly admitted to having a sexual relationship with Breedlove after lying about it for 16 months. The AG's office included texts between Breedlove and Adams, and redacted the rest. The only real revelation in these texts comes when Breedlove tells Adams he was "blackmailed" by The Oregonian for an interview he gave the paper on Jan. 24. Breedlove had...

After Attorney General John Kroger released his report yesterday on Mayor Sam Adams, we went out to ask a few Portlanders what they made of the report and Adams' actions with Beau Breedlove. Here's what the people we spoke with had to say: Niko Kerhulas Messenger "In this incidence I don't think he should be tossed out of office. But he has compromised himself." Willie Black Self-Employed "If he was with someone, it's nobody's business but the boy's and his." Jackie Young Nurse "I don't think he should be prosecuted for something like that.  He should be held...

We've just received the interview reports from Attorney General John Kroger's investigation into Mayor Sam Adams. While we're poring through them, you can too. They're all PDFs and the links are below. First, download a guide to the interviews here. Interviews number 1-10 are here. 11-20 are here. 21-30 are here. 31-40 are here. 41-50 are here. 51-60 are here. 61-70 are here. 71-80 are here. And finally, 81-93 are here. Bon appetit.

The following is a response from Mayor Sam Adams to the results of Attorney General John Kroger's report today. The Attorney General’s office released the results of its five-month investigation today, clearing me of wrong-doing. I made mistakes in my personal life that led to this investigation. As a result, the city I love was put through an ordeal. I am gratified the investigation has been completed, and I want to reiterate that I am sorry. I want to thank Portlanders for their support and understanding. I want to also thank my colleagues, the hardworking employees of the...

Attorney General John Kroger stuck very closely to script in a noon press conference about the investigation report [PDF] his office released this morning regarding the 2005 relationship between Mayor Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove. Kroger, a Democrat who won election in 2008, was very specific about what his investigators found during their five-month investigation: “insufficient evidence to charge Mayor Adams with a criminal offense.” He was equally specific about what the report, which examined five possible theories of criminal conduct, did not do: “This report makes no...

City Commissioner Nick Fish says the report issued today by Attorney General John Kroger should close the inquiry into Mayor Sam Adams. "I think this ends the matter," Fish said. "I was the person who pushed to have the AG take up this investigation because I had great confidence in his abilities. This report effectively clears the mayor of any criminal wrongdoing. I accept the report and am prepared to move forward."

Bob Ball, the Pearl District real estate developer, targeted by Sam Adams supporters for raising questions in 2007 about Adams' relationship with an 18-year-old legislative intern named Beau Breedlove, has been an interested bystander during the Adams investigation. According to a list of those people Attorney General John Kroger's investigators interviewed, Ball was among the first. Here's what Ball had to say about the report Kroger released this morning. On the report: As a Portlander, I am pleased and relieved that the Attorney General’s investigation has now been concluded....

A spokesman for the campaign to recall Mayor Sam Adams says the Attorney General's report today clearing the mayor of criminal prosecution will not affect the recall effort's plans to start July 7. Recall spokesman Jasun Wurster says the Attorney General can only hold Adams accountable for legal statutes statues, but that Portland voters should hold him accountable for what Wurster calls civic and ethical violations. "If the citizens of Portland want Adams to be recalled," Wurster says, "he will be recalled."

Sgt. Scott Westerman, head of the Portland police union, says Adams' lies are unacceptable despite the announcement today by Attorney General John Kroger that he will not prosecute the mayor. "We don't accept a police officer lying in the course of their duties," Westerman says. "I’m not understanding why we should accept it from our politicians." The police union called for Adams to resign when Adams admitted in January that he lied repeatedly about his affair with Beau Breedlove. But Westerman says the union will not take an active role in an Adams recall. "We will allow our...

