filed under Politics
The Heart of Portland Oregon* Just Got A Little Gayer
2:48PM ON
01/02/2009
BY
Matthew Lawrence
Today Sam Adams (not that one) was sworn in as mayor of Portland, Oregon, meaning that David Cicilline’s no longer the only gay mayor of a major US city. [nb: I just had so much trouble writing that sentence. I tried "gayest mayor of a US city," and then "mayor of the gayest US city," and then "the gay mayor of the biggest city with a gay mayor." Be thankful I haven't posted much lately.]
If I didn’t hate the rain so much I’d seriously consider decamping to the west coast, since Portland has a) lots of awesome grocery stores, b) lots of awesome coffee places, c) awesome beer out the wazoo, even in the strip clubs, which are also awesome d) good public transportation, e) a place that sells donuts coated in fruit loops, f) the country’s largest independent bookstore, and g) lots of other awesome things I probably don’t know about because I only ever went there once for a wedding. And now they’ve got a gay mayor, and kind of a dreamy one at that, as far as politican types go. (Those glasses!)
(*Any Hefner fans in the house?!)
[trading card via The ZehnKahten Times]
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:08PM
Wesli Dymoke Says:
Couple minutes of research, and..
When Cicilline took office, he had two claims (outside of Rhode Island): Providence became the largest city in the country to date with an openly gay mayor, and he was the first openly gay mayor of a state capital. Portland is about twice the size of Providence, so we now lose the first of those claims. However, despite what most folks think, Salem is the capital of Oregon, not Portland, so we retain the latter claim, for now.
This leads me to note, however, that one of Oregon’s problems is that they imported all their founders’ New England cultural trappings, especially place names. Portland is named after Portland, Maine. It won out over — ready for this? — Boston. Yes, Boston. That’s right, they were thinking of maybe naming their new city after an existing major city — which they did, because at the time, Portland, Maine was one of the biggest and most important cities in the Northeast, comparable in commercial importance to New York. As was Providence. At the time. (And just take a wild guess what the state capital is named after.)
Portland was, along with New York, Providence, and Boston, one of the ‘Great Northeast Port Cities’ at the turn of the century. Well, times change. But what it also suggests is that at some point, someone almost certainly suggested another name for that city.
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January 3rd, 2009 at 4:35AM
Dub Not Dubya Says:
There was a brief period of time a few years ago where San Diego had a lesbian mayor, but she became mayor when the previous mayor resigned in some scandal; she wasn’t elected mayor. Also, the mayor of Chula Vista, California came out sometime after that, and I believe I remember hearing that that city is actually larger than Providence as well. I haven’t heard anything about that guy in a while, so I’m thinking he may have subsequently left office.
Oregon is also home to the country’s only transgender-identified mayor, and its Secretary of State is an openly bisexual woman. Go Oregon!
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January 3rd, 2009 at 4:41AM
Dub Not Dubya Says:
I got bored and found some links. Article about Chula Vista mayor’s official coming out, which also mentions the lesbian interim mayor of San Diego. And I was right that Mayor Padilla is no longer in office.
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January 3rd, 2009 at 7:36PM
joe bernstein Says:
Maybe someone wants our mayor-gay or not he is a lying miserable little turd.
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January 4th, 2009 at 1:25PM
Samuel John Klein Says:
Just stopping by to say how enormously flattered that I am that you saw my graphic and used it to illustrate this article. That really made my day!
A couple things caught my eye in the comments:
1)Wesli Dymoke said: Portland is about twice the size of Providence. Actually, with a population of 575,000 vs 172,000 (approx, at last estimates) Portland is about three and a half times the size of Providence (no disrespect meant here, I’m just a stickler for figures).
2)Wesli also alluded to the naming of Portland. It’s perfectly correct that the name Boston was in competition with Portland as the name of our town (which started out as “The Clearing”). I thought it would also be interesting to note that the name was settled on a coin toss, between two men: Francis Pettygrove, from Portland ME, and Asa Lovejoy, from Boston. Pettygrove won.
3)The openly TG mayor you’re referring to is Stu Rasmussen, who’s mayor of Silverton, which, incidentally, is the town I was born in. If Silverton was as cool then as it is now, I would never have left it for Portland!
4)I didn’t know that Kate Brown is openly bisexual. That’s an interesting thing to find out.
Happy to stop by. Nice blog!
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January 5th, 2009 at 12:01PM
Pete F Says:
Hello Providence! Let’s not forget Virginia Linder, the first out lesbian to win election to a state supreme court. Defeating a former statewide officeholder and gubernatorial candidate — it was no walk in the park.
I have to say, the thing that makes me happiest is that as far as I can tell, sexual orientation was not used as a significant part of any of these Oregon campaigns (though I’m not too familiar with what happened in Silverton).
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January 5th, 2009 at 7:38PM
Corey Says:
All these people trying to steal our shit!
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