Last Jan. 15, four days before WW broke the story about Mayor Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove, WW interviewed Adams in his City Hall office.
Also present for the interview were Adams’ then-spokesman Wade Nkrumah (who resigned later that month) and Adams policy adviser Amy Ruiz, the Portland Mercury’s former City Hall reporter whom Adams hired in December. WW’s interviewers were reporter Nigel Jaquiss, editor Mark Zusman and managing news editor Henry Stern.
The Oregonian obtained that interview as part of a public records request as part of this story the daily ran today. In the course of the interview, Adams accuses another man of attempted rape and also answers the question if he was ever in the City Hall bathroom with Breedlove. Here is the interview:
[audio:http://wweek.com/2009/adams090115-full.mp3]
- Adams’ Admission Reaction: Hear Mayor Sam Adams Deflect the Bathroom Question Last Sund
- The Daily Gets a Scoop on Sam Adams This even
- Adams’ Admission Reaction: Breedlove Interview With CBS Upcoming on Thursday CBS News
- Beau Breedlove Tells KGW That Mayor Sam Adams Lied About What Happened And That He’s Mad About It (UPDATED with comment from Adams’ spokesman) Beau Bree
- Adams Admission Reaction: Adams and Breedlove’s Stories Differ (Plus KATU Reports A New Detail on Breedlove) In an int
Tags: Audio, beau breedlove, Sam Adams
Adams needs to resign.
Nope tw. He knows he’s going down, but not before he takes the whole city with him.
Annie is correct. Rape and pilage are on Sam’s agenda.
Gosh, it’s refreshing to hear my city’s Mayor lie repeatedly on tape, falsely accuse others of rape, deny his own actions, etc.–and also to hear his “Senior Sustainability Policy Advisor” act as his legal secretary.
and then to hear Storm Large and Thomas Lauderdale sing “Amazing Grace” and lambast anybody who was shocked as “sex-obsessed right-wingers”.
Don’t forget the “Fascist Homophobes” label.
What belligerent stupidity. And to try to provoke others into a barking match with you is the absolute worst type of civic involvement, anonymous or not. This entire affair has been nothing but incredibly divisive and disruptive for Portland; I don’t know if your stupid remarks are meant to muddy the water, score points or mislead whoever you think the opposition is, but the ugliness of your contribution is even worse than you imagine. Grow up.
What’s the “sleaze” part Dr. Dim? Surely not a mayor so obsessed with control issues that he got a couple of you infatuated with the word homophobe when he ignorantly threw it out there in ‘07.
Or are you one of the people who taught him how all those corrupt power words, used to divide Portland into his make believe world of gay and anti gay, in the first place?
I have heard this recording before, most of it. It fills me with disgust. I am particularly repelled by the glee of the Mayor’s tormentors, who inflict a mental torture on the poor guy, imperfect as he is, and then triumphantly point out: look at this animal, this beast, this subhuman. This is torturers’ usual logic: first, they bring you to utter humiliation and helplessness and then delight in their own superiority. This is a vile document.
I have to agree with you, Dr. Jim. There is a lot of mean-spiritedness directed at Sam Adams, and a lot of it is coming from homophobes and sore-loser Republicans. I honestly feel for what Sam Adams must be going through on a very human level. However, I would like to see a new leader for the city. It’s nothing personal against his sexual proclivities, but rather that I cannot trust him to be our leader. I hope you can understand the distinction. I also hope that if/when Sam Adams is removed from office that he has enough emotional support in his life to make it to the next chapter in his life. I don’t envy the position he is in right now.
Hey, I’m willing to forgive and forget and appreciate the humanity of the man, as soon as he resigns. How anyone can feel sorry for him
while he is still desperately clinging to power, and wreaking destruction on our great city, is simply beyond my grasp.
Also, Dr Jim, do you have absolutely no compassion for Breedlove? Do you suffer from amnesia, or are you the rare exception that was not biologically programmed to be OUT OF CONTROL roughly between the ages of 13 and 25?
I’m really tired of people hinting that all of us Adams detractors are somehow morally/emotionally bankrupt. Emotionally bankrupt people are everywhere, but they are not the backbone of the movement that will hit the streets on July 1st.
