August 13, 2003
Local 2004 Election Pieces Begin To Fall Into (And Out Of) Place
Another item to catch up on: Developments in the local 2004 election scene. First off, the start of the month saw Sam Adams -- the Mayor's chief of staff -- announce his retirement. The Tribune had Adams eyeing either a City Council seat or the Congressional spot currently held by Earl Blumenauer (whose own mayoral candidacy is still awaiting announcement).
The very next day, however, The Oregonian proclaimed Adams was aiming for Blumenauer's seat should the Congressman run for local office instead of re-election, and was ruling out a Council run should Blumenauer stay put.
Meanwhile, last week's edition of The Portland Mercury saw managing editor Phil Busse announce his candidacy for Mayor, saying he'd step out should a "more worthwhile candidate" enter the race.
And yesterday's Oregonian reported that "Multnomah County commissioners Lisa Naito and Serena Cruz are not considering runs for the Blumenauer seat, but that Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey is "seriously considering a Portland City Council race for the seat being vacated by Commissioner Jim Francesconi" -- which would put her in a race with lawyer Nick Fish, who "finished third in a council race last year [and] has been preparing for eight months to launch a second council effort."
For what it's worth, the City's official list of declared candidates has Phil Busse, Lew Humble (see this Google search), David Roche (make of this search what you will), and James Smothers (mentioned and dismissed in this story from OPB) as candidates for Mayor; and Alicia Salaz (I'm pretty sure this is her) as candidate for Commissioner No. 4.
Comments (5)
fred on 13 Aug 2003
And if Blumenauer runs for mayor, I'm going to run for his congressional seat. Climb on the campaign now!
The One True b!X on 13 Aug 2003
Ah, so Portland can have its own spate of "the weblog candidate!" articles.
Dave Lister on 13 Aug 2003
Just a quick comment about Sam Adams.
When I was jousting with Saltzman's office and the folks at OMF trying to convince them that water utility billing software could be developed for less than a bazillion dollars I invited those folks to come to our office and see how we approached our craft. I had no takers. When I tried to convince them that they had to have the source code for the billing program, they told me I was nuts.
A few weeks later I met Sam Adams at U of P. I talked with him about source code. I invited him to come see what my company did.
Guess what? Sam took steps to make sure that the city would have control of the source code for the next system. He also came to visit my company and allowed me to show him how we developed software.
I probably don't agree with his politics, but I give him a big thumbs up on the source code issue and am grateful to him for the visit. He's the only city official who exhibited any brains on these matters as far as I was concerned.
hilsy on 14 Aug 2003
Please tell me Phil Busse's candidacy is some lame Portland Mercury joke. The guy, IMHO, is an idiot.
fred on 14 Aug 2003
hey, I know Phil...He's not an idiot. He's interesting, sure. But and idiot? Nah...he'd make a mayor, for sure.