There is a third tactical reason for candidates to use public financing. In Arizona and Maine, most do, because public opinion is strongly in favor of the principle. I chose to use it because it's the right thing to do. In the future, I hope incumbents will choose to use it for the same reason, but it would be fine if its use becomes politically necessary even for incumbents.

I wish supporters of the new funding system would stop saying, "it levels the playing field". It doesn't. It makes it more level, which is different.

I also wish we would all refer to it as Public Campaign Financing, which is what it is. It does indeed offer the potential for Voters to Own the outcome of Elections more than the traditional system. Voters certainly own Councilors who are elected using public funds, more than they own those elected with private money. But all the ongoing inequalities in the electoral process, even with the overt funding being more level, mean we still have far to go before voters truly take ownership of elections. And, voters should vote on it, in 2010 in my opinion, before the system deserves the VOE name.

Kari, to unseat an incumbent you pretty much have to outspend him. The reason VOE favors incumbents is because it basically ensures the incumbent can't be outspent.

The incumbent always has the option of going VOE. If the challenger does it too, there is no way to outspend him. So the only way to do it is to raise significantly more than $600K to outspend him. This of course is more than any city council campaign has ever raised.

Great way to keep the money out of politics! Make sure that the ONLY way to unseat an incumbent is to raise more money than has ever been raised in a city council race!

That really opens things up. Good job!

As was demonstrated in the last election, incumbents in a political race have a built-in advantage over challengers trying to unseat them. With their name recognition and ability to hand out favors during their time in office they don’t need Voter Owned Elections to act as an Incumbent Protection Racket, although as Sasha pointed out it helps by depressing spending levels for challengers.

I agree with Ms. Fritz we should call the act by another name, I prefer Voter Funded Campaigns. We should amend the act so contributions to it are voluntary, just as it is at the federal level when filing your taxes. And that should be done only after Portland voters have had a chance to vote on the plan in the next election, not in 2010.

Portland is not some hotbed of political corruption in need of sanitization by infusing valuable tax dollars into the campaigns of a few political wonks. Candidates spending less than their opponents have won in the past and politicians seen as beholding to special interests can be voted out by the citizens.

As badly written as this act was it should never have been put in place without going before the voters for an honest and open debate. For those looking to tweak the political process this public campaign financing measure has only made the situation worse.

The vote in 2010 is a recommendation, not a promise and not a certainty. The current council cannot bind a future council to bring the vote forward. Auditor Blackmer confirmed this to me when I was interviewed by the citizens review panel on public financing in early May. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was the reason for Commissioner Leonard's dissenting vote. We need to stop talking about "when" we get to vote on it and talk about "if" we get to vote on it.

Kari's argument is accurate and well founded. Many people would like to serve in an elected capacity, but until you sit across the table from a contributor and ask them for a financial contribution...the desire is academic.

Publicly Financed Elections do not eliminate the act and art of raising money, but they work to reduce the extensive amount of time ALL candidates spend fund-raising. Name recognition, message, accomplishments, viability...these are the standards the political process has created for voters to select their candidates. Publicly Financed Elections help turn back the campaign inflation clock to a simpler time and political climate.

Like Kari said, there are a number of outcomes for Incumbent and Challenger alike. But in any scenario, Publicly Financed Elections are neither a silver bullet for one or multiple challengers to win, nor an impossible monetary disadvantage for any participant to overcome.

Rob Milesnick

I'd like to offer on more quick thought on this whole debate. The entire issue of campaign funding would, in my opinion, be less significant if the media would provide better coverage of all candidates. Early in my campaign, before admission to the city club debate, I was totally ignored by the press and dismissed as an "also ran". The reason? I had not yet raised significant money. At the same time, candidate Boyles received extensive press coverage. Why? Because she had (ostensibly) qualified for public financing. We all know now how that worked out. I think both the media and the people deciding which candidates to invite to forums and debates should include all filed candidates. Those on the fringes will be dismissed soon enough by the electorate.

I didn't work very hard at fundraising. I didn't like it and I wasn't very good at it. I also had a little set aside that I was willing to invest in my own campaign. In the end I received nearly half as many votes as Senator Burdick but spent only one quarter of the money she did.

