Earl Riley
| Earl Riley | |
|---|---|
| 41st Mayor of Portland, Oregon | |
|
In office January 1941 – December 1948 |
|
| Preceded by | Joseph K. Carson, Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Dorothy McCullough Lee |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 18, 1890 Portland, Oregon |
| Died | August 17, 1965 (aged 75) Portland, Oregon |
| Profession | Businessman |
Earl Riley (February 18, 1890 – August 17, 1965) was an Oregon politician and businessman, and mayor of Portland, Oregon, United States, from 1941–1949.
He was born Robert Earl Riley on February 18, 1890 in Portland, Oregon to Harriett Miranda (Richardson) and Lester N. Riley. His father was a fire bureau captain and his grandfather ran a tannery at Multnomah Stadium (now Providence Park).
Riley graduated from the Portland Academy in 1907, attended Oregon State College 1908–1910, and later the Holmes Business College in Portland. As a second lieutenant he served at the 4th Officers Training School 1918–1919. He was the superintendent of the Columbia Engine Works machine shop 1919–1931.
Riley's political career began with appointment in 1928 to Portland's civil service commission, on which he served through 1930. Two years later, while he was serving as a partner in a tire company, he was named to fill a vacancy on the city council. He served on the council as commissioner of finance from 1930–1940.
In November 1940, he won his first election to mayor, and was re-elected in 1944. In 1943, the United States Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information sent Riley to Europe to tour war-torn cities and boost morale as a "typical American mayor". Perhaps he was a typical American mayor, but in 1945 Riley was charged by the influential City Club of Portland with negligence in stamping out vice and corruption. Two years later, the Portland Ministerial Alliance repeated the charges. According to historian E. Kimbark MacColl, Riley had a secret vault in his City Hall office to store his percentage of vice protection payments. In the book Vanishing Portland, the Bottenbergs reported that the Portland police were collecting $60,000 a month in protection payments from gambling and prostitution operations, with much of this money going to Riley. Despite denials of laxness in his administration, Riley lost his third mayoral campaign to the reformer Dorothy McCullough Lee.
In its 1965 obituary of Riley, The Oregonian called him "a tough, able and demanding administrator and a wizard at municipal financing". Commissioner William A. Bowes described him as a man willing to work 18 and 20 hours a day.
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