Here are some highlights of the report (PDF) by Attorney General John Kroger finding no sufficient credible evidence to justify criminal prosecution of Mayor Sam Adams. The investigation interviewed 57 witnesses and sorted through other records to answer what investigators called these key questions: 1) Did Adams have sexual intercourse with Breedlove before he turned 18? The report: Adams and Breedlove both deny any sexual intercourse before Breedlove's 18th birthday on June 25, 2005. The investigation found no witness testimony or other evidence to contradict those...

Here's the report (PDF), which concludes there's no sufficient credible evidence to justify criminal prosecution of Mayor Sam Adams. Attorney General John Kroger has announced a noon press conference today  at the State Capitol to take questions about his investigation into Adams' affair with former legislative intern Beau Breedlove.

There has been a little confusion about Mayor Sam Adams' personal real estate holdings since yesterday when the Portland Mercury first reported that Adams had received a notice of default for a property Adams owns in North Portland's Kenton neighborhood. WW reported the details of the three properties he owned there and The Oregonian then advanced the story by noting that in fact two of the properties are in default. After a trip to the county's property records room this morning, here is the full story. 1. On June 2, Wells Fargo bank issued a notice of default on Adams' property at...

[youtube psW_9emrzik] Earnest, thy name is Jasun Wurster. He's the spokesman for the Recall Sam Adams Committee. And with the recall effort gearing up to begin July 7, he has put up this training video to instruct wanna-be recallers how to gather signatures safely when they go door-to-door. Among the vital tips: carry water, sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses. And oh yeah, take a cell phone. That way, if you feel threatened by Adams supporters or anybody else unhappy to see you on their doorstep, you'll be able — as Wurster puts it — to "try and walk away from it and dial 9-1-1." To...

Credit goes to the Portland Mercury for breaking this piece of news about a sign of Mayor Sam Adams' financial troubles: A property Adams owns in Kenton is on the list of local homes in default. The paper reports that Adams is behind on his monthly mortgage payments by $4,995 and quotes him responding that "This is a private issue, but if you must know, I've had to pay some significant upfront legal fees, and now I'm getting caught up on my mortgage payments." Adams, whose annual salary is $118,144, has of course had legal fees stemming from the investigation by Attorney General John...

As first noted on bojack this morning, organizers of the effort to recall Mayor Sam Adams have announced a slight delay in their gathering of signatures to get that recall question on a city ballot. Recall spokesman Jasun Wurster tells WW that the filing of the campaign documents to get 32,000-plus valid signatures will begin July 7 instead of July 1, the first day they could legally begin their effort. Wurster says the Committee to Recall Sam Adams decided on the July 7 date because the 90-day clock to gather the signatures begins the day they file notice of their effort, and they...

Since Mayor Sam Adams first ran for—and won—election to public office in 2004, he's exhibited a keen sense of how to work the media and communicate with the public. As most Portlanders know, Adams is now awaiting the result of an Attorney General's investigation into his 2005 sexual relationship with then-teenage legislative intern Beau Breedlove. At the risk of understatement, that relationship has cast a pall over Adams' mayoral term, which began in January. All of which makes Adams' decision to house a photo exhibition (PDF) titled "Focus on Youth" in his office all the more...

In the weeks since the Sam Adams-Beau Breedlove scandal broke, some of the most persistent rumors involve buzz about a trip Adams may have taken to Mexico. One of those rumors has now surfaced in a court document: specifically, Breedlove's May 28 petition unsuccessfully seeking a stalking order in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Oregonian reporter Brent Walth. In the petition (PDF), Breedlove quotes a text message Walth allegedly sent Breedlove May 27 at 5:58 p.m.: "Mexico with Sam. Don't recall that in your story, beau." Breedlove says in his petition that Walth sent the...

Yesterday, we learned that Beau Breedlove wanted an order to keep Oregonian reporter Brent Walth away from him. Today we learned from The Oregonian that a judge wouldn't give that to Breedlove, saying persistent reporters are part of the public spotlight. So they are. And so it goes while we wait for Attorney General John Kroger to issue his report on Mayor Sam Adams.