It would have been very interesting if the Group of Six candidates who ran against Leonard all had VOE funding.... I know there's an annual cap for total, but think this would have made it under that... of course, having all six qualify for the ballot would have been super hard, and Randy probably could have still come in at least second and then won in the general, but imagine six people sending attack mail on Randy.

Silencing challengers does make things worse and forces us to realize that what they teach in school about liberty and the Constitution is wrong. I was taught that the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech") was meant to protect political speech with which the government disagrees, and that the 14th Amendment guarantees federal protection of our rights when the state abridges them (a mechanism for enforcing anti-slavery).

That Free Money elections were held "legally" means that yes, the Progressives did rewrite the Constitution and here's how. That's what they should teach in school.

The entire hoo-ha surrounding incumbents seeking re-election makes the whole event more of a coronation than an election. By now, we all know the familiar "Entourage" surrounding celebrity incumbents: tax-funded staff, revolving-door lobbyists, and handmaiden editors. Would there be a discernable difference in governance in Portland if City incumbents could hold office until death or retirement? We'd be better off holding elections only for open seats and stop fooling folks - especially unwitting challengers - with the current charade.

The problems that surfaced in this first Public Financed Campaign election are exactly why we shouldn't vote on the system until 2010. Voters should be offered the choice between a good system, and no system. The first run showed many problems in the current rules, which must be fixed. We'll learn more in 2008, then the version after that should be put to voters.

Jesse O and Dave Lister point out two other crucial factors in Portland City Council elections - number of challengers, and press coverage. The 8 community candidates who ran against Randy Leonard in 2004 pulled his vote down to 53%, with virtually no funding public or private. The press couldn't figure out who was the frontrunner of the challengers, so they each captured some publicity. Plus, they were able to be in 8 places at one time. If many good candidates run, they don't just take votes from each other, they each pull some from the incumbent. It wasn't Ginny Burdick who nearly forced Erik into a runoff, it was Dave, and his ability to get the press to cover his campaign.

Ramon is right. Unless the incumbent is horribly ineffective (or really bad at public relations) he/she ALWAYS get reelected. Dianne Linn failed on both counts.

Term limits will increase access to women and minorities, because they create open seats. How else to explain the present diversity on Multnomah County Commission?

Mmmm. On second thought, maybe term limits weren't such a good idea. Too many mean girls out there.

I should have said, "If many good candidates run and receive press coverage....". I truly appreciated the other challengers in my race, and wish more citizens had been able to hear their reasons for running. My early qualification for public funding made it much more difficult for the other non-incumbent candidates to get the newspapers to cover them, debate sponsors to invite them, etc. Since it's the sum of the challengers' votes that pulls an incumbent below 50%, this is a negative unintended consequence relevant to the discussion of whether the current version of Public Campaign Financing is incumbent protection.

OK, one slight issue. What is the value of 4 years of incombency?

For example, Erik realizes after a term it is better not to get involved with things with measurable outcomes (like water bureau computers) and instead strings together longer sentences with bigger words like "economic development" and "homeless housing" whenever he goes into the news. Pretty soon, thanks to Erik's handlers we see headlines like: "Erik secure homeless housing funding" "Erik makes bold vote against tram" even though meaningless "Erik swims across the Yangtze at age 75" (Opps, that was Mao.)

Now a challenger comes along and has 3 months to make headway in the primary, so there choice is to take VoE money and be even with Erik or spend enough in 3 months to make up for 4 years of Erik's facetime.

I mean why not just give the incumbent up to 65% (or whatever number) of what the biggest challenger gets to make up for the free press?

Two months before the election Erik was losing to the "Anbody but Erik" vote and now divide and conquer and he can go in hiding for the next 4 years. God forbid he should meet with anybody beyond his FoEs (Friends of Erik's) group.

Meanwhile he can take Homer's $5K worth of seed money and have lunches with Tom Imeson. Of course, no public disclosure of what they do with their time (except for Sam Adams who has the guts to publish his calendar.)

Believe it or not, my biggest issue isn't with VoE, it is with incumbency. After a few years (or a career as with everyone in the City Council except Saltzman), they lose touch with the people they represent. I mean with $100K+ salary, gold-plated benes and like Potter up to $100K/year additional in pension, how can they identify with the common man when they make 3x what he makes and really have no pressure on them at all?

