NOVEMBER 21, 2008 |USt OUt
9
outstanding
Outstanding Person of the Year:
Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams
by Stephen Marc Beaudoin
he glass closet finally burst
into a thousand pieces when
.X' openly gay City Commissioner
Sam Adams was elected mayor of
Portland with 59 percent of the vote in the
May primary election. Because of this au
gust achievement
and our belief in
his wisdom, vision
and courage as the
first openly gay
mayor of a major
U.S. city, Just Out
is pleased to honor
him as our inau
gural Outstanding
Person of the Year.
At the same
time that we offer
up this scepter and
crown to Adams,
we also hand him a bottle of aspirin. As
mayor, Adams will face massive city
specific challenges in the months and
years ahead: a 43 percent dropout rate
among high schoolers in the Portland
Snapshots of Sam Adams through the years: as chief of staff to Mayor Vera
Katz, as City Commissioner and now as Stumptown’s mayor-elect.
Public Schools district; a litany of exces
sive force charges against the Portland
Police Bureau; a lack of affordable housing and
his sprawling ambition. Adams never met an idea
to marketing
living-wage jobs that have vexed this city for at
he didn’t like, and he needs the queer community
executives.
least a generation; and the question of how to grow
to help him stay on track.
He plans to
Portland’s economy and population without sacri
As mayor of Portland, what will his priori
unveil
the
ficing the small-town, DIY charm that attracts the
ties be? Adams rattles off “reducing [the] high
next stage of
so-called creative class.
schixil dropout rate, reducing over 30 percent of
this initiative in January.
Adams will also face heightened scrutiny from
Portlanders who are unemployed or on a poverty
And about that whole gay thing—Adams has
the sexual minorities community. It would be easy
wage, and bringing Portland to a new level of not only been open about his sexual orientation
to elevate him to queer martyrdom before he even
sustainable practices” as some of his top places to
for the better part of a decade, he’s worked in smart
takes office in January. That would be a mistake.
press forward. He is also taking the unusual step of and innovative ways to advance causes important
Yes, we’re grinning with pride about Adams’ elec retaining his arts commissioner role as mayor; cre
to queers: He led the founding of Portland’s facili
tion to office and his banner year as a city commis ative people across the city should be dancing in
ty for the sexual minorities community, Q Center,
sioner, but we also hope Portland queers continue
the streets about this. Adams has already embarked
and he helped pass an ordinance prohibiting the
to challenge, question and debate with him once
on an ambitious Creative Capacity Initiative that
city from contracting with anti-gay companies.
he’s in the driver’s seat, if there’s one character
seeks to identify and open new funding streams
And his mayoral staff, so far anyway, is stuffed
flaw that might prove fatal to Adams as mayor, it’s
for folks in the creative sector, from musicians
with fabulous openly gay people like Shoshanah
V
■
E verybody ^
FOR KIDS
OF ALL AGES!
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This
month
Adams
at
tended the
red
carpet
world
pre
miere
of
Portland
filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s
biopic about Harvey Milk.
Adams openly acknowledges
the “great debt” he owes to
Milk’s work, which
helped “pave the
way for viable gay
candidates to elected
office.” And at the
Nov. 15 Portland ral
ly to protest the pas
sage of California’s
Proposition 8,
Adams himself raised
the spectre of Milk’s
extraordinary legacy
when he grabbed
a bullhorn, took
the stage to roaring
crowds and updated
a signature Milk rallying cry for his own purposes:
“My name is Sam Adams!” he bellowed to wild
applause. “And I’m here to recruit you!” ©
Celebrate the inauguration of Sam Adams during the
M ayor ’ s B all Jan. 31, 2009, at The Nines Hotel,
525 S.W. Morrison St. Tickets will be available in
early January; proceeds benefit Q Center and
Creative Advocacy Network, an arm of the Creative
Capacity Initiative. For details visit www.
commissioner sam. com.