Murmurs: The O Won't Endorse a Candidate for President

1. For the first time in recent memory, The Oregonian is taking a pass on the presidential race. The daily told readers Aug. 14 it won’t endorse a candidate for president. Insiders say Publisher N. Christian Anderson III didn’t want the paper to endorse President Obama, as it did in 2008 before Anderson became publisher. Endorsing Republican Mitt Romney could reprise the backlash from liberal Portland that the paper faced in 2000, when it endorsed George W. Bush. Anderson says those explanations are wrong. He tells WW he wants The O’s editorial and commentary to be more local. And he adds, “I’m convinced there aren’t any readers waiting with bated breath for a top-of-the-mountain proclamation from The Oregonian telling them how to vote in the presidential race in November.”

1. How will Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland) pick a mayoral staff if elected? He says he’ll ask if you know anybody good. Smith said at Aug. 13’s software-startup forum at Elemental Technologies that choosing a good staff “takes some version of a village, and I hope this village will help.” How do you crowd-source a staff? Smith says he’ll form transition committees and a website. His opponent, former City Commissioner Charlie Hales, told the same group he’ll conduct a nationwide search. “There’s a lot of talent here locally,” Hales said. “But we sometimes can be a little parochial.”

1. Some Southeast Portland neighbors are asking the city to freeze construction along Division Street, hoping to halt the boom in apartment buildings without on-site parking. Their latest objection? A four-story, 81-unit apartment complex at Southeast 37th Avenue and Division Street, already permitted on the former site of the Egyptian Club. Neighborhood advocates all over the east side are complaining about infill apartments and the parking headaches that follow. “Our neighborhood will be a congestion nightmare next summer and never the same after that,” Richmond neighborhood resident and novelist Richard Melo wrote Aug. 2 to City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Bureau of Development Services, adding that the current course is turning the area into “a national case study for unchecked urban development.” Saltzman’s office declined to comment.

1. In an exclusive interview with WW, ex-Portland Timbers goalkeeper Troy Perkins is speaking out about his trade to the Montreal Impact—a move that has fans (and Perkins) frustrated and confused. Perkins says Portland fans “deserve a lot better than they’re getting” this season from their Major League Soccer team. Read the entire interview here.

WWeek 2015