Tom Potter is the current mayor and former police chief of Portland, Oregon. On November 2, 2004, he defeated Portland City Council member Jim Francesconi in the non-partisan Portland mayoral race and was inaugurated on January 3, 2005. He succeeded Mayor Vera Katz, who was not standing for reelection.

Potter was the police chief of Portland during the late 1980s and early 1990s before retiring from the police force. In 2003 he decided to run for mayor of Portland, based partly on a desire to help reform the Portland police department. He has built a platform on the issue of community policing, a police strategry that involves active engagement with neighborhoods with such tactics as getting police officers out of their patrol cars.

Career

Potter began as a police officer in Portland in 1967 as a beat officer in southeast Portland in the Brooklyn and Sellwood neighborhoods. Athough the neighborhoods are considered desirable residential locations today, at the time they were largely crime-ridden and threatened by gangs. According to Potter, early in his career a citizen in Sellwood asked him what he, as a citizen, could do help the police. His sergeant informed him to tell the citizen to "stay inside and let the police do their jobs." The comment helped motivate Potter's early interest in making changes between the relationship of the police and the citizens.

When Potter announced his campaign for mayor in 2003, running in a field of 22 candidates, he was not widely considered as a likely contender. Realizing he could not compete in the money race against more well-funded candidates, Potter limited his individual campaign donations to 25 dollars per person. He won the primary in 2004, having raised only 35,000 dollars in campaign funds, versus other candidates who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the runoff election, he raised the limit on his contributions to 100 dollars per individual, and despite raising only half the funds of Francesconi, he maintained a wide lead in the polls throughout the campaign and won by a landslide.

In addition to continuing advocacy of community policing, Potter expressed interest in other reforms of the Portland police department. He marched against the Iraq War on the first anniversary of American involvement in March 2004 and was dismayed at the black uniforms and the militarized appearance of the Portland police he saw. He made it part of his campaign to rid the police of such a miiltarized appearance if elected.

Potter lives in the Woodstock neighborhood of southeast Portland with his wife Karin.

External link

• tomformayor.org (http://www.tomformayor.org/)
• Official Mayor of the City of Portland Website (http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/)