Political Animals: A field guide to the six groups that will choose the next mayor

Willamette Week:

An L-shaped, linoleum-floored, union hall basement at Southeast 32nd Avenue and Powell Boulevard provided the perfect stage last week to show how power in Portland works.

It was there that the Northwest Labor Council, an umbrella group for city unions, on Nov. 15 hosted the first mayoral candidate forum in the 2012 campaign.

In a revealing moment, Eileen Brady, who styles herself as the bike-commuting sustainable business candidate, told the trade-union audience exactly what their members wanted to hear.

“I am very supportive of the Columbia River Crossing project,” Brady said. “We are going to take the opportunity—you guys, we cannot miss this opportunity—we have a public works project the likes of what we may not see for a decade. We need to move forward on it.”

Only a couple of months earlier, Brady expressed a very different view of the CRC, a proposed $3.5 billion freeway project between Portland and Vancouver that critics deride as unnecessary and unaffordable.

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