Scrum, shoving match interrupts county Democrats meeting

Last week's meeting of the Democratic Party of Multnomah County devolved into a shouting shoving scrum as some in the audience faced off with the party chairwoman over procedures.

Portland police officers were called twice to the Thursday, Aug. 11, meeting in party offices on Northeast Sandy Boulevard. Officers did not make any arrests, but they took information from a woman who said she might file assault charges for a tussle involving a party official who tried to stop her from filming the scuffle with her cell phone.

No one in that room will deny that things were handled poorly, said Abigail Collins, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention who attended Thursday evenings meeting and hoped to become a voting member of the county party.

Collins threatened to call police as a shouting match escalated into a minor brawl that toppled chairs and disrupted the meeting. It looked like a rugby huddle moving about in the middle of the room, people holding onto each other so they would not fall while attempts were made to throw them out, she said.

A difficult meeting

Accounts differ, but several who were there say as the chairwoman began the meeting after the Pledge of Allegiance, four people  elected party precinct people and district leaders  offered a motion to reorder the agenda. The chairwoman declared the motion out of order. The whole thing flared into a scuffle as the chairwoman shouted down audience members and appointed two ad hoc sergeants-at-arms to escort some people from the building.

About four dozen people attended the meeting, and 10 people left early after the scrum.

Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said officers were sent at about 7:15 p.m. to the Democratic Partys offices at 3551 N.E. Sandy Blvd., after a caller told dispatchers a fight had broken out among about a half-dozen people in the middle of a meeting. Officers arrived but didnt see any fighting. They watched the meeting, which by then had resumed, and left, Simpson said.

At about 8:15 p.m., a woman called and asked officers to return so she could file a report about an assault during the melee. The woman said she had been slapped and hit as she tried to film a fight at the meeting.

Simpson said that because of conflicting statements, officers didnt arrest anyone, and they told the woman to call the district attorneys office to file charges in the incident.

I was alarmed at the direction that things were going, said Sue Hagmeier, the county partys communications person who has been part of the executive committee for a dozen years. Eventually folks came back in and sat down. Some people left because they understandably didnt want to be part of a meeting like that.

It was a little more difficult meeting than usual, said Lorraine Van Hoe, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Multnomah County. It finally got to the point where I had to ask some people to leave, they refused to do so.

I did not see what happened. I heard a chair fall, there was a scuffle but it was very short and not consequential. Somebody tripped over chairs was what I heard.

Really bizarre

Collins account is more dramatic. She says Van Hoe and others in the crowd shouted at each other and a party official aggressively tried to stop a woman from filming the incident. The scrum lasted for a few minutes, but was pretty intense, she said, requiring her to shout three times that she would call police if the rumble continued.

It wasnt like these were drunk people at a bar, she said. It was bizarre. Really bizarre.

Van Hoe said the meeting returned to normal after people calmed down and got back to the business of the meeting. She didnt know police were called until after the meeting.

There were no serious altercations or events, she said.

Van Hoe blamed some of the incident on people new to the party who posted social media comments about disrupting the county partys meeting.

Hagmeier, who has been active in party politics for decades, said the incident escalated from a possible misunderstanding about party procedures into a shoving match. Nothing like that has happened before at meetings shes attended.

We are a big tent, and big tents are hard, Hagmeier said. We have made a commitment to being a big tent, and things being hard is part of the deal.

Reporter Nick Budnick contributed to this story.



Kevin L. Harden is digital media editor for Pamplin Media Group. 503-546-5167. email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Follow us on