10A | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019 | COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL
Offbeat Oregon
Frontier-era Portland mayors were surprisingly dramatic bunch
By Finn J.D. John
for The Sentinel
Over the years, the city of
Portland has had its share of
controversy and drama in the
Mayor’s office. At times, the
political tableaux in the top
job in Oregon’s biggest town
has ripened into scenes that
wouldn’t be out of place in a
Vaudeville act.
Over the next two or three
weeks, we’re going to hit the
highlights of a few of them ...
starting with the earliest ones
and moving forward in time
until we arrive at the one and
only Terry Schrunk — against
whom Robert Kennedy him-
self testified in a bribery trial.
(He was acquitted, by the way.)
Our grand tour of mayoral
misconduct (and alleged mis-
conduct) starts with the Wharf
Riot of 1860, when Oregon was
just barely a state and the Civil
War was brewing in the east.
Mayor vs. Mayor
The Wharf Riot had its roots
in a decision by former Port-
land Mayor George Vaughn to
build a wharf on the riverbank
between Alder and Morrison
streets, on a piece of land he
claimed he owned.
But the City of Portland
also claimed ownership of that
patch of riverbank. In fact, the
city claimed ownership of the
entire levee along the water-
front. The issue was destined
to be resolved, several years
later, when the courts ruled
that it did not; but in 1859 and
1860 the question was far from
settled, and the rhetorical tem-
peratures were running high
on both sides.
In response to Vaughn’s con-
struction project, the city got a
court injunction ordering him
to stop work on the wharf until
the ownership question could
be resolved.
Instead
of
complying,
Vaughn hired some extra
workers and banged out the
wharf in record time. The
city, probably calculating that
it wasn’t worth the trouble to
protest, did nothing.
Well, that had worked re-
markably well, so Vaughn tried
the same trick in the spring of
the following year. Without
telling anyone or saying any-
thing, he started construction
of a building to enclose the
wharf.
This time, though, the city
was ready to fight him.
The City Council drafted
an order to cease construction
and remove the wharf with-
in 24 hours, or it would order
City Marshal James Lappeus to
remove it by force.
This done, the council sent
Lappeus to the job site to serve
the notice on Vaughn.
When Lappeus got there, he
found that word of his errand
had already reached Vaughn,
who had responded by hir-
ing an enormous crew, big
enough to finish the building
before the end of the day. He
nevertheless served the papers
on Vaughn, and informed the
ex-mayor that he was trespass-
ing. Vaughn laughed and threw
the papers down in the mud
and stomped all over them.
By daybreak the next day,
the building was complete.
But Lappeus, accompanied by
sitting Mayor Stephen McCor-
mick, was already on his way
to the waterfront to start the
building-removal process. A
showdown was brewing ....
But before that showdown
between Mayor McCormick
and ex-Mayor George Vaughn
could take place, yet anoth-
er ex-mayor intervened. This
was Addison Starr, who was
now the sheriff of Multnomah
County. Ex-Mayor Starr now
arrested Mayor McCormick
and Marshal Lappeus at the be-
hest of Ex-Mayor Vaughn. The
charge was “Intent to Destroy
Private Property,” a charge that
Starr probably made up on the
spot.
Made-up or not, the charge
didn’t last five minutes in an
actual court of law. It was dis-
missed, the mayor and city
marshal were released from the
jail in a matter of hours, and it
was with considerably aug-
mented enthusiasm for the job
at hand that they now headed
for the riverfront to finish what
they’d tried to start.
When they did so, they
found themselves at the head
of a large mob. Word had got-
ten around about Vaughn’s be-
havior, and the town was pretty
riled up.
The mob helped McCor-
mick and Lappeus reduce
Vaughn’s wharf and enclos-
ing building to its constituent
hunks of wood in just a few
minutes.
“Some persons might object
to the manner of removing the
building,” the Morning Orego-
nian’s editor wrote in the next
day’s paper. “If Mr. Vaughn had
not, in a defiant manner, man-
ifested a determination to erect
the building, in an unusual
way, and in such hot haste,
with full knowledge that city
authorities and a large portion
of the people were opposed to
it, and if he had not treated
their authority with contempt
by trampling their protest un-
der his feet, the building would
probably have been rolled off
(instead of) demolished.”
Vaughn, for his part, angrily
shook the dust of Portland off
his feet and moved to Vancou-
ver, although he eventually did
move back to town.
City Marshal Law
As the year 1867 dawned,
Mayor Thomas Holmes was
complaining about Portland’s
city marshal, Henry Hoyt.
The city marshal wasn’t an
employee, like a chief of po-
lice. He was an elected official
— elected either by the pop-
ulation at large, or by the city
council, depending on what
the city charter said (the city
changed charters frequently in
those years).
