Ted Wheeler Ran for Boston City Council in 1993

Long before Ted Wheeler entered Oregon politics and long before he announced he would run for Portland mayor, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Boston City Council.

It didn't go so well.

In 1993, Wheeler, then a freshly minted graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, ran against 12 people for a council seat. He says now he was motivated by concern that Boston's Big Dig—a massive infrastructure project to funnel traffic through Boston—would tear up parts of Beacon Hill, an historic Boston neighborhood that's also one of its wealthiest. Wheeler served as the executive director of the Beacon Hill Civic Association from 1991 to 1993.

But here's how Wheeler, then 30 and a lecturer in government at Northeastern University, pitched his candidacy to The Boston Globe in April 1993. In the short article, Wheeler said he would focus on economic development, education reform and public safety.

"I think other candidates will focus on education and crime," he told the Globe. "I want to make sure the issue of economic development doesn't get lost."

Wheeler came in second to last place, beating only Martin A. Couglin, a longtime East Boston activist whom a columnist at the Globe described as a man who tilted at windmills—and tried to fight expansion at Boston Logan International Airport.

"To protest the noise and chaos, he stood in front of dump trucks heading for Logan in 1968," the Globe wrote. "When Gloria Larson, then chairwoman of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, told a community meeting that delayed flights meant angry passenger arrivals in Boston, Coughlin yelled back: "I'm angry with 221,000 flights that are projected for my roof. You want angry? I'll show you angry."

In this week's WW cover story on Wheeler's political career, he called his first bid for public office "short-lived and largely misguided."

Willamette Week