In my copy of Saturday’s New York Times national edition (page A9), William Yardley reports on the disgrace of Portland’s openly homosexual Mayor Sam Adams. Adams admitted last week that he had a sexual relationship with a then-18-year-old male intern in the state legislature and that he had repeatedly lied about the relationship. The improbably named intern is one Beau Breedlove. Adams also admitted that he had repeatedly asked Breedlove to lie about the relationship.
The mayor’s credibility remains an issue. Adams may have initiated the relationship when Breedlove was underage. Adams claims he waited until Breedlove turned 18 before he allowed the relationship to turn intimate. Adams insists he was concerned that because he met Breedlove when he was 17, others might not believe that they had waited until he was 18 to have sex. State attorney general John Kroger has agreed to investigate. You’d have to be credulous to believe it now.
The Portland Oregonian and other large news outlets somehow missed this story. It was broken by Willamette Week, which also won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for breaking the story of former Portland Mayor and Oregon Governor Neil Goldshmidt sexual exploitation of a 14-year-old babysitter in the 1970’s. (The relationship extended until the babysitter was 17.)
The Times adds a piquant detail regarding Adams’s treatment of Goldschmidt: “In the wall of photographs in Mr. Adams’s office showing former mayors, the photograph of Mr. Goldschmidt is the only one obscured, by a table lamp.” One can only wonder what will become of Mayor Adams’s photograph.
I’ve read the Times story in my hard copy and online. I can’t find any reference to Mayor Adams’s party affiliation. It’s possible that I missed it, but Tim Graham indicates that the same obscurity afflicts the coverage of the Oregonian and the AP.
By contrast, no such obscurity affects the Times’s story on the indictment of former state senate majority leader Joe Bruno (page A15 of my copy of the national edition). The Times story is headlined “Longtime New York G.O.P. leader indicted by U.S. on corruption charges.”
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