Portland Mayor Asked his Billionaire Campaign Donor to Give Him the Pretense To Increase Police Presence
Update: Ted Wheeler’s communications director has denied that the mayor asked the billionaire Tim Boyle who donated $15,000 to his campaign to write the op-ed. They claim that they have asked The Guardian for a correction. However, it also appears that The Guardian reported that Ted Wheeler asked for Boyle to write the piece because when asked about it on OPB, he said “[Mayor Wheeler] asked me, listen we need more police on the street in Portland. There is less than there were when Bud Clark was Mayor here. So I told him I would help him do that.” It is unclear if the mayor’s office believes that Tim Boyle lied or if they have asked him for a correction as well. A public records request has been filed for any and all communications between the mayor’s staff and Tim Boyle.
Tim Boyle, The CEO of Sorel and leader of Columbia Sportswear wrote an Op-Ed in The Oregonian on November 10th of this year which called for Portland leaders to do more about safety issues in downtown Portland. Most Portlanders knew that what he was asking for was an increase in the criminalization of houseless individuals in the community. To his credit, that might not have been his intention but it will be the outcome. Boyle also threatened to move his business out of Portland if city leaders did not do something for him. It is important to note that he called out city leaders, not the mayor. The day after his Op-Ed, Ted Wheeler pretended that it had just happened to catch his eye and fired off a series of tweets on policing and other safety issues.
Within weeks, Mayor Wheeler announced that he would be increasing policing in downtown Portland despite the fact that crime is down across the board. He also instituted new “No-Sit” zones to prevent houseless people from sitting on the sidewalk. These new zones just happened to include Tim Boyle’s business and the immediate vicinity. This move prompted protests and set off alarms of a scandal. However, the story got much worse today when The Guardian slipped into their coverage that Ted Wheeler had actually asked his Billionaire friend and campaign donor to lay down the gauntlet and give him the pretense to increase policing. While the Portland Police Association has constantly argued that they need more officers, crime is down in Portland. So this provided the perfect opportunity to justify the move.
The Guardian’s Thatcher Schmid writes that, “Intriguingly, Boyle has said that he wrote the op-ed at the request of none other than Wheeler, who, in Boyle’s telling, is hoping to gain momentum to get more police on the streets.”
As horrible as this all sounds, the story actually begins during the mayoral campaign. Tim Boyle just happened to have written checks amounting to $15,000 for Ted Wheeler’s mayoral campaign. Then, shortly after Ted Wheeler was inaugurated, Tim Boyle invited him to be the one to cut the ribbon for his new headquarters in downtown Portland. After roughly 3 instances of crime around this location in the following year, Ted asked Tim Boyle for a favor, to threaten the city. He also apparently asked him to call out city council as he wrote, “Wheeler has put forward a proposal to the Portland City Council to add 80 police officers. Frankly, based on our employees’ experiences, we would suggest even more support for the Portland police, but Wheeler’s proposal is an important step and something that deserves prompt support.” Wheeler really threw his fellow commissioners under the bus with that one.
This is all not to mention that the policies that have been fast-tracked through in response to Ted Wheeler and Tim Boyle’s collusion are bad. First of all, Portland wants to be a sanctuary city and the only way to get deported out of Portland is to be arrested. This is even worse if it is for a low-level crime. Portland cannot claim to be a sanctuary city and also increase policing of low-level offenses. Those two things are not compatible. Furthermore, criminalizing things that houseless people need to do to survive is inhumane. Also, more police is not synonymous with less crime. Lastly, pushing houseless people out of sight and out of mind is not a solution. What reason does Tim Boyle have to care about houseless people if he can ask the mayor to make it so that they will never be in his presence? Tim and Ted have basically said, “You can sit. You just can’t sit where a rich person would have to look at you”
This all stinks to high hell. At best, Ted Wheeler tried to trick his constituents into supporting what he wanted to do by asking his billionaire campaign donor to do him a solid. At worst, this is one of the biggest scandals I can remember in Portland politics. I suspect many stories will come out about this. But with Donald Trump in The White House, we need extraordinary leadership at the local level, and this is not it.