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At a City Council candidate ice cream social event last Monday evening at the Hillsdale Food Park in Southwest Portland, a campaign manager for one District 4 candidate delivered the yard sign of another candidate to her while she sat at a picnic table.
Olivia Clark, the recipient of the sign, says Jonathan Pulvers, campaign manager for Chad Lykins, approached her with her yard sign and told her it had been illegally placed near a bus stop. (Candidate lawn signs cannot be placed in the public right-of-way, near transit stops, on sidewalks or near building exits; they can only be placed on privately owned property.)
“I was just in shock when he handed me my lawn sign. I would’ve preferred that if he thought there was a violation of the law, he could’ve contacted me or I could’ve resolved it,” Clark tells WW. “He implied that if he saw a lawn sign in an illegal spot, he’d pull it up again. I thought, what are you, the lawn sign police?”
Clark said Pulvers’ tone left her feeling “intimidated.” (Another District 4 candidate, Eric Zimmerman, witnessed the interaction and corroborated Clark’s telling of events.)
“I’m still ruminating about it, and maybe that was the point,” Clark tells WW of the interaction. “To knock me off my game. I’m still reverberating.”
Pulvers said in a phone call that he meant no disrespect to Clark. In fact, he says, he was trying to help her.
“I was trying to help her. I wasn’t trying to be a dick,” Pulvers says. “In light of her complaining about it, I triple-checked my sources at the city, and it’s absolutely against six different rules to do that [place a yard sign on public land]. I was trying to help and educate her rather than taking a punitive or ‘narc’-ish approach.”
Lykins is the founder of Rose City Chess, a company that provides chess classes to kids across the city and hosts chess tournaments. Clark worked in Oregon government for many years, first for former Gov. John Kitzhaber and then for TriMet for 21 years. Both are front-runners in District 4 and have qualified for matching taxpayer funds through the city’s Small Donor Elections program.
Lykins is politically to the left of Clark, and their respective endorsements reflect as much: Clark has been endorsed by United for Portland, the political action committee set up by the Portland Metro Chamber, while Lykins has been endorsed by progressive groups such as Portland for All, the Portland Association of Teachers and the Street Trust Action Fund.
In a WW endorsement interview with District 4 candidates on Thursday morning, Lykins and Clark had words for one another about the incident. Watch the interaction below.