A former assistant to Portland, Oregon’s ex-mayor Sam Adams just dropped a bombshell six-page account detailing the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of 54-year-old Adams during his four-year tenure as mayor.
Cevero Gonzalez worked as Adams’ executive assistant from 2008 to 2012. During that time he alleges his former boss made obscene gestures, exposed his genitalia, spoke in graphic detail about his sexual exploits, and demanded Gonzalez share accounts of his own bedroom conquests, among other things.
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Both Adams and Gonzalez are openly gay. In his statement, Gonzalez alleges that part of his job was to help Adams plan sexual experiences whenever he traveled for work.
He claims he was required to create a “secret profile” for the mayor that included a list of “gay clubs, bathhouses and gay bars” he might want to visit when out of town. When he returned to Portland, he would report back to Gonzalez with “details of his sexual exploits that he alleged resulted from the secret information.”
Gonzalez also recounts an inappropriate conversation that happened between himself and Adams during a ride from the airport:
“Come on. What type of guys do you like? Do you like ’em cut or uncut?” Asking me the last question while looking directly at my crotch. I tried changing the subject to work-related topics but Sam would have none of it. “Tell me. Are you a top or a bottom?”
When Gonzalez told then chief of staff Tom Miller about the conversation, Miller allegedly replied: “That’s just the way he is.”
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Other allegations include:
- Gonzalez writes about picking up drunken Adams from nightclubs, including settling his bar tabs, making sure he didn’t drive his city car drunk, and making sure he didn’t hook up with any clandestine characters.
- “Cleaning the mayor’s house while on city payroll.”
- “Paying Sam’s personal obligations and waiting for him to reimburse me.”
- “Laundering, pressing and mending the mayor’s clothes, including instances when he would come into my office, take off his pants and ask that I make repairs to a seam or button while he waited, often ‘accidentally’ exposing his genitals.”
- “When Sam was late or did not attend a pre-scheduled event or gathering, I was required to secure his location–using the Find My Phone app–then drive in my personal vehicle to said location and physically walk the perimeter until he or his official city vehicle could be located.”
“Sam was a man who held and exerted power and influence as he saw fit and I simply worked to avoid his wrath,” Gonzalez writes. “I accepted Sam’s behavior and the rationales provided by my supervisors because when I complained I was told to be quiet. When I persisted I was told I could lose my job.”
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This isn’t the first time Adams has been accused of questionable bedroom behavior either. In 2007, he was exposed for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old intern. At first, Adams denied the allegations. He later admitted to lying, but said the two “waited to have sex” until the boy was 18.
Last week, Adams released a statement denying Gonzalez’s allegations:
I’ve been inspired by all the people who are coming forward to talk about how they have been sexually harassed. Sexual harassment is a real problem in the workplace. I did not sexually harass Mr. Gonzalez, but I think allegations like his should be thoroughly investigated. State and city procedures are in place to objectively examine the facts around allegations like these. I will gladly participate in such a process and look forward to its findings.
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Mandrake
Gonzalez comes across as a stooge, and not too bright.
Ummmm Yeah
Then get another job or file a complaint.
Stache
Why do you expect Gonzalez to act like he’s his personal assistant? Oh wait. He is his personal assistant. Yeah, I totally agree. The winer needs to do his job and shut the eff up.
DistingueTraces
Yeah … no.
If in fact this is part of a normal job description, why should he shut up about it?
But it isn’t part of a normal job description. It’s harrassment.
It may be true that we live in a culture where subservient employees should expect harrassment as the cost of remaining employed, and that anyone surprised by that is just being naive.
That doesn’t make it ok.
Women have always been told to just shut up and take this kind of thing — it was a normal, expected part of working as a woman. But it wasn’t ok. And increasingly, women are refusing to tolerate it.
What an irony that at the same time, our society is becoming more and more divided by class and wealth, so that while women have a little more dignity in the workplace, the class of service employees in general has less — as the boundary between “employee” and “servant” is whittled gradually away.
Stache
I’m still waiting for the “bombshell” moment.
Notright
Me too…
MacAdvisor
I just hate it when minions start talking.
fredo777
These responses are pathetic.
gravityyaoi
Yeah he’s a sleeze. So is every politician. Whether that’s right or not aside, most of what he was doing was in the lines of a personal assistant to a high ranking official. Boohoo I had to Google places for another gay man that I probably do myself. As a gay man I’d want to go to a gay bar, just like you wouldn’t send a straight person to a gay bar.
chris33133
The question is: whose payroll was he on? If he was on the ex-mayor’s personal payroll, then it could be seen as part of his duties. However, if this was while he was on the City’s payroll, then I see the ex-mayor being indicted for corruption. ….. An the Chief of Staff’s excuse “that’s just the way he is…..” is headed for the dustbin of history, where it belongs.
PinkoOfTheGange
Besides the house cleaning, what task having the personal assistant do is corrupt? And if he was cleaning up after or before a city functions then even the house cleaning is expensable to the city.
The comments go to a hostile work environment, not corruption.
A PA job is doing grunt work for not much to be in the room to learn.
