Portland is largest city with gay mayor
Published 9:52 pm Thursday, January 1, 2009
PORTLAND, Ore. — Two months ago, Sam Adams, a Portland city commissioner and the mayor-elect, rallied a crowd of gay rights activists as part of a national series of protests against California’s new ban on same-sex marriage.
Speaking into a bullhorn, he urged the protesters to continue pushing for legal same-sex marriage in all 50 states, but he urged them not to embark that day on an unauthorized march.
“This community is watching us, the nation is watching us,” he said. “They are going to judge us for what we do today, and today we do not have a permit to march — not because the city won’t let us but because this happened so quickly we couldn’t get the paperwork in.”
The crowd laughed at the not-so-frequent moment when Adams’ political activism and his municipal role crossed paths. Adams smiled.
Adams, 45, was sworn into office at 12:01 a.m. Thursday at City Hall. It made Portland, population estimated at 575,000, the largest city in the nation to elect an openly gay mayor.
Seven months ago, he won the job with 58 percent of the vote in a primary race against a travel agency owner and other, less well known candidates. That meant he didn’t have to run in a November runoff election.
He didn’t campaign on gay rights or social issues. “I’m running not to be a gay mayor, but a great mayor,” he said.
None of Adams’ opponents raised his sexuality in the race. Neither did he.
“This is a testament to how fair-minded Portlanders are that it wasn’t an issue,” Adams said. “I spend my time on the basic issues of life. A part of that includes equal rights, but that’s not even close to a majority of the time.”
Adams was one of more than 100 gay, lesbian and bisexual candidates running for federal, state and local offices endorsed earlier this year by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a Washington, D.C., group whose aim is to increase the number of openly gay elected officials.
Denis Dison, the organization’s spokesman, said 80 of the candidates won, including 33-year-old entrepreneur Jared Polis of Boulder, Colo., who in November became the first openly gay man to win a seat in Congress as a nonincumbent candidate.
Another candidate the group endorsed was Oregon state Sen. Kate Brown, who describes herself as bisexual.
She will become Oregon’s second-ranking state official when she is sworn in as secretary of state.
