To me, the most interesting sentence in Editorial Page Editor Greg Kesich’s Sept. 22 column criticizing Ethan Strimling was the sentence that reported that Strimling’s predecessor, Mike Brennan, our first (in a century) elected mayor, was voted out because he ran headlong into a power structure that was “not willing to hand over their power in the new political system.”

Then it hit me. That’s absolutely true! All that has changed four years later is the name of the mayor!

Mike Brennan and Ethan Strimling each served Portland with honor in the Legislature before seeking the mayor’s office. Each worked hard as mayor. Brennan was rewarded with a news conference where four sitting members of the City Council endorsed Ethan Strimling and slammed Brennan for not playing well with City Hall. Why? Brennan thought he was elected because the voters wanted a leader for our city. But that meant less power for the city manager and council, a result unacceptable to City Hall.

Fast forward four years. This time, five sitting members of the City Council, including two of the same folks who recruited Strimling, rewarded Strimling’s service with (drum roll, please…) a news conference endorsing one of their own to dump Strimling. Why? Strimling thought he was elected because the voters wanted a leader for our city. But that meant less power for the city manager …  you get the picture …

Call me foolish, but I see a pattern here. Not a four- or an eight-year pattern, but a 100-year pattern. In 1923, over a thousand apparently white males dressed in the hooded white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan marched down Portland’s Forest Avenue to protest the growing political power of the new Irish and Italian immigrants swelling the population of Portland. They demanded and won protective so-called reform – the elimination of the elected mayor in Portland city government.

The recent pattern is not racism or hostility to immigrants; the pattern is fear of democracy and its effect on the establishment called City Hall and those, like developers and others, who depend on acts of grace by those in power.

This isn’t new or unique to Portland, but it is a weakening of the ability of city government to benefit from the greatest strength of democracy: the perceptions and wisdom of the populace.

Portland has had some fine city managers, and some others who proved the law of averages. Not one was elected by the voters. Portland City Hall, like so many others, tends to lock arms against the outsiders, the dissidents, those who want real change. It’s a perfectly natural fear of the waves of change that sweep through society and sometimes break over city halls.

Where is this pattern pointing? Those who fear democracy either find a person happy to just smile and cut ribbons, or they point to the turmoil to justify a return to the “reform” of 1923. Neither is what Portland needs.

Democracy can be ugly at times because democracy more clearly reflects reality. The reality of Portland includes some not-so-pretty issues, such as homelessness, integration of needy immigrants and income inequality. But the ugly demands the best from the rest of us, leaning in to reason with our neighbors, reaching out to mend the fabric that some would fray and rip.

For our public officials, both civil and elected, the challenge is to take a deep breath and reach within for the courage to do what you thought you could not, to make our sacred democracy succeed and deal with the realities magnified by an elected mayor leading our city.

That is what Portland needs and deserves, not a rebellion by the City Council every four years.

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