If you were waiting for another bizarre twist in the Sam Adams-Beau Breedlove scandal, here it is: The Oregonian is reporting that Breedlove today filed for a restraining order — against one of the daily's own reporters, Brent Walth. According to the O, Breedlove alleged Walth said he would publish damaging information about Breedlove unless he agreed to an interview. Editor Sandy Rowe's response: "Any suggestion that Brent Walth coerced or threatened Beau Breedlove is absurd. ... Mr. Breedlove gave us an on-the-record interview voluntarily. He asked for nothing in exchange...

Wade Nkrumah, who resigned as Mayor Sam Adams' spokesman in January, has filed a notice of tort claim (PDF) against the mayor and the City of Portland alleging Adams "damaged his business reputation" when he told KATU that Nkrumah resigned because the job was "not what he signed up for in terms of stress." 

Nkrumah, a former long-time reporter for The Oregonian, is seeking more than $162,000 in his claim along with attorney's fees.

There were three TV news vans out front of Nick’s Coney Island restaurant Thursday evening by 5:30pm, a half hour before the first rally for the Recall Sam Adams political action committee. Too many bulky cameras, microphones, and stiff newscaster hair left the already tight Nick's easily packed by 6 pm.

The bartenders were busy pouring beers, and TV newscasters were “testing testing one two three.” Shortly after 6, volunteer Jasun Wurster stood on a table to speak to about 50 recall backers. And there was in fact, sincerity in his delivery.

The people organizing to recall Mayor Sam Adams are getting together this Thursday at Nick's Coney Island for what commenters on some of our posts are calling a kickoff party for their effort. Festivities begin at 6 pm. Not that the mayor would be invited or perhaps even sweating a recall, but here is where he'll be this week.

KATU has had quite the week of reporting on Mayor Sam Adams. The station was first to report on the collision set off last Sunday by the mayor when he was driving his truck in a parking lot. Then the station reported on how four prominent Portland-area Democratic senators in the state Legislature were raising questions about the effectiveness of Adams and the city among Oregon lawmakers. And that in turn prompted Adams to question KATU's reporting methods, which in turn led the station to last night's piece challenging the mayor's challenge to KATU. Too bad KATU doesn't have a...

Last week, you will recall, Mayor Sam Adams turned some dirt in City Hall's new vegetable garden before heading inside to prepare for his press conference on the city' 2009-2010 budget. But the big news of the day wasn't the city's general fund — it was The Oregonian's story on Adams' phone calls to Beau Breedlove before Breedlove turned 18. And as Adams tried to enter City Hall that day, he was stopped by a swarm of reporters who had follow-up questions based on that morning's news. Next to Adams, as the mayor momentarily addressed reporters' questions, was Amy Ruiz, the mayor's...

[youtube -QqcmtgcVuQ] One update to today's piece in WW catching readers up in question-and-answer format to what's new in the Mayor Sam Adams saga: Question: What are the RecallSamAdams.org people up to?  Answer: They've started a political action committee that's taking donations. [youtube T8-uPhe_lzA]

Two interesting reports about Mayor Sam Adams' travels — or lack thereof — are out today. First, KATU aired this piece about four Democratic state senators — all representing pieces of Portland — saying the city of Portland (a.k.a. Mayor Sam Adams) hasn't driven down I-5 much to weigh in on issues in this legislative session. And then this morning, bikeportland reports that Adams is flying overseas to Brussels with his chief of staff Tom Miller for a bicycle transportation conference.

[youtube 1VU-l6v1BHc] Mayor Sam Adams' wanna-be recallers can't start their signature-gathering efforts until July 1 because the law doesn't allow such a recall campaign to begin until a Portland elected official has been in office for six months. But that doesn't mean Adams opponents can't provide a glimpse of what such a recall campaign might look like, as evidenced by this video above.

