Potter will be most remembered for turning City Hall into a public toilet. The "contributions" he cited will go away with the loss of funding in the future city budgets, replaced with more worthwhile initiatives and projects. "Black parenting classes"? How more insulting could this egotist be to a minority group?

Potter knew he would not have the same free ride from the media as he did in 2004. New details about his reported misconduct as a North Precint captain and chief would have surfaced in a campaign and he was not prepared to tell the truth. Former chief Derrick Foxworth said there were chiefs who did worse to women they worked with.

A highly placed source says that Steve Novick will drop out of the U.S. Senate race to run for Mayor.

full departure speech here

http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/index.cfm?c=41148&a=167689

I wonder how much the Portland Police Union had a hand in this decision.

Here's what I have found interesting about Mayor Potter: his charge that we all figure out a way to get involved in our city. I think he saw himself as more of a leader-as-facilitator than as a traditional do-it-myself mayor. The shadow of the approach may be a perception that little got done. But there's an upside here because many people have taken him up on the challenge. I've seen that first hand. Moving forward, I hope we keep this perspective that governing is not conducted solely by those elected, or paid, to do it.

Potter's legacy will be mixed, because while he is perceived as being somewhere between leader-as-facilitator and milquetoast, he pushed hard for a scheme which would have radically shifted real power away from the shared responsibility of the commissioner model to a strong-man mayor. Did he have plans to exercise all that power? We don't know. Did he decide to leave because he couldn't obtain that power? It is great fun to speculate.

The biggest disappointment of Potter’s tenure (and there are many) is how he squandered the huge reserve of goodwill sincere voters demonstrated when they elected him to office.

Nothing farsighted was proposed that citizens could support or get behind. Once elected he seemed disinterested, overwhelmed, or possibly both.

His administration wandered aimlessly with pointless “visioning” schemes while ignoring the most basic services city government is charged with providing. Now he bows out because “going camping” was more fun than the job he was elected to.

Maybe next election we’ll elect the steak and not the sizzle.

The biggest disappointment of Potter’s tenure (and there are many) is how he squandered the huge reserve of goodwill sincere voters demonstrated when they elected him to office.

Bingo. I'm ashamed to admit I voted for Do-Nothing Potter. He's turned out to be a big fat failure. And now he has the gall to spend MY money on aiding and abetting illegal aliens and their tax evasion? I get to pay taxes so THEY don't have to? WTF? He's already spending tax money on this "day laborers' center" brainfart? Didn't bother to ask the taxpayers, just did it? Exercising his unitary executive power apparently.

He should be sicking the PPD on the illegals who congregate on Burnside, NOT building them a structure to facilitate their tax evasion. Complete and utter bullshit. And this is basically the only tangible thing the turd has done. What an unbelievable waste of space he's turned out to be.

Tom Potter was a great mayor. A grassroots gentle grandpa who put . He lead the city with good decision making on minority issues, helping the disenfranchised, making portland a greener, more bike friendly and transit oriented place, and not letting the portland police beat citizens like Vera did. The media fueled by pamplin and the Portland Business Alliance was out to frame Potter negatively with daily assaults. Potter will be remembered by the citizens in the neighborhoods as a leader who stood up for the little man, not big business interests, even when it hurt him.

Being a native Minnesotan, Tom Potter always reminded me a lot of Jesse Ventura. He wasn't exactly mainstream, had great ideas of how to get more people involved, and got a lot of people interested in him and in city politics who wouldn't normally have been.

While in office he did a lot to anger the establishment, which he appeared to enjoy. But he also found out that being Mayor's a job, and not an easy one. I think that, above all, was the reason for both Potter and Ventura not to seek reelection. Sure, neither of them would win, but neither of them really expected to win in the first place -- winning was never their goal. Their goal was to mix it up, get into a few fights, and go home at the end of the day. It's tough to do that when you're also supposed to be the guy in charge.

