Mayor’s walkout leaves Chávez fate unclear

Potter’s outburst could affect relations with council, public

By todd murphy

The Portland Tribune, Oct 30, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (38 Reader comments)

Mayor Tom Potter walked out of a City Council discussion of his proposal to rename North Interstate Avenue after César Chávez last week. “I was appalled by the discussion and felt I could not be a part of it,” he said.

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

The irony, said city Commissioner Erik Sten, is that Mayor Tom Potter probably would have gotten his vote last Thursday afternoon.

He would have gotten the vote that would have defeated an attempt to derail Potter’s proposal to rename North Portland’s Interstate Avenue for Latino farm leader César Chávez.

But that was before the Mayoral Walkout. Something that most longtime observers can’t ever remember seeing at Portland City Hall. And something that has brought tons of public reaction ever since.

While the City Council was debating the increasingly controversial Interstate-Chávez proposal during its session Thursday afternoon – a proposal that Potter strongly supports but that at least three other City Council members have issues with – Potter got red in the face, said he was not a “voting member of the council anymore,” handed the gavel to Commissioner Sam Adams, the council president, and walked out of the room.

“I am irrelevant,” he said before he left.

The move left observers in the council chambers – along with the three commissioners who attended the Thursday session – stunned.

“I don’t remember anything like it,” said Sten, who has been a commissioner since 1996 and was around City Hall as an aide for several years before that.

“I felt that’s what I had to do,” Potter told reporters Friday morning, when he attended a grand opening for Macy’s department store downtown.

He said the majority of council members were ignoring a process the council already had approved on the renaming question and were showing “disrespect for a sizable portion of our community” – Latinos in Portland and others who support the renaming.

“I was appalled by the discussion and felt I could not be a part of it, so I got up and left,” Potter said. Potter did not return a phone call left with his staff over the weekend for further comment.

For Potter supporters, and supporters of the proposal to rename Interstate, Potter’s move was unusual but understandable – given what they consider the deteriorating, sometimes racist, public discussion on the Chávez proposal and the efforts of two city commissioners to unnecessarily delay it.

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