Mayor Sam Adams apologizes for lying about affair, but will Portland forgive him?

PORTLAND — This city's new mayor ended his recent inauguration speech by rephrasing the famous line of his hero, slain San Francisco supervisor and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk: "My name is Sam Adams, and I'm here to recruit you."

Adams reveled in the idea of making history as the first elected, openly gay mayor of a major American city.

But less than three weeks later, Adams' job is in peril as the result of an old-fashioned scandal involving his repeated lies about a sexual relationship in 2005 with an 18-year-old legislative intern. Adams confessed to his deception Monday as a local newspaper, the Willamette Week, prepared to publish a story about the relationship and cover-up.

While most of the nation has been fixated on the inauguration of President Obama, Portland has been plunged into a gritty debate about the ethics of its new leader.

In recent days, numerous organizations have called for Adams to resign, ranging from the police union to Just Out, a publication that writes about the gay community. The Oregon Attorney General's office is investigating the scandal.

And Adams himself has conceded that he might quit if he's no longer effective as mayor.

"I am very ashamed and humbled and humiliated, and I think that is appropriate," Adams said in a news conference Tuesday, after hastily returning to Portland from Washington, D.C., where he had planned to attend the Obama inauguration.

Fall from grace

It is a dizzying fall from grace for a man who seemed a smooth fit to lead a city often hailed as a hub of innovation and one of the nation's coolest places to live. Adams rides a bike to work, posts quirky videos on his Web site, and has been a longtime advocate of expanding light rail and other initiatives to make Portland greener.

Adams, 45, also focused on the poor; in part, a reflection of his own difficult upbringing.

Born in Montana, he moved to Oregon with his family when he was young. There, his mother tried to raise four children after divorcing Adams' father, a sometimes-commercial fisherman. According to a profile in Just Out, Adams was living alone in a Eugene apartment by age 16. He worked as a bus boy and then a cook at a Mr. Steak restaurant to stay afloat during high school.

During 11 years as an aide to former Portland Mayor Vera Katz and four years as a city commissioner, he gained a reputation as a creative, ambitious workaholic — a striking contrast to the outgoing Mayor Tom Potter, a retired police chief who seemed to run out of steam long before his term ended.

In last May's mayoral primary, Adams won 59 percent of the vote, a margin large enough to avoid a runoff in November.

"We've been so happy with the directions things are going since he took over. He's brought so much energy to the office," said Randy Leonard, a Portland City Commissioner and longtime Adams supporter. Leonard is awaiting the results of an independent investigation into the scandal by the state attorney general's office.

Broader constituency

During his political career, Adams embraced his identity as a gay man but always reached out to a broader constituency.

"For some, it was a positive, and for most voters it was not terribly relevant, " said Tim Hibbits, who has worked in Portland for 30 years as a pollster and political consultant, "The question was, what could he do for the city?"

But an allegation involving Adams' sex life surfaced before the mayoral campaign. In fall 2007, Bob Ball, a gay businessman considering his own run for mayor, raised concerns about the propriety of Adams' relationship in 2005 with the legislative intern.

Many believe Adams could still have been elected mayor had he taken his lumps at that point and admitted to what he now calls an "inappropriate relationship." But Adams feared the allegations would end his political career.

He had met Breedlove when the youth was 17, a minor, and when having a sexual relationship would have been a crime. Adams says he was careful to wait until Breedlove was 18 but worried people wouldn't buy that claim.

"Allegations had been seeded with folks around the city that I had sex with a minor, and that's a very inflammatory thing to throw out there," Adams said at his news conference. "I just didn't think I would survive that so I lied."

After the allegations surfaced, he repeatedly denounced them as an ugly misrepresentation of his efforts to mentor a young gay man.

"I didn't get into public life to allow my instinct to help others to be snuffed out by fear or sleazy misrepresentation or political manipulation," he wrote in a letter released to voters.

Adams also reached out to the gay media, meeting with Marty Davis, the publisher of Just Out, to dispute the allegations. Davis believed Adams, and in the year that followed lauded his accomplishments both for the gay community — where he led efforts to build a gay and lesbian community center — and other initiatives to improve the city.

"The Pride of Portland," declared the cover of Just Out after Adams' May primary victory.

But this week, Davis said Adams should resign because the cover-up has undermined his credibility. "It was not a quick 'oops' cover-up type of thing," Davis said. "It was lying by design. It was the difference between manslaughter and murder. This was first-degree lying."

Others are hoping Adams can weather the storm.

They view his lies as an effort to protect his personal life. News of the relationship, they say, has no bearing on the mayor's qualifications for office.

"People didn't vote for Sam because they thought he didn't sleep with this guy," said Alex Gold, a hotel worker. "They voted for him because of all the good things that they thought he could do for this city."

Basic Rights Oregon, a statewide gay-rights group, said Adams should be given a chance to try to rebuild his trust with voters.

"We condemn what he did, but we support him going forward," Jean Frazzini, executive director, told the Willamette Week Thursday. "Emotions are high and the disappointment is palpable ... but the time has come for cooler heads to prevail."

Television-news crews staked out City Hall in hopes of catching sight of Adams, while demonstrators — both for and against the mayor — marched outside, according to The Oregonian.

But there was one prominent no-show at City Hall: Adams himself.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com. Material from The Associated Press and The Oregonian was used in this report.

This story about Portland Mayor Sam Adams, published Jan. 23 and corrected Jan. 26, misstated the city's rank among major American cities. It is in the top 30 -- not the top 20. The article misidentified Adam's birth state of Montana, and incorrectly identified the elected office held by the late San Francisco City Supervisor, Harvey Milk.