Foul or Fair Ball

[September 19th, 2007] The first major skirmish over next year’s Portland mayoral race raises questions about the judgment of the two men at the center of the nasty exchange—City Commissioner Sam Adams and Pearl District Developer Bob Ball.

Both would-be mayoral candidates emerge with wounds, say two longtime Portland political observers.

“Neither of these guys is all that well-known, and both of them have created problems for themselves in explaining who they are to the public,” says Len Bergstein, a political consultant and City Hall insider.

Adams and Ball both said they were considering a mayoral run after Mayor Tom Potter announced he would not seek a second term.

On Monday evening, WW first reported the “problems” to which Bergstein refers (see “Mayoral Race Off to Brutal Beginning”). In that story, WW reported that Adams met with a 17-year-old legislative intern several times in 2005, and exchanged regular text and cell-phone messages with him.

The intern’s age, and what Adams’ staffers perceived as his romantic interest in Adams, concerned Adams’ aides to the point that they raised the issue to the commissioner, according to former Adams scheduler David Gonzalez and current Adams chief of staff Tom Miller.

Both the former intern, Beau Breedlove, now 20, and Adams are gay. And both have strongly denied that their relationship was anything other than platonic. No evidence has surfaced to contradict their characterization.

Adams says he was merely mentoring the young man, a service he has provided to numerous others throughout his career. In a two-hour-long interview Monday, he dismissed questions about whether he should have been concerned about the appearance of a then-42-year-old elected official meeting with a 17-year-old intern.

Adams, now 44, instead focused his comments on Ball, whom he blames for spreading rumors about him and Breedlove.

“I have been the target of a nasty smear by a would-be political opponent,” Adams wrote in an “open letter to the community” he emailed on Tuesday morning.

Bergstein says Adams is doing a masterful job of diverting the public’s attention from questions about his own decision-making.

On Tuesday, The Oregonian , and local network-affiliated television stations, quickly adopted Adams’ talking points.

“He and his team are making this about Ball, when it should really be a question about Sam,” Bergstein says. “An elected official having a series of contacts with a juvenile gets close to the line in terms of judgment.”

Reed College political science professor Paul Gronke was surprised Adams was seemingly so oblivious to how the public might view such contacts, whether the two people are gay or straight.

“I would have advised Sam to hand off the young man to another colleague on the Council,” Gronke says. “For a gay public figure, I would assume part of the advice and mentoring process would be how—fairly or unfairly—unmarried politicians of either sex have to be extremely careful about public appearances.”

Bergstein and Gronke also say Ball made serious and possibly politically fatal mistakes.

Both expressed surprise that Ball chose to take the story he had heard about a possible relationship between Adams and an intern to City Commissioner Randy Leonard and former Mayor Vera Katz, for whom Adams worked for more than a decade.

“Bob Ball’s story is another study in almost purposeful naiveté,” Gronke says. “To share such a story with two of Sam Adams’ self-identified supporters, including his ex-boss, is beyond foolish.”

(Ball, a reserve police officer, says he followed advice from lawyer Mary Overgaard, who served as counsel to the Portland Police Bureau for nine years. “Bob was given information concerning a minor, and we determined that he should tell a public official,” Overgaard says. “I think he was trying to do the right thing morally and legally.”)

Others say Ball could have shared his concerns with legal authorities or Adams himself.

“It looks to me like he let his interest in elected office overwhelm his judgment,” Bergstein says.

While insiders wondered Tuesday whether Ball’s campaign ended before it began, Adams, a veteran of numerous campaigns, took the fight to his would-be opponent. He vehemently protested his innocence in front of television cameras.

“The whole incident is disturbing,” Bergstein says. “I’m not sure where we go from here.”

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Read the original WWire post—and readers' many, many comments—here.