At summer's end, the issue in the Portland mayor's race isn't coal, streetcars, school funding, experience, potholes or the availability of Bruce Springsteen tickets.



The issue with Charlie Hales and Jefferson Smith is trust.



Can either of these guys be trusted? To speak the truth? To grow up? To finally lend a little dignity to the office?



Smith framed the voters' dilemma rather well Thursday afternoon: "Either Charlie or I are going to be elected mayor. We're both flawed people."



To illustrate that point, the candidates have delivered the full monty. Last summer, Hales falsely claimed he never filed taxes as a Washington resident -- "Mea culpa. I'm not an accountant," he told Willamette Week.



The Oregonian's Janie Har then nailed Hales for insisting that he helped Mayor Vera Katz negotiate a deal with Portland schoolteachers in February 2003 that salvaged the school year, when -- in fact-- Hales left the council eight months earlier.



Smith's momentum, meanwhile, was undercut by reports of churlish behavior in a basketball pickup game and the tortuous release of his driving record.



The roll call of Smith's speeding tickets and license suspensions -- seven each -- and his disdain for court appearances is so obnoxious that I figured Hales could disappear on a two-month Maui vacation and still win election in November.



Instead, the Hales campaign turned right around and covertly recorded the Oregon League of Conservation Voters' endorsement interviews.



"A tremendous breach of trust," said Doug Moore, OLCV's executive director. "Our lawyers agree that it's illegal."



When I asked Hales about the taping Thursday, he called it "a misunderstanding between our campaign manager (Evyn Mitchell) and the lobbying group.



"She records all my joint appearance and speeches on her iPhone. She apologized, and I think that's the end of it."



That's a revealing defense on a number of levels.



As Moore stated flatly Friday, "This was no misunderstanding. We had clear ground rules. We were frank with everyone. We said, 'This is confidential.'"



Secondly, Hales suggests the taping was a defensive maneuver -- the traditional documentation of his remarks -- even though his campaign immediately went on the offensive with the recording, leaking a segment in which Smith volunteered a solution to the city's pothole problems that would annoy the laborers' union.



Finally, Hales was happy to blame his 27-year-old campaign manager rather than take responsibility for the screw-up.



"They didn't come clean on this right away," Moore said, and Hales & Co. couldn't get their story straight: "What was their first instinct? To dissemble. 'What we said wasn't accurate.' 'The tape recorder was in plain sight.' They got very defensive very quickly."



Given that voters are especially eager for maturity and veracity to make a comeback in the mayor's office, it hasn't been a memorable summer for either Smith or Hales.



Both candidates are eager to move on. Hales wants to talk about school funding, given his contention that Smith "is part of the Legislature that has faded in its commitment to public education in this state."



Smith wants to focus on what is possible in 2012 rather than what was manageable in 1992, when Hales was first elected to Portland's City Council.



But when forced to confront their mistakes, Hales turns combative, Smith reflective.



"I'm not a perfect person. I've made mistakes. I'll make more," Hales concedes. But he is quick to minimize and dismiss the miscues and "misstatements," arguing that Portlanders have already done the same.



Hales was the "happy warrior" Thursday; Smith was far more chastened.



"I don't know who's going to win," he allowed. "I might get my ass kicked.



"People can look at the dumb things I've done in my past and evaluate them. My driving record was atrocious in college. I've had the tendency, particularly in my 20s, to throw myself into the thing I was doing and neglect details of my personal life.



"I do think that I am a more effective, more disciplined person now than I was two, four, six, eight, 10 years ago."



You have eight more weeks, sports fans, to decide whether there is enough honesty in that -- or anything else you've read here -- to deliver you to the tipping point between two deeply flawed candidates.



-- Steve Duin