Sam Adams (politician)

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Sam Adams (politician) bigraphy, stories - Politician

Sam Adams (politician) : biography

September 3, 1963 –

Samuel Francis "Sam" Adams (born September 3, 1963) is an American politician and the former mayor of Portland, Oregon. He grew up in Newport, Oregon, attended the University of Oregon and worked on a number of campaigns before taking office as a Portland commissioner. Among them was Vera Katz’s run for mayor of Portland. After she won, he served as her chief of staff for eleven years and then went back to school, earning a degree in Political Science.

In 2004, he was elected to the Portland City Council, serving four years on the council earning a reputation as a "policy-driven advocate for sustainability, the arts, and gay rights." He was elected to a four-year term as Mayor of Portland in the May 2008 primary, with 58% of the vote and a dozen other candidates on the ballot. He was outed as gay by the alternative newspaper Willamette Week in 1993 and was the first openly gay mayor of a top-30 U.S. city. In July 2011, Adams announced that he would not seek a second term as mayor. He had an approval rating of 56% eight months before he left office.

In 2009, Adams in his inauguration speech said his top three priorities were creating more family-wage jobs, reducing the high school dropout rate, and making Portland more sustainable. Later that year, Adams was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing related to a consensual sexual relationship with a young adult he met in 2005. Adams said the deception about the relationship was warranted because a political opponent had falsely accused him of having sex with a minor, but later apologized. That year he also established a local economic stimulus plan by fast-tracking capital improvement projects, secured a Major League Soccer franchise, began work on the Oregon Sustainability Center established a free-bus-ride program designed to help low-income students more easily get to school, helped secure $2.5 million in new grants designed to help the city reduce diesel emissions, began construction of 15 miles of bike boulevards, and consolidated the city’s permitting process.

In 2010, Adams fired the police chief and then fired a police officer who had shot and killed an unarmed citizen. He recruited a wind company to spend $66 million on development and hire 400 employees, established the city’s first economic development plan, developed programs designed to reduce Portland’s high school dropout rate and make the city more sustainable, and, along with the rest of the city council, adopted gun control regulations that are designed to reduce shootings.

In 2011, Adams established curbside composting, banned single-use plastic bags, adopted a transgender-inclusive health plan for city employees, recruited a photovoltaic company to move to and invest $340 million in infrastructure in Portland, recruited several TV and movie companies to do business and spend about $100 million on production in Portland, established the $2.1 million seed fund to help start-up businesses in Portland, supported Occupy Portland at first, but later dispersed the camps, and cracked down on gangs with a 14-month police undercover operation that resulted in the arrests of 31 gang members.

Personal life

From 1992 until 2004, Adams was in a long-term relationship with Greg Eddie. In 2007, the former couple, in a challenge to the state constitution, filed suit against the State of Oregon to dissolve their domestic partnership and divide Adams’ future pension. After his break-up with Eddie, Adams was, for the first time, both openly gay and single. Adams lamented his lack of "gaydar." He said this made him decide to date only men who asked him out first.

In 2005, Adams met Beau Breedlove, a 17 year old interning for Oregon State Representative Kim Thatcher. In September 2007, Adams denied rumors of a sexual relationship between the two, calling the allegations scurrilous, and adding that they played into stereotypes of predatory gays. In January 2009, after being confronted with a story in Willamette Week, Adams acknowledged lying about the nature of their sexual relationship. Breedlove confirmed Adams’ accounts. Adams apologized, saying he had lied to avoid accusations of grooming a minor and the likely disruption such allegations would cause in his mayoral campaign. Adams cited the "swift public condemnation" of former mayor and governor Neil Goldschmidt in 2004 by the news media as weighing heavily in his decision to lie. "[N]o one’s going to believe me [that he was eighteen]". Oregon had already seen several prominent political sex scandals; prior to Goldschmidt’s, there was one involving Senator Bob Packwood in 1992. The "well-funded newsroom" of The Oregonian had been criticized for failing to pursue both stories. In the Goldschmidt case, the Oregonian publicly debated with Willamette Week over which publication reported more accurately and aggressively. Adams also announced his intention to remain in office.