Mayor Sam Adams had to have his truck towed after he was involved in a three-vehicle collision Sunday night in Jantzen Beach, according to this report by KATU. There were no citations and no injuries, and KATU reports that a source says the mayor mistakenly hit the accelerator instead of the brake.    (Photos courtesy KATU)

Three months after Mayor Sam Adams held a tense press conference to apologize publicly for lying about the nature of his sexual relationship in 2005 with a then-teenage Beau Breedlove, a similar scene unfolded today in City Hall's third-floor Rose Room. The news of the day dealt with the same topic as on Jan. 20, even though Adams called this morning's news conference to discuss his proposed 2009-2010 budget. Unlike the Jan. 20 press conference, Adams refused today to answer reporters' questions about the scandal. Nor would he address The Oregonian's Friday story, which raises new...

This morning's Oregonian story about the relationship in 2005 between Mayor Sam Adams and then 17-year-old legislative intern Beau Breedlove advances the story in three important ways:

Last Jan. 15, four days before WW broke the story about Mayor Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove, WW interviewed Adams in his City Hall office. Also present for the interview were Adams' then-spokesman Wade Nkrumah (who resigned later that month) and Adams policy adviser Amy Ruiz, the Portland Mercury's former City Hall reporter whom Adams hired in December. WW's interviewers were reporter Nigel Jaquiss, editor Mark Zusman and managing news editor Henry Stern. The Oregonian obtained that interview as part of a public records request as part of this story the daily ran today. In the course...

This evening The Oregonian published on its web site a story about Mayor Sam Adams' relationship with Beau Breedlove. The story reveals that Adams made more than 30 phone calls to Breedlove between the time they first met and when Breedlove turned 18, far more contact than Adams has acknowledged. The O also secured a copy of the taped interview this newspaper had with Adams on January 15 of this year, by filing a public records request with City Hall. (Adams' staff had recorded the meeting). Four days after that interview, Adams confessed. Photo from 2008 by Byron Beck

From the fertile mind that brought us "Sam Adams, the Musical" has come a whole series of songs spoofing the mayor's "predicament." And now that creative mind — Charles Deemer, editor of the Oregon Literary Review — has gotten a friend to record some of these ditties.  Take a listen while cogitating on how Adams is helping one of his priorities.

For the first time in several weeks there were no community members signed up at this morning's City Council session to address Mayor Sam Adams' relationship with Beau Breedlove. Instead, the first person to speak in this new Era of Good Feelings during the introductory moments of public testimony was Kristine Akins. She wanted to commend the mayor for helping her small business connect with city officials who could help her as the recession eroded sales. Not one to miss an opportunity for positive publicity, the mayor interrupted his cheerleader to address reporters in the audience...

What? You haven't gotten your daily Beau Breedlove fix? Well, Rick Emerson and his crew can take care of that. The new KUFO morning show, which recently migrated from sister station 970 am, gabbed with the Sam Adams canoodlin', Unzipped cover-posin', Voodoo cock contest judgin', 15-minute fame exploiter on the radio for 35 amazing minutes this morning. And videotaped it. Enjoy.

The current WW poses the question of what wouldn't Beau Breedlove do before the spotlight fades. We now know one more thing we can cross off the list. This Saturday, Breedlove will appear at the Fantasy For Adults Only store downtown to sign copies of his Unzipped cover.

It has been a busy couple of weeks for Breedlove, who entered the spotlight this year after Mayor Sam Adams admitted he had lied when he denied having sex with Breedlove when Breedlove was 18.

Breedlove's latest star...

Last night, Beau Breedlove's career took a new turn: Cockfest judge. Cockfest, the annual event hosted by Voodoo Doughnuts, comes down to this: You have a handful of male contestants and a box full of oversized doughnuts with large holes. The "winner" is the contestant who can stack the most doughnuts on his oversized penis while balancing them. (Three doughnuts took top prize this year.) This year, the organizers of what's certainly among one of Portland's more unusual competitions invited Breedlove, hot off the heels of his cover shoot for the magazine Unzipped to sit in as a...

