Former Stranger Reporter Caught in Crossfire Over Portland Mayor
Oh, Portland! This Seattlest contributor's hometown is currently in the midst of its biggest and juiciest political scandal in years. Turns out, Mayor Sam Adams, the city's first openly gay mayor, had a relationship with a legislative aid intern who may have been 17 at the time. Local connection? Former long-time Stranger reporter Amy Jenniges (now Amy Ruiz) and later news editor for the Mercury, Tim Keck's Portland alt-weekly, has been drawn into the entire mess with accusations she helped cover up the affair.
To be clear, this isn't just a sex scandal. The issue first came up during the mayoral race in 2007, when one of Adams's opponents, Pearl District developer Bob Ball, raised the question of Adams's relationship to former legislative intern Beau Breedlove, who met Adams in 2005 when he was 17 years old. Ball, like Adams, is openly gay, so the issue was never simply trying to play off of homophobia in the electorate. The tactic backfired on Ball, though. Adams strenuously denied the claims of an improper relationship with a minor, Breedlove denied a relationship to the media (apparently in an event staged by Adams's campaign staff), and Ball was basically shamed out of the race.
The local media didn't give up. Mercury writers Ruiz and Scott Moore kept pursuing the story and the paper was among the first to get serious tips on the issue, but reporters from Portland's other alt-weekly, Willamette Week, and the daily Oregonian also looked into it. Ultimately, the Mercury never ran a story. As editor William Steven Humphrey explained frankly on Tuesday, "The problem has always been substantiating these claims. We begged, we pleaded; none of our sources would agree to go on record with their claims." Willamette week's did.
On January 14, WW was preparing to publish an article with some on-the-record accusations; shortly before it went to print, Mayor Adams recanted his former denials and admitted, "In the past, I've characterized my relationship with Beau Breedlove as purely non-sexual and that is not true."
The WW went on to raise questions about Ruiz. On Dec. 22, after pursuing the Adams story for over a year on and off, Ruiz was hired by Adams to be his sustainability and strategic planning adviser. Her salary increased from around $42K (according to a Slog post) to $55K. WW basically accused her of burying the story, or at least being bought off. In a wonderful example of a leading comment, WW's writers wrote of interviewing Ruiz's former co-worker Scott Moore: "Asked what he thought of Ruiz becoming Adams' aide, Moore, now a spokesman for the advocacy group Our Oregon, offered a terse 'No comment.'"
Is it true? It seems doubtful. One would hope that with a number of years' experience as a reporter, Amy Ruiz would have had second thoughts about the decision, which could sadly impact her career. But unlike Adams's poor judgment, WW doesn't have any real proof that Ruiz took the job in exchange for shutting up, nor would that have stopped other Mercury writers from pursuing the story.
In the end, it feels like this is more about the juvenile competition between alt-weeklies we've seen here in Seattle, between the Weekly and the Stranger (at least back when the Weekly was relevant). All we can say is, we're sad for what's happening to Adams, who showed the sort of leadership during Snowmageddon that was sadly lacking here in Seattle (Update: Adams only took office on Jan. 1). That said, we're not so prone to keep supporting him; if this were just a sex scandal, we'd be whatever, but it became a dirty tactic against an opponent that helped scooch him into City Hall, and that's not so excusable.
