Here's a couple of paragraphs that could be related. First, from the Oregonian's "Yin and Yang of Jefferson Smith" article:

"Detractors, though, consider Smith a self-promoter. Few were willing to talk on the record because, they said, Bus Project supporters are like cult members and that Smith and his family are too powerful to cross. Smith's stepmother, Meredith Wood Smith, is the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Oregon."

And speaking of not talking on the record, here's a recent comment on the Willamette Week site:

HBanana:
"WOW. I was in the victim's French class at UO and her version was quite different. This was not a 'tap on the forehead.' The entire half of her face was bruised and her eye was swollen half-shut. I believe there were stitches.
I am glad this came out finally. Mr. Smith needs help."

Oh, and to those who say he was a victim here, and not a violent person, here's a paragraph from a Portland Tribune article back in 2009:

Smith recalls losing his temper often during high school and his first couple years at the University of Oregon, even getting into fights at the tavern.

“I was kind of an angry dude,” Smith said.

And given his conduct on the basketball court and soccer pitch, he still is.

Now that Portland has the Big Pipe, this guy needs to be flushed. "Powerful interests" don't want him to be mayor -- like anybody with half a brain and any sense of decency.

"My hand connected with her head as I was shoving her away."

That is some pathological shinola right there.

"Doing his best to be candid." Not good enough, though. The only powerfulforce out to get him is his own fist. And Eileen Brady must be thinking why the hell couldn't all this have come out months ago?

Eileen Brady must be thinking why the hell couldn't all this have come out months ago?

Why, indeed?

Because it's been planted by Hales and Wiener, who knew how to time it. Brady's campaign was utterly incompetent.

It's been interesting to watch the failure of much of blue Portland to back up their rhetoric. If Rob Cornilles (just throwing out a R candidate for the purposes of example) had an incident like this that, in all likelihood, his dad's $ bailed him out of, there is no way the Kari Chisolm's of the world would be rationalizing this. I bet the truth is in the middle - a drunk girl went after Jefferson for something he (not some mystery guy) did and he probably lost it and jabbed her to back her off. Unfortunately, Jeffy is a big guy. Any kind of swing from a 6'4 guy downward on a 5-something girl is going to do some damage. I don't think he deserved to go to jail - this sounds like two drunks being stupid in college. But if this was truly the "worst moment" (his words) of his life, wouldn't Jefferson have learned something about the consequences of violence, intended or not? His behavior says he didn't.

NEPguy,
You make a great point about the mystery guy who flipped the sofa, but I can't even buy into the story that much.
I hate to be so cynical, but I'm still not convinced this story is even remotely true. It just seems like a cover story from top to bottom by a guy who's lied his way through life at every turn.

Did you hear the part about the fire in his storage unit making the settlement records unavailable? It could be 100% true as well, but it sounds one notch above, "My dog ate my homework." At least the reporters jumped on that and the settlement agreement was released.

The witness saying Smith tapped the woman on the head with a finger was another clue: There's a level of obfuscation going on here. So how far does it go?

What if the whole story's BS? Not that the sofa-flipping case of mistaken identity doesn't sound plausible. I mean that happens all the time, right? A woman is asleep at a party and someone flips the sofa, but it's not the huge guy standing there. It's someone else. But she attacks him and that's why he has to have contact with her accidentally. Right....

I wouldn't be shocked if this was a simple case of Jefferson arguing with someone, getting mad, snapping, hitting her and the whole thing is a crock. The key point is that even if the details are 100% true his behavior was - in my opinion - criminal. I'm not saying he was charged or anything, but he sure has hell could have been.

I'm just saying young people get together to dream up BS cover stories all the time. This one could be true, but I'm saying this is just too farfetched for me to believe. Especially when it comes with a tsunamis of BS that we know isn't true. Jefferson can't remember the details of the worst night of his life? I found that hard to believe. Usually these are details you can't forget if you wanted to.

One time I was smoking a bowl of hashish in Arabia with 2 cars parked side by side. Maybe 9 kids. This pipe burned forever and we all got ripped. We agreed to leave that spot and drive down to the baseball field at the other end of town. Along the way, we met at an intersection and collided. What followed was a long session to cook up a cover story that would explain the damage to one of the cars. I think the driver settled on, "I came out of the movie and the car was hit."

The next day there were all kinds of threats and pressure to back up the shaky story, and keep the guy from getting in trouble. It evolved during the day, as we scrambled to keep the BS story afloat. Someone had to volunteer to say they went back to the theater and swept up the glass. Just totally winging it.