In 1869, the marshal was
hired by the city council, a
detail that would turn out to
be important in the attempted
swindle that followed.
The city marshal was com-
pensated more or less on a
piecework basis, like an inde-
pendent contractor. This, of
course, saved lots of money
during quiet times, but as the
town grew bigger there were
more criminals to deal with,
and the marshal’s budget was
growing steadily.
Holmes thought Hoyt was
deliberately stirring up trou-
ble to pad his billable-hours
account — basically, abusing
his position to hit the cash box
harder and more often than
was necessary to get the job
done. So he complained about
him to the city council.
One of the city councilors,
A. Rosenheim, was all ears.
Hoyt may or may not have
been taking advantage of the
open-ended nature of his job
to enrich himself; but Rosen-
heim clearly intended to do
just that. He schmoozed and
bargained with his fellow City
Councilors for support, then
presented himself as a candi-
date to replace Hoyt. With his
four friends’ votes added to his
own, he “won” the election, de-
feating Hoyt.
Only problem was, Hoyt de-
clined to step down, claiming
Rosenheim’s election had been
illegitimate.
The council filed a suit
against him to force him out.
But when the case was pre-
sented to the Oregon Supreme
Court, the court ruled — not
unreasonably, it must be said
— that, yeah no — it was not
OK for a member of an execu-
tive board to use his appointive
power to place himself in a lu-
crative job.
Having made his point,
Henry Hoyt stepped down a
few months later.
The Co-Mayorship
In 1881, upstart attorney
Joseph Simon was running for
mayor against incumbent (and
establishment darling) David
Thompson. When the polls
closed, the electors declared Si-
mon the winner by a margin of
9 votes out of 3,570 cast.
Naturally, there had to be a
review of the ballots, with the
race that close. So the city au-
ditor, the county clerk, and the
justice of the peace sat down to
do it.
They determined that Si-
mon hadn’t won — he had, in
fact, lost by one vote — 1,784
to 1,785.
Ignoring this piece of bad
news, Simon started loudly
proclaiming victory and de-
manding to be inaugurated.
Meanwhile,
Thompson’s
friends were not idle, and soon
the Morning Oregonian was
righteously thundering forth
demands that Thompson be
seated without further delay.
Clearly a full recount was in
order.
But before that could hap-
pen, there was a problem —
several problems, actually, but
they were nestled together like
one of those Russian dolls.
First, it seemed at least one
of the city council’s members
had a little money riding on
the outcome.
Councilor William An-
drus denied it, but five people
swore out affidavits swearing
that he’d bet on Simon to win.
Andrus responded by getting a
couple friends to file affidavits
swearing that, yeah, he’d placed
a couple bets, but the bets had
been on their behalf and not
his. This sounded just as plau-
sible in 1881 as it sounds today.
Irregular though this was, it
wasn’t the real problem. But it
took Andrus’s vote away from
the City Council — of course,
he had to recuse himself — at
a time when it was going to be
sorely needed to resolve the
real problem, which was the
recount results.
Those results confirmed
that Thompson had won by
one vote, but it excluded two
disputed ballots that had been
cast for Simon. If those two
votes were added back in, of
course, Simon won. If not,
Thompson did.
The Council met to discuss
the issue, and to review the
disputed ballots one at a time.
The first one had Thomp-
son’s name written on it, with
Simon’s overwritten over it.
Close inspection showed that
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Simon’s had been the second
name written on the ballot, so
they gave that one to Simon.
The race was now tied.
The second ballot was hard-
er to figure out. Eventually it
was put to a vote, and the result
was a tie — four votes to keep
it, four to throw it out. Andrus,
who ordinarily would have
broken the tie with his ninth
vote, had been forced to recuse
himself because of his bets.
Great wrangling ensued,
and a clumsy and futile attempt
to toss this hot potato over to
the state supreme court. Final-
ly the council voted again, and
this time it was 5 to 3 in favor
of throwing the ballot away.
The race was now tied, with
1,783 votes each. Thereupon,
the council tabled Simon’s re-
quest to be declared Mayor,
and went home. Thompson
was left in office by default.
The record is silent about
whether or not Andrus lost his
money.
We’ll continue this whirl-
wind tour of mayoral misbe-
havior in next week’s column.
(Sources: Merchants, Mon-
ey and Power: 1843-1913, a
book by E. Kimbark MacColl
published by Georgian Press in
1988; Portland: People, Politics
and Power, a book by Jewel Lan-
sing published by Oregon State
University Press in 2003; Wick-
ed Portland, a book by Finn J.D.
John published in 2012 by The
History Press.)
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