Expert Bio

Samuel Francis “Sam” Adams is an American politician and the former mayor of Portland, Oregon. He grew up in Newport, Oregon, attended the University of Oregon and worked on a number of campaigns before taking office as a Portland commissioner. Among them was Vera Katz’s run for mayor of Portland. After she won, he served as her chief of staff for eleven years and then went back to school, earning a degree in Political Science.

In 2004, he was elected to the Portland City Council, serving four years on the council earning a reputation as a “policy-driven advocate for sustainability, the arts, and gay rights.” He was elected to a four-year term as Mayor of Portland in the May 2008 primary, with 58% of the vote and a dozen other candidates on the ballot. He was outed as gay by the alternative newspaper Willamette Week in 1993 and was the first openly gay mayor of a top-30 U.S. city. In July 2011, Adams announced that he would not seek a second term as mayor.