This month’s Armchair Mayor is author Phil Stanford, who spent more than 20 years as a columnist for The Oregonian and The Portland Tribune. Stanford lives in the Ardenwald-Johnson Creek neighborhood, where he now spends his days researching and writing books. He is two-thirds of the way through a Rose City Trilogy about the history of Portland in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ’70, and the first two, “Portland Confidential” and the “Peyton-Allan Files,” are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand who we are.
The books explore our deeper truths, not the just the superficial image ridiculed in the TV show "Portlandia." Indeed, Phil Stanford has interacted with the Rose City for so long that the tone in his work has become part of the place. He has actually created some of the atmosphere, enhancing the city’s deeper vibes—the ones you feel walking down a street in the rain at midnight with a jazz saxophonist practicing in the weird apartment complex down the block. This is quite remarkable. How many writers can say they’ve written their way into the soul of a city?
NN: I know you focus on history, but as our Armchair Mayor, what do you think of Portland’s future? Are we headed in the right direction?
Stanford: Well, clearly we’re not heading in the right direction. If you’re not one of the favored developers or with the public employee unions, you’re sort of left out of Portland politics. You’re caught in the middle. Those two groups collude and run politics to their benefit.
NN: Do you have any advice for Portlanders about this?
Stanford: Oddly enough for someone who has served time as a columnist, I’m not comfortable giving advice, and actually, I don’t even think that it works most of the time. But what happens is that people you would want to advise get to the point where they figure out that things are wrong and that they have to make a change. And I think that Portland is about at a place where people are realizing what has been going on now for some time is not working. Just how that’s going to work out politically, I don’t know.
NN: It’s been three years this December since you stopped writing your column. What are you working on now?
Stanford: I’ve been writing books since then. I did one on the old Peyton-Allan murders, and I’m working on a couple right now. Of course, I’m going on to do the dirty cops and robbers here in Portland in the ‘70s, but I’m going to be concentrating most of all right now, God willing, on Watergate—the sex scandal behind the Watergate break-ins.
NN: Speaking of sex scandals and the like, “Portland Confidential” is a pretty shocking book. It turns out that back in the fifties, when it came to vice and corruption, our city made Las Vegas seem innocent. Wasn’t there even a Congressional investigation?
Stanford: Yeah, Portland led off what actually amounted to the Hoffa hearings, the Senate Racketeering Hearings of 1957. [We were] sort of the opening act for that.
NN: Well, thankfully those scandalous days are over. We don’t have the numbers racket anymore, although we do have the lottery; and bribes and kickbacks don’t flow between city officials and businessmen, although we do have these public-private partnerships. Is that what happened? Is Portland less corrupt now, or has the corruption just been legalized?
Stanford: Well, that’s certainly part of it. A lot of the old vices have been institutionalized. The numbers are the lottery. You used to be able to go to jail for that and now the state is running it. Alcohol, of course, is legal and run by the state, and slot machines are run by the state, and very soon I’m sure marijuana will be licensed and taxed by the state.
NN: One of the fascinating things about Portlanders is that we have such a pleasant view of ourselves, compared to the people in a city like Chicago. Your books show Portland to be a much darker but more exciting place than we let on. Can you explain why we have such a cheerful view? Is there something in our history that makes us this way?
Stanford: Well, I think all humans tend to do this, you know—to ignore the darker side of themselves and their cultures, but here it seems to be a particularly acute problem, and I think the reason is that it has something to do with our history. You know, there’s the old story about people coming over the Oregon Trail who got to a place in Idaho or Montana or someplace like that—a fork in the road—and all of those who were interested in money went south to California, and all the good people came to Oregon. It’s a myth we have about ourselves.
