Wheeler's political career began with a campaign for the Boston City Council. He finished 11th in a field of 12 candidates in the
1993 Boston City Council election. Wheeler was registered as a Republican until 2001 and described as "the wealthy heir to a timber fortune controlled by social and fiscal conservatives". In
2006, he defeated incumbent
Multnomah County chair Diane Linn to become chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, taking office in January 2007.
Multnomah County Commissioner Shortly after he was elected chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, Wheeler worked with his colleagues to balance a county budget that had called for $22.3 million in cuts in 2009. Wheeler also fought to preserve social safety net programs and to eliminate hidden fees from state-issued debit cards. Following the loss of nearly $16 million in Oregon Common School Fund and Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund investments, Wheeler co-filed a class-action lawsuit with Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum to recover the money after firms misled investors. Building, preserving and updating public space and infrastructure was a focus during Wheeler's time as County Commissioner. He led efforts to construct new libraries in Kenton and Troutdale and to construct the new East County Courthouse in
Multnomah County. Wheeler also fought to fund repairs for the crumbling
Sellwood Bridge. Under Wheeler Portland became Oregon's first municipality to "
Ban the Box", which reduces employment discrimination against residents with a criminal record by removing the criminal history check box on forms.
State treasurer parade On March 7, 2010, incumbent Oregon State Treasurer
Ben Westlund died of lung cancer. Two days later Governor
Ted Kulongoski appointed Wheeler to the office. Wheeler defeated fellow Democrat
Rick Metsger in the Democratic primary election on May 18, 2010, and defeated Republican
Chris Telfer, Progressive
Walt Brown and Michael Marsh of the Constitution Party in the November
special election for the rest of Westlund's term, which ended in 2013. He was elected to a second full term in the
Oregon state elections, 2012. Wheeler practiced aggressive financial management, achieving more than $172 million in cash flow savings since 2013. He promoted environmental stewardship, committing to double Oregon's investments in renewable energy resources by January 2020, and double them again by 2030. Wheeler also pledged not to pursue new investments in coal. He promoted the use of ESG (Environmental Social Governance) for all state investments to improve long-term performance, and urged the
Securities and Exchange Commission to institute tougher reviews of carbon asset risk disclosures from 45 major corporations. Wheeler was chair of the Oregon Retirement Savings Task Force, which developed what became the
OregonSaves program to assist state residents in saving for retirement. It grew Oregon's pension fund to more than $72 billion, one of the country's five strongest state pension funds. He campaigned on addressing income inequality and ensuring government accountability. During his speech, Wheeler promised to build a government that worked "for every person." In October 2015, former Portland mayors
Vera Katz,
Tom Potter, and
Sam Adams endorsed Wheeler. Gresham Mayor
Shane Bemis also endorsed him, as did State Representatives
Lew Frederick and
Tobias Read, former State Senators
Ron Cease,
Jane Cease, and
Avel Gordly, and 2012 mayoral candidate
Eileen Brady. Wheeler was also endorsed by
Basic Rights Oregon, the Portland Business Alliance, and the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council.
Mayoral tenure Wheeler was sworn in on December 30, 2016, and his term began on January 1, 2017. One of his first actions was to make initial assignments of city departments (known as bureaus) to the five commissioners, of which the mayor is one. He assigned to himself the
Portland Police Bureau, the
Portland Development Commission, and the
Portland Housing Bureau, among others. He said he intended to reconsider the initial assignments during the annual budget process in April. In July 2018
The Oregonian newspaper reported that half of arrests in Portland were of people who were homeless. Wheeler, who oversaw the police department, said he saw this as a problem and that it would influence his budgeting decisions. In September 2018, Portland residents who found Wheeler's response to the growth of homeless encampments inadequate petitioned his office and other local agencies to take stronger action. In September 2020, Wheeler announced his intention to withdraw the city from the Joint Office of Homeless Services partnership with the Multnomah County in a push to get campers on downtown streets into shelters. In 2018, the
city auditor found that the city regularly ignored citizen complaints about transient camps. The
Oregonian reported the city's lack of response was inconsistent with crackdown on illegal camps instituted earlier in Wheeler's term.
Far-right protests and counterprotests In 2017, after white supremacist
Jeremy Joseph Christian murdered two people on a Portland train, Wheeler called for a halt to
far-right rallies in Portland. He declined to grant a city permit for an event to be staged by far-right provocateur
Joey Gibson, and called on the federal government to revoke a rally permit granted to far-right groups in the federally owned
Terry Schrunk Plaza. In asking the federal government to revoke that permit, Wheeler incorrectly stated that "hate speech is not protected by the
First Amendment." The
U.S. General Services Administration declined to revoke the permit. In that rally and subsequent ones in Portland in 2017 and 2018, violence erupted as far-right activists (including
Patriot Prayer and the
Proud Boys) repeatedly brawled with
antifa and other left-wing counter-demonstrators on Portland streets. In October 2018, Wheeler sought greater power to regulate protests, proposing an ordinance that would give him (in his role as police commissioner) greater powers to control the location, duration, timing, and size of protests in Portland and to keep opposing groups physically separated. Wheeler described the measure as an attempt to stop people from "beating the bejesus out of each other on the streets of our city."
