A month ago, small business owner/non-profit director Charles Lewis announced he was running for city council—running for the seat currently occupied by Sam Adams. He was clear that he expected Tom Potter to not run for reelection, and for Adams to run for mayor, leaving the seat open. But he pledged to run for the seat no matter what Potter or Adams decided.

It set up an interesting political dynamic; Lewis was an Adams supporter, having volunteered on his campaign for city council. And Adams was the second person he told when he decided to run. Still it’s difficult to run a successful campaign when you don’t know exactly what your target is, and Lewis had a gamble to make—he could coast until September, especially since he’ll have a hard time gathering supporters/volunteers while Adams is still undecided, or he could come out of the gate swinging against Adams, a politician he says he admires.

The risk of the first approach is that Lewis could fall off the radar while playing nice; the risk of the second is that he could get drawn into a campaign against a popular politician, when it might not even be necessary.

Starting tomorrow, though, it looks like the gloves are coming off. Lewis is holding an informal press conference at his house in the Cully neighborhood, to fill potholes in a dirt road and talk about the problems with Adams’ current push for increased transportation funding. His main argument is that taxpayers shouldn’t pay any more in fees or taxes unless there’s “increased accountability, long term planning, and a creative mindset.”

He’s even attacking the town hall meetings that Adams has been holding:

To begin with, while city hall insiders received early notification of the meetings, many in the general public were mailed notices after the meetings already started taking place. In addition, a press release for the town hall meetings was not released until the day prior to the first meeting.

Critics are also concerned that the presentations were confusing and misleading. The town hall meetings highlighted significant transportation problems including freeway congestion, decrepit bridges across the Willamette, and unpaved roads, yet these issues aren’t in the city government’s list of responsibilities. Freeways are run by the state, most of the bridges across the river are owned by Multnomah County, and individual property owners are responsible for paving their own streets. The new tax proposals do very little to improve these identified problems, leaving many asking why they were identified in the first place.

As I said, the gloves are off.

Coincidentally, about an hour ago, Adams’ office emailed out an announcement that early survey results from the town halls were now posted on his website—and that the 250 or so people who filled out surveys were supportive of all but one of Adams’ funding ideas.

That may seem innocuous, but the timing could be seen as trying to get a jump on media coverage of Lewis’ press conference.

If I’m not mistaken, this could be the first shot fired in the 2008 city council race.