Dr. Jim’s [et al] varied issues are a confused blur but for this point: that criticizing Adams is by itself full evidence of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy and, rather strangely, an expression of hatred against Dr. Jim himself, the very hurt person writing under that and other screen names hereabouts.
For lo, we are all sexual predators howling about how unfairly we’re being persecuted, so any condemnation of Adams’ specific actions is an intolerable injustice. Disgusting to the core. It’s sickening. It’s unbelievable. How dare we.
I’m less interested in locating the mainspring of pain from which this commenter draws the poison with which to nourish his garden of resentment and more interested in reiterating for the sake of any interloper that should stumble upon this thread: Adams needs to resign. His rare supporters now may equate all judgment with intolerance, but most everybody else recognizes imploded authority when they see it. He needs to resign.
For or against Sam Adams beaugate issue, admitting his issues or giving him a pass for his behavior with Beau is one one issue and has it’s own path and frankly really only nails Sam for being reckless, then it hits the city. However, his direct and current city wide decisions in the same reckless manner effect us all for a much longer term. We’ve watched his supporters defect due to that process—interesting don’t you think? So, to all the SA supporters out there, are you all supporting Sam like the currently imploding GOP, who cannot see the forest through the trees, and is supporting the party at any cost basically the ultimate hail marry pass to protect a few?
Can’t any of you see — Sam cannot see the elephant in the room? Can’t you believe that the information evolved regarding Sam? Take off the blinders.
Sam said Amy Ruiz was “hired for her smarts”
You have got to be kidding. Her performance on this interview is so pathetic it is hilarious.
Yeah, don’t you LOVE the part where she says “WHO in city hall is……chatting
about me??!”
(”…About…..the fact that I was hired….to be sustainability adviser…um, when I probably knew a lot of stuff about Sam and Beau and didn’t publish it…..and, um, am unqualified for the position….and,um, Sam is throwing his sustainability-minded constituents under the bus anyway…”)
Why are people still obsessing over this? This is soo stupid. Have we no REAL problems in this city?
DamosA says:
May 6, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Why are people still obsessing over this? This is soo stupid. Have we no REAL problems in this city?
kidding..RIGHT?
That’s a lot of ” I don’t know” and I don’t remember”. His memory is substantially sharper when it comes to city affairs.
“Hired for her smarts”. The Ruiz thing is pathetic. Sam is using her.
None of his many powerful friends publicly support him. I mean people on the order of Vera Katz, not Thomas Lauderdale the piano player. Perhaps they know something they don’t wish to be associated with.
Why is Amy Ruiz present for this interview? As I understand it she was hired for a position in the sustainability office. It makes no sense that a new staffer from a different department would be involved in a press interview and something this high level. Her presence here can not be easily explained.
I have no PROOF but i have thought, since this story broke, that Amy’s hire was central to the cover up. That is the best explanation I can come up with for her being in the room for this interview.
It’s a question that still lingers and that has never been explained.
Amy was hired because those close to Sam could smell 2009 was going to be the year of The Press.
They needed someone who knows the rules of the game from the journalistic world, and you wonder why she was present as the “Sustainable What” at the shake shake down early Jan, when WW offered Sam the chance to come clean, and she was in the room…giving him subtle directions….so brand new to her office in City hall? Beth’s piece this morning on the content of Amy’s texting after the Big City Hall Co-Opt of the White House Garden Press op….brings it home even more.
Why else do you think she gets paid what she does for her great big important job for Sam….oops! I meant to say “for her valuable services to the city of Portland”.
Crash my car like a boss
William…yours is one of my most favorite posts EVER.
“Have we no REAL problems in this city?”
Sure we do. Potholes, less police protection, bad schools, Sellwood bridge falling down, water rates going up 16% in July.
Yet Sammy-boy is off on a week long jaunt to Belgium.
Face it, the only way he can dela with problems is lying which doesn’t solve anything.
[...] says the first lie came in the Jan. 15 interview WW had with Adams in the presence of Nkrumah and Adams staffer Amy Ruiz when Adams denied any [...]