Mayor Wheeler interview gets personal

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

KGW-TV interviewed Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler as he is soon to exit.

Ted Wheeler: And then when George Floyd was murdered and you had you had a broader movement around social justice some of the very same people who’d been engaged in those riots in 2017, 2018, and 2019 conveniently stepped into those broader movements and frankly hijacked them. And you’d see that. You’d see during the day you’d have families with kids demonstrating in support of basic police accountability and reforms. And then about 10 pm the dynamic would change as people showed up in black block, and they brought their tools. And they brought their spray paint. And they brought the kinds of things that they used that you showed in the video. People destroying property.

Laural Porter: It really took a toll on you personally too. Didn’t it? Those protests. I mean people came to your condo. Camped out at your condo. You eventually had moved.

Ted Wheeler: Yeah I mean people forgot I’m a person and I sort of understand that. I am the man, I’m the power, I’m the authority, and I don’t think it was necessarily personal. But when you come to my house and you try to burn it down or when you stand outside my daughter’s room with a firearm. When you cat call her and tell her her father is a Nazi. When you chase her and her mother to school. When you slash my tires. Those things start to get very personal. And another thing I’d do differently Laurel, I used to say back in the day “Well comes with the territory.” You’re an elected official. You signed up for it. Uh. I don’t think that anymore. I believe it does not come with the territory and I believe in this country as well as this city, if we have differences of opinion politically we need to come and express them through the institutions of democracy we have set up. You can’t just confront people on the street and as we saw even a week and a half ago, just shoot somebody in the back because we have a fundamental policy disagreement. We have institutions of democracy we have spaces that are designed to contest ideas and have open deliberations and we need to use those tools. Not try to intimidate people or scare people out of elected office or encourage good people to never run for elected office because they don’t want to have their homes vandalized, their families terrorized, or have to look over their shoulders constantly to see who’s following them down the street.

Laural Porter: You have security here today. Two security people with you.

Ted Wheeler: I Do. Yes indeed.

— There is more to the interview here.

— While we know Mayor Wheeler’s liberal policies during the Portland riots only served to enable more rioting, we acknowledge this interview because Wheeler is still a victim of Oregon political violence that no one deserves.   People need to know the levels of attacks that far-Left protestors inflicted on our community.