SALTPDX
Where is this bombshell 6 page report? Also, where are any backlinks for your story? Seems like a sensationalist piece to get more web traffic, you’ve been doing this an awful lot lately Queerty, and it’s not cute. Sexual assault allegations are serious business, so if you want to “report” on them – back up your reporting, otherwise stop trying to generate clickbait.
PinkoOfTheGange
So the comments and the house cleaning on the city’s dime out of bounds.
But everything else including a the gaping of a boxer shorts fly, all part of being a personal assistant.
He didn’t have to pay any tabs, and if he got fired for not doing so, he would of been well compensated in the settlement.
calpoidog
I can’t believe the idiotic comments here.
A) the PA was a GOVERNMENT employee! Do you want your taxes going toward the activities he was forced to perform? Personally I’d rather he perform functions that benefit the mayor’s office and the city;
B) It doesn’t matter if he is a PA. Everyone deserves respect and to be treated professionally in their jobs;
Kangol
THANK YOU. Not sure if the commentators simply do not care about evident misuse of government funds and mistreatment of workers, especially subordinates, but the callousness, indifference and snark of so many of these comments are almost as disturbing than the alleged behavior.
Danny595
Do you suppose there might just possibly be a link between, on the one hand, a culture of promiscuity, which treats gay sex as a casual, meaningless thing – a “gay handshake” to be indulged with multitudes of people in multitudes of places – and, on the other hand, an attitude that it is OK to mix sex and work, to involve subordinates in sexual talk, or to make passes at every guy who comes along?
Yes. Yes, there is. The ex-mayor and Kevin Spacey are the inevitable results of the culture of promiscuity, which is relentlessly promoted and hyped on this site.
Kangol
No, there’s no link, except in your head.
You need help. The issue here is ABUSE OF POWER. If you think you can get away with abusing power you will do so in a variety of ways. That has nothing to do with sexual liberation, which seems to terrify you. Consensual sexual activity does not involve abuse of power, but you can be abusive without ever engaging in a sex act, something you seem not to realize.
Kevin Spacey’s problem was that he thought he could get away with manipulating and abusing people who had less power than him: teenage boys, young actors looking for jobs, etc. The same was true of this creepy mayor, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Mark Halperin, and all the other creeps out there. Some, like Bill Cosby, even went so far as to drug their victims so they were completely powerless. But as Trump demonstrated, if you’re powerful and shameless enough, you can admit violently sexually assaulting people on tape and still pay no penalty.
Stache
The Danny595 broken record. Sqawk.. Promiscuous, Sqawk..promiscuity. Over and over.. Annoying as f*ck.
Mick406
So . . . . they are both gay. Then, Gonzales shouldn’t have been shocked at any of the questions he was asked. That was just casual conversation that most any gay men could have. Sounded like a good job to me. He got paid for being a confidant and worker. Sounds like there was more to this story . . . like revenge, maybe?
Kangol
NOT. OK. FROM. YOUR. BOSS.
But hey, you try this BS with a subordinate in any reputable job and then don’t be surprised if you get sued for sexual harassment. It’s 2017, not 1957 or 1977. Gay or not, sexual questions like this between a boss and his subordinate do not fly. Just look at most companies’ HR guidelines; they’re pretty clear!
Heywood Jablowme
“That was just casual conversation that most any gay men could have.”
Really? That’s pretty crude conversation even for a very drunken gay bar encounter.
And even that doesn’t work as an analogy. If someone talks to you like that at a bar, maybe you’re interested and maybe you’re not, but if you’re NOT interested you can just go to the other end of the bar. You’re not already working for the guy and forced to listen!
natriley
I basically agree with Stache that these are the kind of things a personal assistant does. He should expect to be paid big and is he reporting one inappropriate conversation in 4 years? But arranging personal time including gay fun would be things that someone in an office would do for most executives. I’m curious how this ends up.
DistingueTraces
I’m curious how you think this translates to the personal assistants of straight executives.
Does a straight executive’s personal assistant sit at his desk and google “strip joints in Cleveland” when the executive is off on a business trip there?
I mean, maybe he or she does. But do you seriously think that a man or woman asked to do this would have no grounds for a harassment complaint?
seaguy
Seems like Gonzalez was fine with his job back when he was performing it because he stayed with the job. But now he is stabbing the mayor in the back. Seems like maybe things between them got frosty and this is his way of getting back at the mayor by spilling some secrets?
Stache
More to the story I’m sure.
DistingueTraces
Sure. A harassed employee who doesn’t go to the length of quitting his job was obviously fine with the harassment.
Or he needed a job and couldn’t afford to quit, much less to quit under a cloud that could follow him in the small, gossipy field of regional politics.
Which is what defines the abuse of power in workplace harassment and makes it different and worse than just harassing somebody on the street or in a bar.
Notright
This is ridiculous. Claiming sexual harassment is all the rage now for anyone that’s broke and looking to make a quick buck.
If your manhood doesn’t measure up there are ways to gain an inch or maybe two to your manhood https://packedpenis.xyz/2017/11/07/stop-having-penis-envy-now/