The Oregonian | By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh | February 26, 2024
Sam Adams, the former Portland mayor, longtime City Hall power broker and political lightning rod, will run for a seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, marking his third attempt at a comeback in recent years.
“Way too much of the decision-making process at the county lacks focus, urgency, partnership and accountability,” Adams told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday. “I’m running to help fix this and I offer a track record of tackling big bureaucratic problems.”
In an interview, the 60-year-old said he’d aggressively push the county to adopt a new staffing model to improve ambulance response times, ensure that a long-promised sobering center opens and push to help homeless residents access needed services with greater ease.
“The average Portlander and Multnomah County resident might not know all the ins and outs of any given policy, but they want to see more results and their intuition is spot on,” he said shortly before a campaign website went live. “Anything less is a waste of money, lives and human potential.”
A Concordia neighborhood resident, Adams joins the race for District 2, which encompasses North and Northeast Portland. He will face business owner Jessie Burke and Shannon Singleton, the former head of the city-county Joint Office of Homeless Services, in the May 21 primary.
Adams’ bid for the seat comes after he unsuccessfully ran for Portland City Council in 2020 and departed a high-profile job working for current Mayor Ted Wheeler under a cloud of bitter accusations a year ago.
For nearly two years, he served as the chief architect and driver of many of Wheeler’s initiatives including downtown recovery efforts, attempts to curb visible trash and graffiti, and the push to ban homeless street camping citywide.
Yet Adams’ hard-charging style and unapologetic backing of the mayor’s agenda rankled some people and angered others at City Hall.
A handful of female city employees accused Adams of bullying behavior. Adams resigned last January, citing health reasons. Wheeler then went public with the women’s complaints and said he forced the former mayor out.
Adams has repeatedly disputed claims made by Wheeler and other city officials and recently hired Michael Fuller, a prominent Portland civil attorney.
“This issue now has a potential to be a legal one,” he said. “I’m not going to comment on it further.”
