Portland's Half-Century of Ruinous Leadership

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Aaron “Jay” Danielson was shot and killed Saturday in downtown Portland, Ore., where he was participating in a vehicle caravan to show support for President Trump. No one has been charged, but the Oregonian newspaper reports police are investigating 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl, who described himself on  Facebook  as “100% Antifa.” Not long after Danielson was killed, a  video  was posted to the internet of a woman in Portland shouting into a bullhorn: “Our community can hold its own without the police. . . . I am not sorry a f— fascist died tonight!” That elicited cheers and applause from the crowd of dozens.

As a third-generation Oregonian and former Portland resident, I’ve been bombarded with questions over the past few months about why one of America’s whitest cities has descended into civic madness following the police killing of George Floyd. Violent radicalism had been flourishing in the city for years before the rest of the country paid attention, and Mayor Ted Wheeler’s feckless leadership is no anomaly. The situation in Portland has been enabled by 50 years of political leadership that has been as corrupt and depraved as it has been “progressive.”

Danielson’s killing was a culmination of more than 90 days of unruly protests in Portland. It occurred the day after Mr. Wheeler sent President Trump a letter belligerently rejecting federal help to restore order. “When you sent the Feds to Portland” in July, Mr. Wheeler wrote, “you made the situation far worse.”

In truth, the increased federal police presence around the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse was justified. The city had stood by when rioters burned the Multnomah County Justice Center jail and the Portland Police Bureau headquarters a few blocks away. Violence has accelerated since the federal government secured a protection agreement with the city and withdrew its increased security presence on July 31. In August, Portland police declared at least 14 riots, more than in June and July combined.

The day after the shooting, Mr. Wheeler blamed Portland’s violence on Mr. Trump, saying the president “created the hate” that led to violence. He blamed the riots on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, asserting that the president had praised white supremacists after the ugly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., three years ago. In fact, Mr. Trump said “they should be condemned totally.”

It’s one thing to attack Mr. Trump, but Mr. Wheeler can’t even guarantee the right of ordinary Republicans to walk down the street. In April 2017, four months after becoming mayor, Mr. Wheeler canceled the city’s annual rose parade after “antifascists” threatened violence because among the many civic groups marching in the parade was the Multnomah County GOP. “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely,” read the threat sent to the city.
In 2018 Mr. Wheeler, who in his capacity as mayor also serves as police commissioner, ordered officers to take a hands-off approach to protesters who had set up a camp in front of the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, trapped federal employees inside, and vandalized their cars. Though the protest camp generated nearly 60 calls to police over 39 days, Mr. Wheeler publicly supported the protesters.

Incredibly, Mr. Wheeler may not be the Portland’s worst recent mayor. In 2008 the city elected Sam Adams, who, shortly after he was elected, admitted to having been romantically involved with an underage boy—though Mr. Adams asserted the relationship didn’t turn sexual until after the boy turned 18. Not only did Mr. Adams survive the scandal; criticism of his behavior was routinely branded homophobic and he survived two recall attempts.

Mr. Adams’s agenda was so environmentally progressive that he approved a city budget that did no major road paving for five years. He set the precedent for Mr. Wheeler by allowing Portland’s massive Occupy Wall Street camps to take over city parks for weeks after it was obvious they were a threat to public health and safety. Mostly, Mr. Adams will be known for presiding over Portland’s burst into national consciousness when it became the cultural mecca known as “Portlandia.” He was a regular guest star on the TV comedy of the same name.

The most influential modern mayor of Portland was Neil Goldschmidt, who held the office from 1973 to 1979. Mayor Goldschmidt earned notoriety for redirecting federal highway funds to a new and exorbitantly expensive form of public transportation that became known as light rail. He later became Jimmy Carter’s transportation secretary.

Elected governor in 1986, Mr. Goldschmidt shocked the state by announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election in 1990. He quickly became the biggest lobbyist in the state. As mayor and governor, he was the architect of the state’s celebrated “smart growth,” which became a model for urban planning around the country—and which has been criticized for dramatically raising the cost of housing.

As a result of his connections and expertise, Mr. Goldschmidt had a hand in many of the state’s biggest development projects. But in 2004 Portland newspapers reported that the state’s integrated land use and transportation planning regulations were being manipulated to award Mr. Goldschmidt’s lobbying clients hundreds of millions of dollars of state contracts. Portland regulators dubbed Mr. Goldschmidt, his developer clients and state regulators “the light-rail mafia.”

Soon after, the Willamette Week newspaper reported that when Mr. Goldschmidt was mayor, he raped his children’s babysitter over the course of three years starting when she was 14. His surprising exit from public life in 1990 was part of a private settlement he’d negotiated with the victim. Mr. Goldschmidt had taken the girl to parties, and his relationship was known to many of the state’s power brokers, many of whom are still active in Oregon politics. No one said anything for decades. In a May 2004 statement to the Oregonian, Mr. Goldschmidt acknowledged having had what he called “an affair with a high school student for nearly a year.”

In the years after the scandal, Mr. Goldschmidt retreated to his estate in the South of France. His victim, Elizabeth Lynn Dunham, lived a life of tragedy and addiction and died in hospice in 2011 at 49. Her only consolation was the removal of Mr. Goldschmidt’s official portrait from the Capitol.

Messrs. Wheeler, Adams, and Goldschmidt offer different and dramatic examples of how much Portland voters are willing to tolerate, provided their leaders burnish the city’s national reputation as a beacon of progressivism.

I love Portland like no other city, and it is hard to square what’s happening with residents of the city I am blessed to know. Their commitment to rectifying injustice is sincere. They abhor violence, and they are patriotic Americans. But if Portlanders believe progressive governance requires rejecting basic notions of law and order, they are, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, getting what they vote for—good and hard.

Mr. Hemingway is a senior writer at RealClearInvestigations.