Last year, with massive publicity and a high level of public anger and disappointment working in their favor, the campaign to recall Sam Adams laid a big, fat egg. Since a democratic process failed to achieve their goals, the anti-Adams forces have decided to buy a recall.

The campaign will use a combination of paid and volunteer signature gatherers …. We raised enough funds to get the paid effort started but need more help from Portland business leaders and individuals who care about Portland’s future. I encourage those interested to send their contributions to Portland Future PAC….

Because that worked so well in California when money brought the Governator to office. Yea, let’s give that a go here. That’s clearly the right thing to do in the middle of an election year with the economy in the crapper: a referendum on the Mayor’s moral fitness for office.

Here is the disgusting part, courtesy of the Portland Tribune:

At this point it is unclear who will collect the signatures. One firm that has been contacted by the campaign is Voice of the Electorate, which is owned by three longtime conservative political activists, Kevin Mannix, Ross Day and Russ Walker. Day says his firm is ready to go and confident it can collect the required signatures, but it does not yet have a signed contract with the campaign.

Kevin Mannix, purveyor of Measure 11, currently bankrupting our state with out-of-control spending on innumberable prisons? Ross Day? Is Gordly out of her fucking mind? These are people who have spent their career attacking the State of Oregon, specializing in pushing policies and ballot measures that harm her former constituents more than anyone else. That she and Wurster, who at least showed a modicum of deference to the democratic process in the first recall attempt, would even consider hiring these political thugs is reprehensible.

Who they hire to do their dirty work really does not matter, of course. That they have to resort to a paid campaign shows both their desperation and the futility of the exercise. A recall that has a chance to win — that has the support of the voters — does not require a paid field staff of political hacks to get on the ballot. Oregon is already hurting enough from the checkbook initiative system. To drag the City into that mire is reprehensible. Why they feel so fervently that we need to be dragged through three months of signature gathering and then an expensive and divisive special election is beyond my ability to comprehend. Even if they succeed in driving Adams from office — and that’s not very likely — what good will it serve? We’ll elect someone whose lies we won’t know? We’ll all be aglow with moral superiority?

We got rid of that faggot?

I’ve been told that Adams’ on-going presence as Mayor is hurting the city. Me, I’d blame the massive global economic crisis, but what do I know? Apparently we’re losing tremendous economic opportunities because he’s mayor; most businesses certainly put moral issues above the chance to make money, so I totally get that. So what if he’s a guest in other nations, not to mention the City’s appeal to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, on behalf of an Obama Administration that seems to like what Adams’ Transportation Dept is doing. But having a liar (not a queer, mind you; a man who told a lie so he could sucker the city and get elected) for mayor is just too much for decent entrepreneurs and business-types to stomach. “We have standards, you know.”

This just disgusts me. This is the base opposite of democracy: using the money of a few rich people to overturn the will of the people, expressed last year in a refusal to sanction a recall. Avel Gordly and Jason Wurster, shame on you. And thanks for dragging the city down with you as you descend into the muck.

How do we recall such reckless citizens?