Amanda - I'm a Washington State resident interested in finding out how public campaign funding is doing in Oregon. I was attracted to your blog when I saw that you ran and won for city council as a Public Campaign Financing candidate. What is happening in the Oregon legislature at the state level? In WA, our public funding bills just died in committee, apparently nixed by political higher ups who didn't want to take the time from other "more important" bills to pass them out of committee. This seems short-sighted to me. How can they count on support for their "more important" agendas unless legislators are free of the undue influence of exorbitant private campaign funding?

In your opinion would it be more fruitful to tackle one city at a time than go for state passage?

Elizabeth Ogden, Washington Public Campaign Funding volunteer and first time blogger

Welcome to my blog, Elizabeth, and thank you for your questions. I'm just about to go to work for the rest of the day (I'm a nurse), so I may add a more thorough response later in the week. You made my day by saying "I saw that you ran and won for city council as a Public Campaign Financing candidate." I did win Public Financing and I believe my campaign was successful on that and many other levels, despite not having won enough votes to be elected or force a runoff.

The short answer to your main question, is that I've heard statewide public campaign financing isn't likely to get far in the current Legislative session in Oregon. And, I believe both here and in Washington, the underlying cause isn't so much "short-sighted"-ness, as that those in power got there under the current system so find it works quite nicely, thank you. It's like older doctors being resistant to more reasonable hours for residents in training, because "we did it, and look how good we are". The Portland City Council deserves great credit for enacting our system. They would deserve even more, if all members from now on pledged to use it in re-election campaigns. As our TriMet transit system tells us, "how we get there matters".

I'm not sure if trying a city-by-city approach will prove more fruitful in the long run. I'm reminded of the story of the child on the beach, throwing starfish stranded by the tide back into the water. When asked why, when there were so many beached starfish the effort made hardly any difference, the child replied, "it makes a difference to this one". The City of Portland's public campaign finance system will make all the difference to me, and others like me, in deciding whether to run for City Council in Portland. If even one city in Washington enacted such a system, I believe that would be good for democracy in that city.

Thanks, Amanda. Now I've got more questions.

1. How much time did it take you to get the signatures necessary to qualify you as a public campaign financing candidate?
2. Could you estimate how much time it would have taken you to raise the money yourself to compete with your competitor?
3. Could you have run with out the support of public campaign financing?
4. How did the city of Portland fund your campaign?
5. Would you do it again?

Elizabeth Ogden

1. Two months, three weeks. Incumbent Erik Sten did it in two months, two weeks.
2. I would not have been able to raise $150k in private donations.
3. Yes, I planned to run whether public campaign financing was in place or not. It's debatable how I would have done, running on less money.
4. Not sure what you're asking, please clarify.
5. Yes, but not against an incumbent without huge negatives. And only with even broader and more intensive citywide support and volunteer participation.

Re question #4 - Ill thought out question. Did I say that? I guess when I dashed it off I was wondering how Portland finances its Public Campaign Financing Program and I was still thinking you had run and won. I'm still unclear - did you qualify as a public campaign funding candidate but not run as one? I'm having a little problem here.

Elizabeth Ogden

I qualified for funding and received $145,000 from the City of Portland, in two chunks. I was the only non-incumbent candidate to run as a Public Campaign Finance Fund candidate and win funding without cheating. Once having received funding, I was required to continue to follow all the rules of the Public Finance Fund system - if I hadn't, I would have been required to pay back all the money personally. I spent $140,000 on staff and office space for my campaign, on direct mail, radio and newspaper ads, etc. I returned $5000 to the City at the end of the campaign, on principle - to demonstrate my commitment to sticking to budgets and saving taxpayers money. I did not receive enough votes to force a runoff beyond the primary or win the seat. If the incumbent's total had been less than 50% of the turnout in the primary, he and I would have been in a runoff in the general election and I would have received another $200,000 in public money for that phase.

Portland finances its campaign finance fund by collecting a small amount from each of all city bureaus, which of course in turn are funded by citizens' taxes and fees. The amount works out to about 50 cents per taxpayer for each qualifying candidate.

Thanks - got it.
Now I'm curious as to how a person could cheat and get public campaign funding, as implied in your second sentence.

Elizogden

Sorry, you'll need to Google and find that elsewhere. The only Cheat who's earned publicity on my blog is the one on Homestar Runner.

I'm interested in all aspects of public campaign funding, and have never heard of anyone cheating to earn it before. People who want to use public campaign funding aren't usually the type to cheat. I was just curious as to how anyone could. Sorry, I didn't mean to tread on dangerous territory.

Elizogden