I think Potter's having been mayor is going to be good for the city, even if Potter was so ineffective while he was mayor. And in the end, I agree with Stephanie V. Would Francesconi have gotten more done as mayor? Probably. Would just as many people who have poo-poo-ed Potter have done the same at Francesconi, if for different reasons? Absolutely, and then some.

And Jack, you sound like a republican. Take your hate elsewhere.

I hope Novick goes for mayor... he would be so much better than Adams. That Oregonian piece on him on Sunday really painted a sorry picture of Adams.

No matter what else he did or did not do, he was instrumental in helping establish the Peace Memorial Park, and I thank him for his support.

For those who criticize Potter for not having a big or aggressive enough vision, keep your powder dry. '08 will be all vision all the time.

Jeff, four years is a long time for the City to be without vision and leadership. And three years is a long time (and a lot of money) to develop a vision. Have you looked at the results? There is very little in there that you and I could not have come up with had we spent a weekend thinking about it.

Mayor Potter's a guy who clearly cares about the city, and even if his governing style drives you a little batty, you gotta admit he entered politics for the right reasons: to serve the city.

Actually, Charlie, the desire to serve the City is generally why someone volunteers for a board or commission or at a local non-profit. It's not why someone should run for Mayor. If you want that job, it should be because you already HAVE a vision, and you want to implement it. You put it out there, and ask people to vote for you.

Look, Potter is a nice guy, and he talks a very good game when it comes to inclusiveness, outreach, "power to the people", etc. But has anything really changed in the City? Are people more engaged, more aware, more active? Is Council spending more money improving the quality of life in neighborhoods, and less improving the profits of developers? I have yet to see substantive changes as a result of Potter's tenure.

Well, first, I didn't realize that Adams had such personal financial woes. I believe that the inability to handle money wisely, even in one's (relative) youth, is a significant deficiency, particularly for one seeking larger public office.

I also thought that his use of his sexual orientation, at least in the article, was questionable. He said he doesn't want it to be an issue in the campaign. But then when questions are raised about his temper, he replies something along the lines as "are gay guys just supposed to be funny".

This struck me as manipulative and treacherous. Indeed, when the very real issue of his temper comes up, he softly links such criticisms with a hint of homophobia. He appears to imply that those who criticize his temper are operating on stereotypes of gay men. That's a cheap way out of very serious questions about his temper; as well, it suggests that he doesn't want his orientation to be an issue, except when he can use it to silence criticism.

Actually lots of immigrants living in the U.S. pay taxes, via withholding. These include social security and medicare taxes whose benefits they will never see, but that support current & future "native" elders doubtless including many of your relatives or friends, Jack.

Chris Lowe, you are either self-deluded or lying. Either way, it's obvious you haven't crunched the numbers. I have. I've spent many hours gathering data and analyzing them. Illegal aliens do not come even close---NOT EVEN CLOSE---to paying for their own children's K-12 education. Tax-paying citizens and legal immigrants in Oregon subsidize illegal alien education to the tune of ~$268 million/yr.

The same goes for every other social service they use, from roads to public safety to health care. Numbers don't lie. And I won't even mention the well established wage depression that mass immigration causes---anyone who has done even ten minutes of research on the subject already knows this. That may not matter to a white-collar elitist (what exactly is your field Chris?), but to a blue-collar worker, it's the difference between making the ever-increasing rent or not. I'm in the horticultural field, and wages SUCK!

Chris, the intellectual bankruptcy of your argument is truly astonishing. And of course, your intellectual emptiness is joined with the expected ad hominems about what a "hateful nativist" I am for daring to question the progressive powers that be. How typical of the illogical "I feel it so it must be right" progressive hypocrite.

This lie about illegal aliens paying for Americans' social security is the biggest fraud the open borders crowd has perpetrated on the naive public and self-deluded hypocritical "progressives." Why are you progressives are so eager to sacrifice hard-working blue-collar Americans on your multicultural altar? And why do you have to lie to achieve this goal?

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