To all of you Beau Breedlove saga lovers, your wait is over for hot, steamy pictures of the ex-legislative intern at the center of the state Attorney General investigation into Mayor Sam Adams. Thanks to Unzipped magazine, here's the cover photo, But don't just stop there: the issue has tons of fun inside too! A full spread nude photo session and interview where Breedlove tells all about his now infamous sex life with Adams in 2005 when Breedlove was 18. Unzipped Media’s editorial director, David Kalmansohn, says in a press release accompanying the release of the cover photo...

A few more details on this week's lead Murmur about who officials from Attorney General John Kroger's office are talking with in their investigation of Mayor Sam Adams. Former Mayor Vera Katz said today that she spoke for between a half-hour and 45 minutes recently with two officers sent by the AG to her office at Gallatin Group. Katz, who employed Adams for more than a decade as her chief of staff when she was mayor, says the scheduled interview wasn't a deposition. She describes it instead as a more informal Q & A that riffed off the basic question about whether she knew...

By now, Mayor Sam Adams has perfected The Face — the one that manages to communicate three separate messages at once. He employed it again this morning, when yet more citizens showed up at City Hall to press for his resignation two months after news broke of his disinformation campaign. The Face is characterized by a closed mouth and is a cross between the one Portlanders saw on Jan. 20 (pictured above, when the mayor publicly apologized for lying about his sexual relationship with a then-teenage Beau Breedlove) and Dana Carvey's Church Lady (pictured below.) It manages to...

Reese Lord, co-founder of LEP High charter school in Portland, has joined Mayor Sam Adams' staff as Adams' new "education strategies youth coordinator." Lord replaces Nate Waas Shull, who quit Adams' office Feb. 13, almost one month after news broke of Adams' lies surrounding the sexual nature of Adams' relationship with a teenage Beau Breedlove. Waas Shull was the second staffer on Adams' education team (but the third staffer overall) to part ways with the mayor in the wake of that news, which arrived just weeks into Adams' then-new administration. Lord started his new job at City...

Mayor Sam Adams has regularly faced angry citizens at City Council meetings demanding he resign in the wake of his admission in January that he lied about a 2005 sexual relationship with then-teen-aged Beau Breedlove. Today, the only person who signed up to call for the mayor's ouster was Rondine Ghiselline, a West Linn woman who has been among the mayor's fiercest critics. In emotional council testimony, Ghiselline revealed the reason for her criticism of  Adams. She told the council that as an 18-year-old college student in Eugene in 1992, she was raped. "Both Beau Breedlove...

There was at least one moment in Mayor Sam Adams' State of the City address Friday that provoked a collective sigh of disbelief. Talking about the importance of education, Adams said: I want to share a staggering fact with you: In the state of California, decisions made about how many prison cells to build are partially based on the reading scores of California’s third-graders. That statement is completely false. "That's an urban legend," says a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "We've been trying for years to find the source of...

The first call Mayor Sam Adams took on OPB's Think Out Loud program this morning to discuss the state of Portland came from "Nigel in Portland." No, not our Nigel (as program host Emily Harris was quick to ascertain by asking the caller if he worked for Willamette Week). But the caller had a good question nonetheless. The caller's question was what he should tell his daughter if she were to ask him if it's "OK to lie to further your career." Adams' answer: "No, I don't think it's OK to lie and I'm an example of what happens when you lie." "My reputation has been seriously...

"Give bikes a round of applause, somebody," Mayor Sam Adams said midway through his State of the City address at Portland City Club today. That odd request typified a rambling speech that began with Adams introducing his mother and grandmother, and that ended with Adams getting a standing ovation from about two-thirds of the room. Early on in his first State of the City speech, the mayor acknowledged his Jan. 19 admission that he'd had sex with then teen-aged Beau Breedlove in 2005.  "I've made life more difficult in these trying times," Adams told a standing-room-only crowd in...

  Global evangelist Luis Palau, with the help of 15 local churches, today presented Mayor Sam Adams with a $100,000 check to be used for mentoring programs that help homeless families, and programs to help school dropouts. The event at Hinson Church in Southeast Portland kicked off this year's Season of Service in the Portland area — a cooperative effort between religious and political leaders. And obviously, this year's event with money for mentoring took on a different dynamic given Adams' lie about "mentoring" 18-year-old Beau Breedlove. “I’d like to thank you just as...

