[January 30th, 2008]

At least six Portland City Council candidates, plus mayoral hopeful Sho Dozono, appear poised to split more than $1 million in public campaign financing between them.

That fact, on the eve of the Jan. 31 qualifying deadline, shows how much the system has grown since two years ago, when only two council candidates had the wherewithal to gather the necessary signatures and $5 contributions (without cheating).

The surge of publicly funded candidates raises two key questions before Portland’s unique public financing program goes to a voter referendum in 2010.

First, can the city afford it? (The short answer is yes.)

Second, is it too easy to get public financing?

“Ha ha ha,” said council candidate Amanda Fritz. “Ha ha ha.”

“Only somebody who has not tried to do it would suggest that it’s easy,” Fritz added when she stopped laughing. Fritz qualified for public financing in her 2006 run against Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and has done so again in her current council bid.

A registered nurse and longtime activist, Fritz says qualifying was actually harder this time, because of a complicated new form designed to deter phony signatures like those from Emilie Boyles’ campaign in 2006 (see “Rogue of the Year,” WW , Dec. 26, 2006).

But something is different this time: The pros are moving in. More recognizable names who could’ve run on private dollars are instead seeking public funds, which impart grassroots cred, deserved or not.

Council candidates must gather 1,000 valid signatures and matching $5 contributions to qualify for $150,000; mayoral candidates must collect 1,500 valid signatures and $5 donations to qualify for $200,000. (More money is awarded to candidates who make it to a runoff election.)

Two of this year’s candidates—Dozono and council candidate Jim Middaugh—were able, with the help of volunteers, to collect hundreds of signatures with stunning speed.

Neither is an outsider to politics.

Dozono is a well-known businessman and civic booster with extensive political contacts, and his “brain trust” includes powerful lobbyists and seasoned campaign consultants. Middaugh, who cut his political teeth working for U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and now works as chief of staff to Commissioner Erik Sten, wants his boss’s job now that Sten is resigning.

With the help of more than 350 volunteers, Dozono gathered some 3,000 signatures and contributions in less than a month. When Sten ran in 2006, it took him two months to get enough signatures to qualify. (“We weren’t in any rush,” Sten says.) Middaugh and his 175-plus foot soldiers pulled it off in little more than a week.

“Jim has, I think, taught us all how to do it,” says Brendan Finn, Saltzman’s chief of staff. Finn abandoned his council bid this week, after realizing too late he should’ve gone for public financing.

Howard Weiner, a skate-shop owner who dropped out of the council race to endorse Middaugh, worries that “Voter-Owned Elections” could be repossessed by the political class. “To me, it was to promote folks who would otherwise be unable to run, because of financial constraints,” Weiner says.

Sten, who helped design the program, is delighted to see participation from bigger “name” candidates who aren’t incumbents, such as Dozono and Middaugh. But Sten says the bar to qualify may need to be raised in the future. This time around, he says, “anybody who ought to have qualified—not to be rude to anybody—has. Those that shouldn’t have, have not.”

To Commissioner Randy Leonard, who opposed Voter-Owned Elections, that’s just the problem: All the successful candidates showed the tenacity needed to raise private donations. Leonard said as much to Fritz, who doesn’t believe she has the connections to run without public money.

“I told her, ‘Amanda, I didn’t know anybody in downtown Portland when I ran for City Council. I cold-called. I’d wait in people’s offices,” Leonard recalls.

Now, the city may be committed to spending $1.2 million to fund seven candidates through the May 20 primary election. That will leave the campaign finance fund with a cushion of about $700,000 through the primaries, says city financial planner Casey Short.

The city’s new fiscal year comes before the general election in November (which may cost up taypayers up to $850,000 more in campaign funds), so the campaign finance fund will be replenished before then.

This time, at least, Voter-Owned Elections won’t break the bank. Next time?

“This is not a sustainable program when the economy goes into the tank,” says Leonard. “Just imagine when we’re in that budget time, and we’re funding this program at a time when we’re laying off cops and firefighters.”

MAPPING THE MONEY

Proponents of Portland's public campaign financing system claim that one of its benefits is that it forces local candidates to get off their asses and mingle with the proletariat , rather than simply picking up big checks from fat cats and blitzing the airwaves with advertising.

Is this actually true? At the least, it's not total bullshit.

In order to qualify for public financing, City Council candidates need to pick up 1,000 signatures and matching $5 donations (mayoral candidates need 1,500 signatures and donations). No matter how well you know your neighbors, they're not all going to give you five bucks. Successful Voter Owned Elections candidates can't stick to one part of town.

WWeek took up the thankless task of plotting, street by street, the places where City Hall candidates have picked up their campaign contributions so far. The resulting maps give some idea where candidates and their volunteers have been hoofing it around Portland, and, possibly, where they might expect to pick up votes in the May 20 primary.

Now, keep in mind as you tool around:

1.) These maps shouldn't be parsed too deeply. It's early in the race, and the data is incomplete.

Because of software snafus, only the most recent 1,000 donations are included. Which means for the most hard-working candidates, hundreds of donors are missing from our catographic experiment.

We worked with the most up-do-date data we had from the Oregon Secretary of State and the Portland Auditor's Office. Still, some candidates—notably Jim Middaugh—are much farther along in their signature gathering than the numbers here suggest.

2.) Not all of the candidates are included. Those who weren't either haven't yet filed campaign finance updates with the proper authorities or haven't gathered nearly enough contributions to make the cut for funding.

3.) Mayoral candidate Sam Adams is not seeking public financing, but he is the only privately financed candidate to raise a significant amount of money so far—so we threw him into the mix. The state doesn't require campaigns to go into detail about small "miscellaneous" contributions, so we requested additional info from the Adams campaign, which they provided, and which we've incorporated into the map. Keep in mind that here, Adams is a big fat orange in the middle of an apple orchard.

4.) A $5 qualifying contribution is not an endorsement. So even though your boss gave five bucks to help Amanda Fritz qualify, he might still vote for Charles Lewis, or vice-versa.

5.) The little dots don't mark every spot where a candidate knocked on the door. They just mark the addresses of the people who donated five bucks.

Now, to disregard our own advice, what do these maps tell us about the campaigns?

Most obviously, that nobody is campaigning very hard east of 82nd Avenue. Surely, this has something to do with the fact that none of the candidates lives out that far. Let 'em eat cake.

Amanda Fritz, Charles Lewis and Sho Dozono appeared more willing to venture out to the far side of I-205 than the other candidates.

Dozono found concentrations of support in the Southeast Portland neighborhoods of Eastmoreland and Woodstock (where he held a kickoff fundraiser).

Jeff Bissonnette, who lives on the North side of the St. Johns bridge, had no obvious concentration of support. John Branam was the opposite. Branam found a load of $5 donors in the immediate vicinity of his home in Northeast Portland's Alameda neighborhood.

That Fritz resides in Southwest Portland probably explains why she found more donors there than the other publicly financed candidates.

Lewis, who lives in Northeast Portland, made a strong showing in North and Northeast Portland, particularly in the Piedmont neighborhood, as well as around Hawthorne Blvd. in Southeast.

Chris Smith, a Northwest Portland fixture, did well on his home turf, and in the inner neighborhoods on the east side of the river.

Feel free to post your reading of the chicken entrails here.

Click on the maps below to access interactive features.

Sam Adams

Jeff Bissonnette

John Branam

Sho Dozono

Amanda Fritz

Charles Lewis

Jim Middaugh

Chris Smith