Skip to main contentThe Other Side of the Ledger
Despite Emilie Boyles, public financing is successful at reducing big bucks in local politics.
Portland's controversial publicly financed city campaign program is working.
Yes, there have been well-documented problems. City elections officials say candidate Emilie Boyles must return the $145,000 in tax dollars she received (she's already spent part of that cash paying her 16-year-old daughter for campaign work and renting campaign space well beyond next month's primary).
But despite Boyles, public financing is doing what it's supposed to do: keeping big special-interest money on the sidelines.
First of all, the candidates who qualified for public financing, Erik Sten, Amanda Fritz and Boyles, are limited to the $150,000 they receive from the city.
In addition, there is less money sloshing around in those campaigns that declined public financing. The two major candidates for City Council who are not taking public money—incumbent Dan Saltzman and state Sen. Ginny Burdick, who is challenging Sten—have collectively raised less than either candidate who ran for the office in 2004.
Cash contributions through the April 1 filing period for the top-money candidates in next month's two City Council races were less than half the contributions the top-money candidates logged during the same period in the two most contested races in 2004 (see chart).
"What we're seeing is that candidates don't need big money to run city campaigns," says Carol Cushman, president of the League of Women Voters of Portland.
Another public-financing advocate, Janice Thompson of the Oregon Money in Action Research Project, says the old system placed candidates in the pockets of special interests who could write big checks. In the comparable period during 2004, Thompson says, "just shy of 70 percent of the money" came from a few big donors in checks of $1,000 or more.
"That's not occurring this time around," Thompson says.
Instead, Boyles, Commissioner Erik Sten and Amanda Fritz, who is challenging incumbent Saltzman, each has qualified for public financing by raising 1,000 contributions of $5 (although there is considerable doubt about the validity of Boyles' contributions and the accompanying signatures).
While public-financing advocates sing the program's praises, a spokeswoman for the First-Things-First Committee, which spent $350,000 trying unsuccessfully to place a repeal of public financing on the May ballot, says comparisons to 2004 are misleading.
"It's apples to oranges, because there was a mayoral race then and there isn't one now," says Ellie Booth, who notes the vast war chest raised in 2004 by Jim Francesconi in his ultimately unsuccessful bid for mayor.
That's tempered, of course, by the fact that successful mayoral candidate Tom Potter limited his donations to $25 per person in the 2004 primary.
Booth adds that Boyles' alleged misdeeds outweigh any benefits: "If 'clean money' was the point, you may have clean money coming in, but it doesn't look clean in the way it's being spent."
Others say public financing isn't achieving the goal of reducing the extraordinary advantage incumbents enjoy. (Since 1970, according to city figures, incumbents have won 116 out of 121 races; in nearly every case, they also spent more money.)
For example, every dollar that Burdick raises above $150,000 triggers another public-financing dollar for Sten, notes Burdick's campaign manager, Ed Grosswiler.
"An incumbent retains an incredible advantage," says Grosswiler, who ran Francesconi's 2004 primary campaign. "It costs more than $150,000 to get a message out, but if you raise and spend more, all you're doing is putting money into the incumbent's pocket."
Thompson disagrees, arguing that Sten could have raised far more as a privately funded candidate. "By opting in to public financing, he holds down the cost of the campaign," Thompson says, "and won't be beholden to donors in the future."
&mdashNIGEL JAQUISS
Can You Believe This?
City elections officer Susan Francois is resigning after eight years on the job.
But it's not because the fledgling voter-owned elections system she helped to craft has gotten a rough ride its first time out. She's leaving this summer to become a nun. Francois, 33, says she wants to spend most of her time on what she feels called to do.
"It makes more sense for me to do that as part of a religious community," Francois says, "where I can combine my work life and my spiritual life and have the support of a community."
When she's not directing the city's elections department, Francois coordinates the Portland chapter of the national Catholic peace group Pax Christi. She also co-chairs the peace and justice commission at Southeast Portland's St. Philip Neri parish.
Last October, Francois became a "candidate" for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, a politically active Catholic order that works for peace and justice. Now she spends two weekends a month living with nuns in Seattle and is disposing of her belongings in preparation for becoming a "novice." In September, she'll move to a convent in New Jersey and begin the three-year process of becoming a full-fledged nun.
Francois has been planning this move for two years, though on her blog, "Musings of a Discerning Woman" (actjustly.blogspot.com), she admits the attraction of a heavenly calling grew as recent controversy made her elections post a daily hell.
Francois wrote the rules for implementing Portland's public campaign-finance system that City Council passed last year, and she has come under fire (including a WW Rogue of the Week April 5) for certifying City Council candidate Emilie Boyles to get $145,000 in public funding. Boyles is now accused of multiple violations of the public finance rules, and the city wants its money back.
—Don McIntosh
Blog Watch
The Candidates Gone Wild committee decision to exclude Emilie Boyles from the blockbuster event Monday, May 1, set the commentariat to chattering on the blogosphere.
On Loaded Orygun (www.loadedorygun.blogspot.com), Blogger Torrid posted, "My treacherous heart might like to see a grand political meltdown happen in front of my very eyes, but there's also a risk that Boyles might just kill everyone's buzz by acting creepy."
A poster on Jack Bog's Blog (www.bojack.org) wrote that Boyles was excluded "because she's a chunky woman who lives in a trailer in East Multnomah and that's so so not a part of the Willamette Week aesthetic of hip."
Amanda Fritz
What she's doing: Running for Commissioner Dan Saltzman's seat on the City Council.
What she's done: Headed a slew of school, parks and environmental councils on the west side. Seven years on the Portland Planning Commission.
What she wants you to know: She's a real neighborhood activist who cares!
What she doesn't want you to know: Neighborhood activists rarely get elected, and Fritz's amateurish campaign shows why.
Follow The Money...
Portland's first election with public financing available has sharply limited the campaign donations that (2004 aside) usually spell victory for the best fundraiser.
2004
Jim Francesconi - $858,092
Tom Potter - $44,801
Sam Adams - $164,546
Nick Fish - $184,726
Total 2004 - $1.25 million
2006
Ginny Burdick - $84,927
Erik Sten - $150,000 (public financing)
Dan Saltzman - $68,105
Amanda Fritz - $150,000 (public financing)
Emilie Boyles - $144,905
Total 2006 - $597,847
The Greatest Show On Earth!!!!
Monday, May 1
There's only one event worth attending this week, and it's the biggest of the season. Candidates Gone Wild, hands-down the most entertaining political scream since Howard Dean went primal on us, returns to the Roseland Theater. This year's CGW is the biggest ever, featuring music by the Retrofits plus Multnomah County Chair Diane Linn and challenger Ted Wheeler; City Commissioner Erik Sten and challengers Ginny Burdick and Dave Lister; and City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and challenger Amanda Fritz. Never been? Well, get ready for a beer-fueled orgy of civic involvement where pols show off their knowledge (or ignorance) of all things Portland, their unexpected talents (or lack thereof), and their ability to debate under the influence.
Roseland Theater. 8 NW 6th Ave. 8 pm. $3. Tickets available at Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Bus Project, 333 SE 2nd Ave., and City Club of Portland, 901 SW Washington St.
WWeek 2015