Four citizens showed up at City Council's weekly session this morning to ask Mayor Sam Adams to resign, in what's become a regularevent since Adams admitted on Jan. 19 that he'd lied about having a sexual relationship with then teen-aged Beau Breedlove in 2005 Today's testifiers were more measured than in previous weeks (video will be archived here later today).  And while seemingly not coordinated, each of them (One person scheduled to speak, Rachelle Allen, submitted written testimony) focused some attention on Adams' four council colleagues, calling on them to hold Adams...

For the sixth fifth straight week at a Wednesday City Council meeting, Mayor Sam Adams and his four colleagues on City Council will face some angry Portland residents calling on the mayor to resign. Among the five people signed up to address Adams tomorrow during the opening minutes of the council's weekly public meeting is Annette Smith Levy of Southeast Portland. She is bringing two friends from the CherryWood Village Retirement Community's swim class to back her up as she peppers Adams and what she calls "the four stooges up there" with questions. The 61-year-old retiree voted last...

A WW story today about Roland Chlapowski, a former staffer for then-City Commissioner Sam Adams, mentioned research projects that Chlapowski conducted in 2008 for Adams while working for the Bureau of Environmental Services. Here are the results of that research into Prosperity in Portland and Citizen Well-Being. Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann says both documents will be used to help update the Portland Plan, a document intended to provide a blueprint for the city's future. (Photo of Roland Chlapowski courtesy of Chlapowski). Click here for the latest updates and complete WW...

According to this post by Unzipped.net, Beau Breedlove has completed an "erotic photo session" to be published in the magazine's May edition that hits newsstands in April. Breedlove was first offered an opportunity last month to pose nude for a cover and photo spread after Mayor Sam Adams admitted to having lied about having sex in 2005 with a then-18-year-old Breedlove.  Breedlove was an intern in the state Legislature whom Adams first met when he went on a lobbying trip to Salem. (Photo above taken in 2008 by Byron Beck) Click here for the latest updates and complete WW...

Oregon's two U.S. senators, Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, held court at the Multnomah County building this afternoon to talk about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Absent at the event was Mayor Sam Adams, whose public calendar for the President's Day holiday lists zero meetings and zero appointments. Representing Portland were Commissioners Nick Fish and Randy Leonard. Asked why the mayor did not attend the event that Wyden's office had announced, Wyden said he was focused on the task ahead to make the stimulus bill work and that he didn't want any...

On Jan 13, six days before he admitted lying about having had sex with a teen named Beau Breedlove, Mayor Sam Adams announced a $500 million stimulus package for the City of Portland. Tomorrow, Oregon's two U.S. Senators, Ron Wyden (D-Portland) and Jeff Merkley (D-Portland) are holding a press conference to introduce the local roll-out of the $787 billion federal stimulus package Congress passed last week. On Friday, Sen. Wyden's office sent out an announcement of the event (details below). Among those joining the senators on the dais tomorrow are top local officials, including...

WW has learned that a third member of Mayor Sam Adams' staff is leaving in the wake of Adams' admission that he lied in 2007 when he denied having had sex in 2005 with Beau Breedlove when Breedlove was 18. Nate Waas Shull, who held the title of Adams' Education Strategies Youth Coordinator, is leaving the mayor's office to join the Portland Schools Foundation. Before joining Adams' staff, Waas Shull had worked for former Mayor Tom Potter. Waas Shull joins former Adams press secretary Wade Nkrumah, who resigned;  and Carolyn Becic, who had accepted but not started a job as Adams'...

Former WW scribe and Starbucked author Taylor Clark chimes in at Slate with a recap and analysis of the Sam Adams scandal—the best I’ve read so far. The killer graphs: To demonstrate the first way it's different, let's ask the obvious question: How would the Portland public react if Adams were straight and Breedlove were a teenage girl? The answer is, we'd see this as a garden variety, morally black-and-white sex scandal, and Adams would be jobless faster than you can say "McGreevey." After all, there's a massive double standard in how we think about the age of consent. When an older...

