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Portland mayoral hopeful Mingus Mapps may join the race’s top three contenders in benefiting from outside interests boosting his campaign.
Public campaign finance records show that a political action committee was set up on Sept. 25 to boost the candidacy of Mapps, who’s fallen far behind the top three candidates (Carmen Rubio, Rene Gonzalez and Keith Wilson) in fundraising and in visibility over the summer and fall. So far only one donation is logged: a $1,000 donation from Chip Shields, a former state senator who now works for an oil company.
The role of independent expenditures in this year’s mayoral race is expected to be outsized. That’s largely because the city’s campaign public financing program, the Small Donor Elections program, is facing a budget crunch and lowered the amount mayoral candidates could receive in matching taxpayer dollars—from $750,0000 down to $100,000. (Rubio, Gonzalez, Wilson, Mapps and a fifth candidate, Liv Osthus, all reached that cap.) That blunted the ability of mayoral candidates to run aggressive citywide campaigns, so independent expenditure campaigns, which aren’t subject to campaign finance limits, are stepping in to fill the void.
City commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s IE is the one that’s actually brought in substantial money (a total of $292,000 to date), and it’s been funded almost entirely by downtown developers, leaders of investment firms and business owners, including the Goodman real estate family, Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, Cushman and Wakefield, and Tom Brenneke of Guardian Real Estate Services.
An expected IE campaign to boost Rubio’s campaign, directed by longtime Democratic strategist Paige Richardson and expected to bring in money from labor unions, has yet to materialize. It’s unclear if it’s related to The Oregonian’s reporting last month that Rubio received over 150 parking violations and six license suspensions over a 10-year period—a revelation that shook Rubio and her campaign.
Richardson, when reached by phone, declined to comment.
A similar campaign set up to boost the candidacy of Keith Wilson, the owner of Titan Freight who’s built his campaign on a lofty plan to end unsheltered homelessness by setting up 20-50 nighttime shelters every single night, is called Fix Portland Now. No contributions have yet been recorded, but Rich Schlackman, the Arizona-based consultant behind the IE, says he’s so far secured $20,000 in donations. That’s chump change compared to what the IE boosting Gonzalez’s candidacy has raised.
Mapps, who’s served on the City Council for four years and whose term ends at the end of the year, was a business-favorite candidate when running for the City Council in 2020 and was primed to be a mayoral favorite. But over the past two years, he’s alienated the Portland Metro Chamber, the city’s business chamber, and was outshone by Gonzalez, who after being elected in 2022 quickly became the darling of business leaders because of his unwavering promise to bring law and order back to the city.
The two people listed as directors of Mapps’ independent expenditure campaign are Margaret Carter, a former state senator and the first Black woman to ever serve in the Oregon Legislature, and Maria Smithson, a longtime political strategist.