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Seven candidates running for Portland office this November, including Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who’s running for mayor, won’t know if they’ve unlocked taxpayer campaign dollars until one day after the deadline to qualify.
That’s because Mapps, and about six candidates who are running for one of the 12 available seats on the Portland City Council, use a donation-counting software that only provides weekly reports. Those reports are delivered on Wednesdays. This Tuesday, Aug. 27, is the deadline for candidates to qualify for matching funds through the city’s Small Donor Elections program, which matches small contributions by up to a 9-to-1 ratio.
That might help explain several cryptic emails that have landed in inboxes over the past week from Mapps’ struggling mayoral campaign. (As WW previously reported, Mapps’ campaign was in debt this summer as his campaign sought to gain its footing. Campaign finance filings show he still owes $15,000 to various vendors.)
In an Aug. 23 email, Collin Erickson, Mapps’ campaign manager, wrote that the campaign was still trying to confirm if it had reached the 750 donors necessary to unlock $100,000 in matching dollars from the program.
“At 1:00 PM today, [Small Donor Elections] determined we are still a few donors away from qualifying. There is an ongoing process as we manually review our 1100+ donations,” Erickson wrote. “We need to guarantee that we hit 750 individual Portland donors before Tuesday afternoon. Please keep pushing. We need to be 50 donors over not 5 short.”
In an previous email blast on Aug. 15, Erickson wrote that Mapps’ campaign was just 21 donations shy of reaching 750 donors. He implored people to donate to the campaign.
Now, says Susan Mottet, director of the Small Donor Elections program, Mapps won’t know until Wednesday whether he’s unlocked the $100,000.
“I don’t know why this wasn’t an issue in prior election cycles, but I was informed this month that ActBlue doesn’t let people see their donor info in real time. It just sends reports every Wednesday,” Mottet said in an email. “So we are waiting for the Wednesday report of all contributions before we complete the official count, not just for Mapps, but for a number of other candidates.”
In a phone call this afternoon, Erickson said that, as of his last hand count on Sunday night, Mapps’ campaign had received 754 individual donations, which would push Mapps over the threshold by four donations.
“I think we got it,” Erickson says.
Three other mayoral candidates, including front-runners Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio, both sitting city commissioners, have unlocked $100,000 in matching funds. A third candidate, freight business owner Keith Wilson, has also unlocked the $100,000—the maximum amount allowed for mayoral candidates this election cycle.
Per an Aug. 17 email from Erickson, Mapps was disqualified from participating in a mayoral campaign forum hosted by the Progreso Latino PAC because he hadn’t reached 750 donors. “While we didn’t make this debate,” Erickson wrote, “we are already confirming our attendance at other debates.”