I knew the guy's dad was thinking, "I can't prove it, but this sure sounds like BS to me."

I can't prove it, but everything about the sofa-flipping story sounds like BS to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulTDU0QYVBM

I will probably vote for the candidate that won't leave the city with sore balls and stitches after four years.

Bill,

I couldn't agree more. Why would she attack HIM after being couch tipped? If he wasn't the tipper, he was laughing like a you know what when it went down, and that's just as bad as doing it yourself in my book. The guy is a creep and a bully. Just like everything else in his life...he won't own his own b.s.

Criminal defense attorney here, with a couple observations. First, the argument of self defense fails the proportionality test. True self defense in the circumstance described would be warding off blows, pushing her away, maybe wrapping her up so she couldn't hit, maybe bodily propelling her out of the apartment. Not dropping her with a right cross. Smith knows this (or at least had it explained to him at the time) which is why he did not take the case to trial.
Second, the fact that he cannot, 20 years later, get up and say "I was drunk, I lost my temper, I hit this lady, I was wrong, and I'm sorry" suggests to me that he still doesn't take responsibility for his actions that night. Of course, being irresponsible is why his ODL has been suspended so many times.
Third, do not overlook the subtle distinction between a diversion agreement and a civil compromise under ORS 135.703. Either one would accomplish the goal of getting the charge dismissed short of trial. But the civil compromise requires the victim to agree to dismiss the charges (in exchange for satisfaction). Whereas the the diversion agreement does not.

Which do we want:
1) Streetcar Charlie to waste more money on railroading us, condo bunkers talking money from basic services, smart growth, 20 minute neighborhoods (and other crackpot fallacies), neighborhood destruction and climate control.

or

2) A sociopath who might self destruct in office and require recall? Then we get another chance to do it right.

Probably most important is to give Charlie his walking papers to once and for all end his infestation in Portland affairs. Maybe he can follow Fred to infest Australia. Maybe Afghanistan needs some streetcars to encourage development.

Maybe the real question is when will the local hipsters get their fill of this crap and vote for an adult?

Thanks
JK

Hmmm, as to my third point, I see the diversion agreement section 7 does include a victim release. A release that forecloses her right to sue him civilly, something that is not required under a diversion or civil compromise. I wonder if she signed it.

JK is sincerely articulating his desire for the better mayor to not be elected mayor.

Following up on Stanton's excellent comments, that release section in the diversion agreement says that the victim agrees not to sue Jefferson Smith over the conduct that the prosecutor described in the criminal complaint. So there was a criminal complaint, as one would expect. Moreover, for the civil release to be meaningful, it must be read with the criminal complaint. That means that wherever the copy of the diversion agreement came from, the criminal complaint was attached to it in the same file, so it was a conscious decision by Jefferson Smith not to let the public see the prosecutor's allegations in the criminal complaint.

Look, I'm not comparing this to the OJ trial, although there is a component of violence to women. But I remember learning a lot from the OJ trial about how lawyers and clients craft an explanation that incorporates the facts they can't fight.

Remember how OJ came out of the crime with cut hands that he knew he had to account for? He was in Chicago when the detective called him to discuss the horrible news of his wife, and OJ would later claim he was so upset to hear it that he smashed a hotel drinking glass and cut his hand? He worked backwards from the facts to a story.

In this case, it sounds like Jefferson went off and hit a woman so hard she needed medical treatment. I can just imagine everyone gathering to say, "We have to explain this or Jefferson's going to jail. He won't get into law school and his life will be ruined...any ideas?"

They needed a sequence of events that would concede he hit the woman but only as the result of her actions. She had no reason to be mad at him and he certainly wasn't enraged - he was basically defending himself and "accidentally tapped her on the head." So they came up with this convoluted cover story, in great detail to help sell it, including a mystery man who flipped a sofa and a woman who falls out and then attacks the wrong guy...does this pass the smell test? Once again, life can be strange and so it could have happened exactly like Jefferson said, but it also sounds like a very elaborate concoction built around an ugly fact. In this case, a 6'4" man had belted a woman.

There's usually one detail that makes you say, "Hmm.." I know with OJ, it was the seasoned, worn-down crime detective who said the call to OJ in Chicago didn't add up. Why? Because whenever he called a person to tell them their relative was dead, as part of a crime scene investigation, they always asked, "How? How did this happen?" OJ forgot to ask that. He left out that step because he already knew how it happened.