The nonprofit group Community and Parents for Public Schools will no longer feature Mayor Sam Adams as a keynote speaker at its parent leadership conference Feb. 28. Now, instead of Adams, a representative of the mayor's office will talk about Adams' agenda for improving Portland's public schools. "What's important for me and the organization is that we talk about the issues," says Doug Wells, CPPS's president. "We're just trying to get the best possible people in front of our parents with the least amount of distraction." The original invitation for the event, emailed on Jan. 7...

[youtube g4gPzxMRQdM] Beau Breedlove, in his interview on the Logo network's "365gay News" program Thursday night, offered little new information about his relationship with Mayor Sam Adams when Breedlove was 17 and 18 and the mayor was a Portland city commissioner. But one assertion -- that Adams did not ask Breedlove to lie about his having sex with Adams in 2005 -- contradicts earlier statements from the mayor, who apologized at his Jan. 20 press conference for asking the younger man, in the run-up to the 2008 mayoral election, to deny they were ever sexually involved. "He never...

Former Willamette Week news editor John Schrag first met Portland Mayor Sam Adams back in 1993, when Schrag was a WW reporter. These days, Schrag, who left WW in 2005, is the editor and publisher of the suburban Forest Grove News-Times. He's also the father of a teen-age daughter, which appears to have influenced the column he wrote today about Adams' recent admission that he had a sexual relationship in 2005 with the then-teen-age Beau Breedlove. Click here for the latest updates and complete WW coverage of the Adams-Breedlove story.

Portland's policy on public testimony for topics unrelated to pre-determined agenda items establishes a deadline of Thursday at 5 pm to sign up for the following Wednesday's weekly meeting. The first five people to sign up are given three minutes at the beginning of each week's meeting at 9:30 am to address whichever topic they want. But that policy became the subject of a tense exchange Wednesday after Rondine Ghiselline went before the City Council during a later portion of the meeting to urge Mayor Sam Adams to resign. Ghiselline has been a regular at City Hall in the days since...

Portland's gay publication Just Out got a lot of heat when it joined mainstream publications such as The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune and The Portland Business Journal in calling for Mayor Sam Adams to resign after he admitted to lying about having sex with then-teenager Beau Breedlove in 2005. With a nod to Martin Luther King Jr., the San Diego Gay & Lesbian Times recently echoed and amplified Just Out's demand for Adams to resign.  (Although like some other publications, the San Diego paper apparently misunderstood Breedlove's position. He was a legislative intern, not a City...

Newsweek's website has an article by Winston Ross about the media context before and after WW broke the Sam Adams-Beau Breedlove story: The Paper Chase How an investigative reporter at a small Portland weekly scooped a nationally acclaimed daily paper on a sex scandal involving the city's mayor. The interview strategy was good cop, bad cop. Mark Zusman, the editor of the Portland, Ore., alternative newspaper Willamette Week, would lay out a few softball questions for the city's newly inaugurated mayor about the extent of his past relationship with a teenage legislative intern....

(Updated at 3:33 p.m. with the addition of the word "political" to the description of Lars Larson, courtesy of the man who called him a "carpetbagger). Mayor Sam Adams might want to start showing up late for City Council meetings. Today, the city's top elected official took a beating in the public comment section of the regularly scheduled council session, a couple of weeks after he admitting to having lied about a 2005 sexual relationship with then teen-aged Beau Breedlove. This morning, KXL (750 AM) talk-show host Lars Larson teed off on Adams with three minutes of rhetorical...