George Floyd protests On May 30, 2020, Wheeler imposed a curfew on Portland during the
Black Lives Matter protests (sparked by the
murder of George Floyd, the fatal police
shooting of Breonna Taylor, and the
murder of Ahmaud Arbery, earlier in the year). Critics of the curfew argued that police officers would have an incentive to restrict free speech and incite violence on peaceful protesting using crowd-control methods such as
tear gas and
stun grenades, both of which were deployed on crowds of demonstrators in Portland and nationwide. This earned him the nickname
Tear Gas Teddy. On June 2, Wheeler lifted the curfew due to his perception of a "significant [peaceful] shift in the tenor." Wheeler also requested the deployment of the
Oregon National Guard to Portland in response to protests following the murder of George Floyd, but Governor
Kate Brown refused. In response to the Portland Police Bureau's use of tear gas on protesters, Portland organization
Don't Shoot PDX filed a class-action lawsuit against the city on June 5, 2020. On June 6, Wheeler said that he supported nonviolent demonstrations for "meaningful reform and restorative justice" and had "serious concerns about the use of
CS gas for crowd management"; he said he would not ban police from using tear gas, but that he had "directed Portland Police Chief
Jami Resch that gas should not be used unless there is a serious and immediate threat to life safety, and there is no other viable alternative for dispersal." On June 15, Wheeler called for an overhaul of Portland's police oversight system, which he said doesn't have "any real teeth." Nightly protests at the
federal courthouse in Portland were followed by the deployment of federal agents to the city in July 2020, and there were episodes of violent confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement. After videos showed masked, camouflaged federal agents without identification arresting protesters, Wheeler said, "This is not the America we want. This is not the Portland we want. We're demanding that the President remove these additional troops that he sent to our city. It is not helping to contain or deescalate the situation. It's obviously having exactly the opposite impact." Wheeler left after the first round of tear gas, after which Portland police declared a riot. At the end of July, in accordance with a deal made between Governor Kate Brown and the federal government, federal agents withdrew from Portland and calm was largely restored in the city, with largely peaceful protests. On August 6 and 7, there were a number of peaceful rallies in the city, but—despite Wheeler urging demonstrators to stay off the street—also renewed violence from demonstrators, including attacks on local police precincts (such as an attempt to set it ablaze); there were also two reports of assaults against elderly women. Police arrested 13 people. 19 protesters were arrested, mainly for
disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. On September 2 Wheeler said he was leaving his apartment building due to safety concerns posed by the ongoing protests; he apologized to fellow building residents "for the damage to our home and the fear that you are experiencing due to my position". Throughout the protests, local activists called for Wheeler's resignation, for various reasons. Some believed that he had not spoken up strongly enough against excessive use of force against protesters; others were frustrated he had not done more to end the nightly demonstrations and the property damage, small fires and provocations of police that usually accompanied them; and some felt that he had not sufficiently handled issues such as the
COVID-19 pandemic and
related recession, homelessness, a lack of
affordable housing, a spike in gun crime, race relations, and economic inequality.
The Oregonian reported: "Critics and observers largely fault Wheeler not for what he's said or done as much as the tepid manner in which he's addressed key issues and the steps and stands he hasn't taken." By the end of 2020, the number of protest actions had dwindled, but those who remained were radicalized. On
New Year's Day 2021, Wheeler—angered by repeated vandalism of downtown shops as well as violence on
New Year's Eve (in which a few dozen shot fireworks at the
Multnomah County Justice Center and smashed windows in downtown Portland)—vowed
zero tolerance for criminal behavior by "violent antifa and anarchists ... rampaging through Portland" and called upon the
Oregon Legislature to impose harsher sentencings for repeat offenses of vandalism and destruction. In March 2021, after marchers started to smash windows at night in the
Pearl District, Portland police used
kettling tactics to herd about 100 people onto a single, enclosed city block, and detained the crowd, stating that they were doing so due to
suspicion of criminal conduct. Police ordered those detained to sit on the ground, required each one to identify themselves, and took photographs of each person. Police arrested those who refused to cooperate, and charges were brought against 13 people on various charges. Police reported seizing crowbars, knives, hammers, bear spray, and firearms from those detained. Conversely, the tactic was condemned by the
American Civil Liberties Union and other groups as "aggressive and indiscriminate." Iannarone, an urban policy consultant ran to Wheeler's left.
2024 election In September 2023, Wheeler announced he would not be seeking reelection in 2024. ==Political positions==