Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly said Wednesday she was surprised, “disappointed” and didn’t understand why former Mayor Sam Adams is choosing to challenge her in the upcoming May election instead of trying to fill the late Commissioner Nick Fish’s seat on City Council.

"I just don’t think it’s a good look,” she said. “We’ve had a council dominated by middle-aged white men for over 100 years. We now have a women-majority council for the first time in Portland’s history and I am one of the most progressive council members. I’ve been very effective in this role. If his values are really what I understand them to be, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Eudaly, who swept into office in 2016 after defeating incumbent Steve Novick, said she had heard rumors that Adams was considering running against her, but she was repeatedly reassured by people close to Adams that he would instead seek Fish’s seat.

On Wednesday, Adams, the one-term mayor and former City Commissioner and long-time aide to the late Mayor Vera Katz, instead filed paperwork seeking Eudaly’s seat.

Four of the five citywide positions on City Council will be contested in May.

“My prevailing feeling right now is I’m disappointed,” Eudaly said on Wednesday, briefly pausing, “in him.”

Eudaly said she and Adams have a lot of mutual friends, and they shared a friendly dinner this summer. When asked if Adams gave her a heads up before the announcement, Eudaly said he did not.

“I think I bring something to council that Sam didn’t,” Eudaly said in an interview following a Metro transportation task force meeting, “and Sam won’t. There was a better seat for him to run for.”

Eudaly said that seat is the one vacated by her former colleague Fish, who died of stomach cancer Jan. 2.

Eudaly said she isn’t viewing Adams entering the race as a sign she now has to run against the former mayor directly. “I’m not campaigning against Sam,” she said. “I’m running on my record and my platform and what we want to accomplish in the next four years. My message doesn’t change.”

She said she’s surprised that Adams would challenge her, given that she is a progressive who has accomplished a lot in her first term. Eudaly won a seat on council on a message of housing rights and tenants’ issues, and she has led the way on those policies from her second-floor office.

She also leads the transportation department, a topic area that is near and dear to Adams’ heart, too.

Eudaly said she is “more progressive” than Adams in a lot of areas, but they are similarly aligned in many others.

She questions why Adams chose to target her, but posited that it’s a “calculated move,” and she anticipates there will be some “very lively candidate forums.”

Adams and Eudaly won’t be the only candidates expected to appear on the May ballot.

Retired energy consultant Jack Kerfoot, licensed attorney Robert MacKay, former Portland Office of Community and Civic Life employee and ex-political science professor Mingus Mapps, activist Alyssa Vinsonhaler and transportation company owner Keith Wilson are all in as well.

Adams told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he called Eudaly and Mapps and left voicemails on their cell phones before he filed his paperwork.

He said that since he moved back to Portland, he’s sensed he could help pave a way to help residents reconnect with city government. “I have ideas and deep passion for the issues, but since coming back to Portland full-time, I have been struck by how many Portlanders feel we are being run over by our challenges — how we are losing urgent opportunities to take on these issues in a way that improves the city we love,” he said in an email to supporters.

Adams said he sees connection that too many feel it has been “frayed or broken” with City Hall. "Passion, debate, yes, but City Hall needs to be a place where we could work things out,” he wrote.

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

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