I was struck by the statement that this was the worst night of Jefferson's life and yet he couldn't remember details about it. Traumatic events play over and over again in your mind - you can't forget the details.

I don't think we have heard the truth here yet.

I often wonder how history would have played out if Juanita Broaddrick had made a complaint

Normally I would never care to try to surmise what happened when violence breaks out at a drinking party. Sort of like trying to figure out what happens to your finger when it gets caught in the blade of a handheld mixer. It's of course quite possible that she staggered and fell and banged herself up in the process of the altercation, and he got blamed. Who would ever know the better 20 years later, the lot of them were most likely inebriated.

But when the story concerns an adult, long past the swamp of adolescence, socking someone's crown jewels during a community basketball game, (who, as a practicing lawyer, also got his driver's license suspended for speeding), well, the story does weigh more heavily in the ditch.

He spied an opening in political office when Portland refused to recall Adams; chronic dysfunction is a force of society that has a way of calling its adherents together, like the loons on a lake in the summer.

The big question of course, is who would be worse? Maybe a continuance of a hobbled mayor in office in Portland might in fact be best.

"Maybe the real question is when will the local hipsters get their fill of this crap and vote for an adult?" from JK.

And also:
"He spied an opening in political office when Portland refused to recall Adams..." from Gaye

Both are focusing not on the idiots our little Portland Village is so wonderful at creating, but instead, focusing on the electorate that keeps elevating them to the highest office in the city.

That is the problem with Portland city politics, the electorate, not the many Village Idiots.

As I said in the other thread: "There is your problem. Sadly, many of Portland's electorate are right here at Bojack's blog commenting away, without realizing that they are the problem, not Nutsy or CharLie."

I think the hipsters are a small part of the Portland electorate. Best to look elsewhere for the real blame.

Harry,
You were doing great 'til you overplayed it:

Sadly, many of Portland's electorate are right here at Bojack's blog commenting away, without realizing that they are the problem, not Nutsy or CharLie.

I think the people here are doing exactly what you're supposed to in a democracy: Voice your opinions. Say your piece. And we're not "many of Portland's electorate." If that's all the math chops you have, you should sue your teachers.

If anyone has let down America it's the other half of our 2-party system. How come there isn't a viable Republican candidate running for mayor or for that matter president?

The problem here and nationally is that there isn't a great choice of candidates. I believe it's because the party of Eisenhower has been taken over by losers like Sarah Palin, and they're leading their flock of morons right over a cliff.

Did you see the Republican Primaries? Rick Perry? Michele Bachmann? Herm Cain? It looked like out-takes from a Fellini movie. Eventually, of course, they settled for Mitt while admitting that aren't too thrilled about him.

Do you remember when Oregon had Republican governors? It's the Republican Party in Oregon - and nationally - that's really fallen on hard times, so there's no alternative from the other side to keep the Dems honest.

The key is in the couch ...

• Almost everyone knows the victims name, even though according to Jefferson's version, she wasn't a victim. If it was her fault, release the name.
• Twenty years everyone remembers that it was Jefferson Smith at the party.
• So many people know tiny details, like flipping a couch, "tapping" on the head. But ...
• No one knows who flipped the couch.

In a room full of a dozen or more college students, no one saw the couch get "flipped."

And, remember, one does not merely "flip" a couch. One squats down, let's out a loud grunt, and lifts a couch to flip it over.

So, the flipper, went through all that physical exertion and then sprang out of the way, leaving Jefferson Smith standing there looking like the perp.

Uh huh.

Bill it's more complicated than that.

Whether Republican or Democrat, the people who might best serve are reluctant to enter the campaign meat grinder that is necessary today.

I have an acquaintance who considered running for public office in Oregon, and would have had a decent chance of winning. He did not want to subject himself or his family to the scrutiny (I think he was squeeky clean), and worse, he did not want to bow down to the expectations of the unions and other interests who would naturally fund his campaign; he was considering to be a "D" candidate.

Face it, the Portland Metro area has many things that need fixing, and few if any competent people are willing to run a campaign to get elected in this environment.

I am reminded that Frank Morse resigned recently, because he viewed the situation as hopeless, with little chance to get anything done at the state level.

Yes, Oregon and Portland is dysfunctional at this point. Perhaps some brave souls are running for office. I wish there was an easy way to identify them.