laissez fairy

Portland’s Heroic New Mayor!  Gay Establishment Wonder Boy!  America’s Gay Mayor!  The Gay Obamessiah! Had you picked up a copy of the Advocate way back on January 9th those are just some of the images that might have popped into your mind regarding Sam Adams, Portland’s newly sworn-in gay mayor.

“Portland, Ore.’s gay mayor Sam Adams was finally sworn in at 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day . . . about 40 people were there to witness the ceremony, including his partner, Peter Zuckerman.”

Finally. Then this moving tale:

“Though Adams’s sexuality never became a factor in the race, before it officially began, he was the subject of a smear campaign from a world-be rival, gay real estate developer Bob Ball.  Ball attempted to link Adams to an encounter with an underage intern - an attempt that failed.”

(Puzzle: Did the attempt fail or did it just take a while to kick in?)

Ah, the ol’ “smear campaign.” Ironically, the most common “smear campaign” in American politics, esp. at the local level, consists of falsely accusing your opponent of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against you.  That is, often times the accusation of smearing is itself the only smear in the picture.  I’m not saying that’s what transpired in the Portland mayoral election, but now that Adams has admitted that the smears were true, some Oregon liberals are now openly wondering who was smearing whom.  As a BlueOregon column noted last week:

“Earler, Adams had denied any sexual relationship with Breedlove, and the story transformed from one focused on Adams’ judgment and possible criminal wrongdoing into one focused on the motives of Adams’ accuser, Portland developer Bob Ball, and the tragedy of smear-filled politics. . . It turns out Ball was right.  Not only did Adams lie, but he convinced Breedlove to lie as well.  And he kept on lying right up until today when WW [The Willamette Week] was going to release an update on the subject parading forth a ton of evidence showing the truth.”

Oh well, that’s just politics, you say?  I guess.  Or perhaps that’s just politics in a one-party cesspool like Portland.  Mind you, this is a city where someone (like Adams) can go straight from undergrad into politics, never have a real job, never work in the private sector, and somehow sweet-talk (or worse?) his way up the local Democratic machine until he reaches the office of mayor.  Looking at the Gay Wonder Mayor’s resume, though, I wouldn’t trust this left-wing gaybot to manage a 7-11 for more than a few hours.

But he seems to have mastered the fine art of successfully managing a political sex scandal.  First, you adamantly deny any accusations and lash out at your opponents by smearing them with accusations of smearing you right up until election day (with intermittent photo shoots for national magazines like the Advocate).  Then once you’re safely across the election-day finish line - what do you do?  Well, ol’ boy, ya’ switch gears!  The voters don’t matter anymore (or at least not until a few months before the next election), so you quickly fess up to all the accusations and start shrieking “BUT I DIDN’T BREAK ANY LAWS!!!”  Because once you’re elected, it’s not the voters’ judgment that matters, but the prosecutors’.

It was the post-election phase that Mr. Gay Establishment’s Mayoral Wonder Boy went into last week.  Specifically: Adams and Breedlove both suddenly revealed that although they met when Breedlove was 17, there was no sex until Breedlove turned 18 - which, as a conspiracy theorist might latch onto, just happens to be the legal age of consent in Oregon.  (Say, what did they do to kill time until Breedlove turned 18?  Sit around playing two-person Scrabble?  Sweety, won‘t that be great next month when you turn 18?  Uh-oh, I think someone is stuck with the ‘Q’ and it‘s not me!)

For months Adams and Breedlove lied about how they met, about having a relationship at all, about whether or not Breedlove was an intern or an internet hookup.  In an attempt to cover up their relationship, lie to voters, deflect attention, and defame a decent man, they publicly and falsely accused Adams’ gay political rival, Bob Ball, of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against Adams for political gain, and now - safely after the vote was counted and Adams was sworn in - when the only issue is whether or not Adams broke any laws, they radically reworked their storyline into a version that concedes pretty much everything but minimally complies with the law?

How does Adams thinks that looks to prosecutors?  (Or does America’s Gay Mayor see this as a chicken game where he tries to spook the prosecutors into believing that he will survive this latest “smearing” and retaliate against them later when he’s, say, America‘s Gay Governor?)

Oh, and then Breedlove had the gall to tell the New York Times, “I do not feel like I was ever a victim.”  No, heh.  We’re pretty sure you don’t feel like the victim.  In fact, at this point, we doubt anyone is seeing you as the victim.

So now the natural spin for Adams and his remaining Gay Establishment advocates will (we assume) proceed something like this: “Oh, well, it’s a private matter, my own personal life, and I didn’t break any laws.  The haters are going after me because I‘m gay.  Sure, I shouldn’t have lied.  But it‘s a sexual witch hunt, straight men aren’t held to the same standard, I didn‘t break any laws, privacy, privacy, blah, blah, blah.”  Wildly entertaining, we readily admit; nauseating nonetheless.

There is a real scandal here.  First, there’s the obvious question of whether or not Adams committed statutory rape and then conspired with Breedlove to cover it up.  Second, there’s this from Oregon’s largest newspaper:

In early 2008, Amy Ruiz was a reporter at the Portland Mercury news weekly when she confronted Sam Adams about his relationship with an 18-year-old man three years earlier.  By the end of the year, Ruiz had joined Adams’ staff as a planning and sustainability policy adviser.

The two events have opened Adams and his staff to questions about whether Adams hired Ruiz — who had no formal experience in planning, policy or as an analyst — to stop her from digging deeper into the story.

Bribing a young reporter threatening to investigate you with a government job is very likely illegal, depending on just how quid pro quo the job offer was.  And, for the record, it wouldn’t be the sex part that’s illegal - it would be handing out government jobs in an attempt to hide a sex scandal from the voters that would be illegal.

But at this point in the life of a political sex scandal, it’s time for Adams and his apologists to do two things, and so far they appear to be working at both:

1) Make it all about the sex.  So long as the general public and the media are focused on the sex scandal part, Adams can insinuate or outright assert that the government investigations are all about sex, just another homophobic witch hunt.  We’re all just obssessed over the sex because we’re dumb Americans.  Why can’t we be more laid back about sex, like the Europeans?  This line allows him to (yet again) pretend like he’s the victim.

2) Show up at city hall and show just how hard he’s working for the people of Portland - even in the midst of this distracting sex scandal.

Something like this:

Mayor Sam Adams\’ Apology

Yes, a disgusting display.

Most of the gay publications in Oregon have called for this megalomaniac to resign.  LF strongly concurs.

This guy is a slime ball.  He gives the rest of us a bad name.  He has mislead voters, unfairly smeared political rivals, potentially committed statury rape, potentially conspired to cover up his crime, refused to abdicate office in the midst of serious accusations, and reinforced for the general population some of the foulest stereotypes about gay men.

We can and will find better role models.