Stalwart (continued)

The move from May to November elections brought out what Leeman calls with distaste "activist groups" — by which she means Democratic activist groups — which in her opinion played a large role in making city council races more partisan. She’s hardly the only person to say this; Press Herald coverage of the 2000 municipal elections makes clear that losing candidates in that year (as now) called city Democrats a "machine" that used the mobilization of voters for statewide elections to push people toward the party’s preferred city council candidates. Whether local Dems are a machine or not, the council has taken a marked leftward turn since the 2000 move to November municipal elections. At the beginning of Leeman’s second mayoral stint, the council had identifiable liberal and conservative blocs, and her accession to the post was seen as evidence that the council’s liberal wing was in decline; 18 months later, when Karen Geraghty succeeded Leeman, the day of the conservative Portland city councilor was coming to an end. Leeman is now just about the only right-leaning official in City Hall.

This has put her on the losing side of popular but jurisdictionally questionable votes such as the council’s universal health care and antiwar resolutions. On the topic of the antiwar resolution, she drags out the old warhorse that it made local people with kids serving in Iraq feel bad; reminded that the resolution had nothing to do with individual soldiers, she refocuses on more solid procedural issues. "Whether you’re for or against the war," she says, the council should limit its concern to city issues. "We should be doing the people’s business. The people of Portland’s business."

On more ideological grounds, Leeman opposed the creation of a police review board in 2001, even though the Portland Police Department had already demonstrated its inability to police itself, and she also opposed the council resolution preventing the city from funding organizations that don’t provide domestic-partner benefits.

These and other conservative stances — including a pro-business tendency rare among local officials — have placed Leeman at odds with the liberalism of the Portland electorate as a whole, but she’s fond of saying that all Portlanders need to be represented on the council. And, after all, she’s been re-elected how many times now?

She doesn’t know off the top of her head, and can’t remember the names of most of the people she’s run against. "I haven’t had many opponents," she says, trying and failing to hide a smile, and she may not have another one when her current city council term expires next fall. District 4 has been Leeman territory long enough that babies born on the date of her first victory will be drinking in the bars of the rejuvenated Old Port this summer.

Everywhere she goes, she says, people recognize her. "I run into people all the time who don’t know I’m not mayor any more," she says with a laugh, going on to tell the story of running into a constituent at the Tampa airport who started calling, "Mayor Leeman!" from across several baggage-claim carousels.

"I get calls from people who aren’t in my district," she says, "because people tell me I have a reputation as the city councilor who gets things done."

Part of this reputation, if not most of it, comes from Leeman’s leadership during her second term as mayor, especially following Ganley’s demise, after which, the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly wrote at the time, "a power vacuum opened up in City Hall that permitted Leeman to step in and assume a considerable amount of control."

But there’s more to it than that. Leeman is both politically savvy and genuinely committed. As she says, "I know the people; the people know me." When Hurricane Bob dropped eight inches of rain on Portland in August of 1991, Leeman was out taking care of her constituents — particularly those on one block with a clogged storm sewer, where the resulting backup had flooded every basement on the street. "I toured every single home on that street," she says, and when the homeowners told her that they’d called Public Works and nobody would come out, she got on the horn. "They had somebody there in 10 minutes," Leeman recalls, and shortly after that the blockage — a piece of lumber festooned with plastic newspaper-bundle strips thrown down the drain by the local paperboy — was removed.

Leeman is full of stories like this, and she enjoys telling them. Ask her about the shut-in whose favorite tree was uprooted by a snowplow, or the weekend she spent wallpapering with a constituent whose sister died. "The human side of all of this is the important stuff," she says.

A little cheesy? Sure. But coming from a politician with Leeman’s longevity, put together with a willingness to drop the gloves and throw punches for even her most unpopular beliefs, it rings a little truer.

Alex Irvine can be reached at airvine@phx.com