PPS Capital Bond Opponent Predicts Measure's Defeat

After the 10 pm release of a second round of ballot counting, the status of two Portland Public Schools measures on the tonight's ballot changed only a little. The $57 million-a-year operating levy picked up some ground, widening its margin of approval by a couple of percentage points to a 55 percent to 45 percent spread.

The larger $548 million capital bond, also gained ground slightly, narrowing to a 5 percentage point deficit at 52.5 percent "no" to 47.5 percent voting "yes."

With a little over 25 percent of the votes counted in an election not expected to draw more than 45 percent of voters, one leading opponent of the capital bond told WW he doubts even a late onslaught of ballots will change the outcome. That could mean the defeat for a highly-organized campaign which saw proponents spend $1.2 million (combined, on both measures), while opponents spent effectively nothing.

"There are just not enough votes left to change things," says Marc Abrams a PPS board member from 1995 to 2003 and a leader of the group called "Learn Now, Build Later," that opposed the bond.

"I think we can all be glad the operating levy will pass," Abrams added. "But I think this shows that voters wanted a more tightly-focused bond with more emphasis on safety and less on what I'll call 'playground pork.'" 

For the bond to triumph, and assuming there are another 80,000 votes to be counted (which would bring turnout to 45 percent) proponents need to see a major swing from here on out, capturing something on the order of 53 percent of the remaining votes. Both 2008 and 2010 saw major swings after midnight but those were high turnout elections with the Barack Obama and John Kitzhaber on the ballot. Multnomah County voters may have found paying additional property taxes less exciting than electing those two.

Mark Wiener, a political consultant to the "yes" campaign, Portlanders for Schools, saw things moving in his campaign's favor as later votes were counted but was not confident there were enough ballots remaining to swing the margin positive.

"It's tightened up but right now, I'm thinking we won't quite make it," Wiener told WW at 11 pm. "Still, the results here are going to be a lot better than in other places," he added referring to the decisive defeat of money measures in Clackamas County.

WWeek 2015