⁍ Images of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler getting tear-gassed alongside protesters made him an overnight standard-bearer for the growing movement against President Donald Trump’s use of federal agents to tamp down violence in U.S. cities.

---

⁍ For many Portland residents, however, the moment felt ironic and hypocritical.

---

⁍ Before he was gassed this week, Wheeler fought to be heard over a hostile crowd screaming obscenities and then hecklers surrounded him as he left hours later with chemicals in his eyes.

---

– Images broadcast worldwide of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler getting tear-gassed alongside protesters made him an overnight standard-bearer for the growing movement against President Trump’s use of federal agents to tamp down violence in US cities. For many Portland residents, however, the moment felt ironic and hypocritical, the AP reports. Before federal agents arrived in the liberal city, local police repeatedly used tear gas on protesters, and Wheeler—who is also the police commissioner—is increasingly unpopular with those who feel he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, control officers. Before he was gassed this week, Wheeler fought to be heard over a hostile crowd screaming obscenities and then hecklers surrounded him as he left hours later with chemicals in his eyes. The failure by the Democrat and sixth-generation Oregon resident to navigate this polarizing moment in his hometown reflects Portland’s simmering internal struggle over its identity. A city that prides itself on having one of the nation’s most progressive resumes is being challenged to move even further left by a growing anti-police constituency that’s elevating Black voices during America’s reckoning over racism. “The national imagination of Portland—and even to some extent Portland’s imagination of itself—as a hotbed of progressivism and liberalism has never been matched by the political reality,’ says Chris Shortell, a political science professor at Portland State University. “It’s not as liberal and progressive of a city as the national public holds it to be, and that’s particularly true on race.’