News  The Metro Council today selected former Gov. Barbara Roberts, 74,  to replace resigned councilor Robert Liberty, ending a whirlwind process. She does not plan to seek election next year to a full term (Bob Stacey, who withdrew from consideration for appointment to this seat, already has said he will run in next year's election.)Updated at 4:06 pm: In the first round of voting, Metro Council ...   More

News  Bob Stacey, the former 1000 Friends of Oregon executive director, this morning notified supporters and reporters that he's dropping out of the field of candidates vying to replace resigned Metro councilor Robert Liberty. Stacey's announcement comes six days after his one-time boss, former Gov. Barbara Roberts announced she also would seek to replace Liberty. Here's the brief email sent out by ...   More

News  Former Gov. Barbara Roberts was enjoying a quiet day at home this past Wednesday morning, when the phone rang.It was a Metro councilor (Roberts prefers not to say which one) calling. Would Roberts, 74, who served as secretary of state from 1985 to 1991 and governor from 1991 to 1995 (she remains the only woman ever to hold that job in Oregon) be willing to help Metro out of a jam?Councilors trying ...   More

News Here's a late-breaker: Former Gov. Barbara Roberts is among the eight applicants looking to fill the vacancy on the Metro Council.That's an intriguing wild card in the mix to replace Councilor Robert Liberty, who stepped down last month to take a job at the University of Oregon. Roberts is a Democrat who was governor from 1991 until 1995, and remains a go-to ex-pol when it comes to candidates for other ...   More

News After combining to raise more than $1 million in their bids to be the next president of Metro, Bob Stacey and Tom Hughes will learn tonight who's the winner. And what are Stacey (top photo) and Hughes (bottom photo) trying to win? The chance to be president of the only elected regional government in the country—a government whose purview covers about 1.5 million people in Multnomah, ...   More

News ...   More

News Awaiting the results in the close race for Metro president tonight with candidate Bob Stacey were about 200 nervous supporters in the dimly lit, normally laid-back Rontoms bar on East Burnside Street. At 8:30 pm, KGW reported that Stacey took 57 percent of the vote in Multnomah County, which pleased Stacey—the former executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon. "This is really wonderful ...   More

News The Portland Spirit is nice enough for a yacht well into its second decade of service. She was calm tonight in the Willamette, only stirred by the occasional tugboat. Like Metro president candidate Tom Hughes, this wasn't her first election party. Hughes, the former two-term mayor of Hillsboro, took it easy as backers arrived for what turned out to be a close election night in his race against ...   More

News There are at least a couple of interesting lessons in Tom Hughes' narrow victory over Bob Stacey in the Metro Council president's race. That victory, finally decided on Nov. 11, ended up with a difference of less than one percentage point—about 1,000 votes out of nearly 400,000 counted. As noted earlier, the unusually high number of write-in votes far exceeded Hughes' margin of victory. Here ...   More

News In the wake of Metro Councilor Robert Liberty's resignation, former 1000 Friends of Oregon Executive Director Bob Stacey is so far the front-runner to serve out the remaining two years of Liberty's term. Yesterday, new Metro Council President Tom Hughes said Stacey was the only potential successor who had formally announced interest in the job, although Hughes says he expects others to express ...   More