Mayor Sam Adams convenes his "economic development cabinet" Wednesday, signaling once again -- nearly two weeks after confessing to having lied repeatedly about his sexual relationship with 18-year-old Beau Breedlove -- that he intends to stay focused on city business. The final invitation list [PDF] for Wednesday's cabinet meeting is exhaustive at 78 people and a veritable "who's who" of Portland's business community.  Also noticeable, however, are the big names left off the final list. Both Paul Otellini, Intel's president and CEO, and Mark Parker, Nike's CEO, were invited...

Mayor Sam Adams may want to focus on the city's business —the configuration of a proposed Columbia River Crossing bridge and an effort to lure a Major League Soccer franchise to Portland, to name just two big issues. But the national press wants to hear more about his confession two weeks ago to lying about his sexual relationship with then teen-aged Beau Breedlove in 2005. Over the weekend Aaron Scott, a former WW intern who now writes for Out.com, a national gay publication, sat down with the mayor. Here's what Adams had to say.   Click here for the latest updates and...

CBS News has gotten an on-air interview with Beau Breedlove, and this excerpt of the interview (which will air Thursday night) says Breedlove will discuss the other times and places he says he and Mayor Sam Adams kissed when Breedlove was 17. News of the CBS interview comes on the heels of a KATU report last Friday that quotes a longtime friend of Breedlove saying he believes Breedlove and Adams had sex before Breedlove turned 18. Adams has denied having sex with Breedlove before Breedlove turned 18. Click here for the latest updates and complete WW coverage of the Adams-Breedlove...

It appears Beau Breedlove may have more to gain from this whole Mayor Sam Adams saga than his requisite 15 minutes. Breedlove has been offered an opportunity to live forever on the “steamy” pages of an adult, gay-oriented magazine. Unzipped Media has offered Breedlove the cover, and a nude photo spread in one of Unzipped’s three publications. The Los Angeles based Unzipped Media publishes Men , Freshman , and, Unzipped magazines. According to a blog on Unzipped Media’s website, Breedlove will have at his disposal “Unzipped Media’s top photographers and stylists—the...

WW has learned that even after Mayor Sam Adams pledged to come clean in the wake of news about his sexual relationship with 18-year-old Beau Breedlove, he told his staff a story at odds with what Breedlove later told The Oregonian.  That discrepancy is the reason for the abrupt resignation of Adams' spokesman Wade Nkrumah on Jan. 27.   Adams met with about 20 of his staff last Thursday, Jan. 22 at a site outside City Hall. At that meeting, Adams was asked whether he had flirted with or touched Beau Breedlove before he turned 18. Adams said no. Three days later, The Sunday...

The local arts community is throwing considerable support behind Mayor Sam Adams in the wake of revelations about his star-crossed affair with hunk-a-licious Beau Breedlove. A group of arts leaders including PICA’s executive director, Victoria Frey, and Regional Arts & Culture Council Executive Director Eloise Damrosch, has circulated an open letter to the public supporting Adams. The letter holds that “an episode in [Adams’] private life, that has become a lightning rod of distraction from the real work at hand, should not be allowed to derail our entire leadership, and our...

Here's a sing-along summary of the saga: [youtube Y7VFhTR3blo] And here's an "I Forgive Sam" video [youtube rQCjlpe5FXQ]

Last Sunday, The Oregonian reported that Beau Breedlove and Sam Adams kissed in a City Hall bathroom on June 2, 2005, which was 23 days before Breedlove's 18th birthday. Breedlove told the daily the kissing was "mutual and said it lasted about a minute." Breedlove told The O they did not have sex that night. Adams has also said the two did not have sex that night. Here is audio and a transcript from WW's Jan. 15 interview in which Adams artfully dealt with the bathroom question. [Click to play, and scroll down to read...

Two of the three people who founded Oregon's top left-leaning political blog, Blue Oregon, are going to bat for Mayor Sam Adams. Last week, Kari Chisholm, who designs websites for Adams and many of the state's Democratic elected officials, posted a couple of times in Adams' favor. Last week, for example, he wrote, The media had no business asking him a question about sex between two legal consenting adults. It doesn't matter what he said when he was asked -- the question was out of bounds. Once the media determined that it was a legit relationship, then that should be...