TA: You would never get 42% of the vote unless:

1. An incumbent like Sten registered Republican, and started building homeless concentration camps ("out of sight, out of mind")

2. An incumbent like Saltzman literally did no campaigning, or quit showing up for City Council meetings.

If the incumbent wants to keep his/her job, and he/she isn't a total bonehead, they win. Amanda Fritz proves that 25% of the primary vote is achievable (against a weak incumbent) with spending parity, but I don't imagine that T.A. would have drawn 42% based on your kermit the frog prowess.

TA - I am waiting for the day when we get 6 little guys and Erik running for his seat on VoE. Then one rich challenger spends $300K. NOw the City of Portland will give 7 guys $300K each.

So now we are spending $2.1M to keep elections clean? And this is only the primary.

Originally this was shoved thru not as a way to get small guys involved - almost everyone said it will keep big money out of politics when it really doesn't.

The same politcal hacks have lunches, make big contributions to a commissioner's favorite charity to get facetime, set up "independent" committees which can still give unlimited contributions to help a candidate or throw $10K into a "seed" committee.

If we want the effects of money out of politics, why not be direct and just hold politician to some kind of accounting for their actions by making them be open with us?

Chris - When Randy Leonard went for re-election, he had something like 18 people who filed. What if a few of them are sharp enough to figure out how to game the system like Ms. Boyles (not the smartest person) or an enterprising consultant starts rounding up signatures for candidates like the Russian guy for a fee?

I don't even know if that matters, since money is going to get into the process anyways if the politician is enterprising enough, so that argument for VoE is pretty weak.

TA - One more thought, if we really want to help the small guy against the incumbent, how about everyone but the incumbent qualifies for VoE funds?

Let's put the folly of incumbency re-elections in terms that more people can relate to; to illustrate, let's use the Governor's race as an example - it's not City but it's still on the air.

It's kinda like the HBO series Entourage. Nothing really good or really bad ever happens but you can't take your eye off it and the show gets renewed year after year.

You've got the star, Gov. Ted. He's like Vince Chase, you know, Aquaman. Ted being AG was like starring in "Head On". Being Supreme Court Justice was like starring in "Queens Blvd."

Cameron Johnson, of course, is like James Cameron, who plays himself as Vince's director in Aquaman.

The manager, like E (Eric), that would be Tim Nesbitt. Then you have Neil Goldschmidt, like Vince's older brother and former face, Johnny Drama, unable to get out of the game. And Lisa Grove is like Turtle; she gets him all the good stuff and serves up all the latest dish.

Jim Hill and Peter Sorensen made brief appearances, like Bob Saget and Paulie Shore - in walk-on cameos for lost has-beens seeking some glam-of-the-moment.

Then you've got the Gov.'s tax-funded staff, like Vince's agent Ari Gold and publicist Shona, and their assistants; the revolving-door / campaign-donor lobbyists, like Josh Weinstein angling for action and movie execs jockeying for the next deal; and fawning MSM editorialists, like Variety's lead story writers and that reviewer they took real good care of in Season 2.

See, now it makes more sense. Gov. Ted's re-coronation is like a self-referential celebrity event. It takes village to raise a child but it takes an Entourage to get re-elected.

Incumbent-challengers' task should make more sense now.

Only one non-incumbent candidate qualified-and-remained-qualified for public funding this cycle. The concern that the fund would be overwhelmed with multiple recipients was unfounded. Indeed, since one of the goals is to increase opportunity for non-incumbents, in this cycle we saw that the current bar of 1000 donations of $5 may be too high. I believe we should leave it that way for 2008, to see how many qualify then, but the citizen Commission will be making that call. The crucial point is that we WANT more than one candidate per seat to qualify, in order to further level the playing field against an incumbent. That way, the challengers collectively have more money than the incumbent. And hopefully will attract more press coverage and interest in the race, since funding won't immediately identify which of the challengers is the frontrunner.

Qualifying more than one candidate per seat must be done legitimately, of course. I've submitted 12 pages of comments to the Commission this week, recommending changes to improve the structure. I'm working on another set. One of the ideas I'd like considered is adding a rule that donors may only donate $5 to one candidate. There are drawbacks to this restriction, but it would take care of the issue of the hired consultant getting contributions from the same donors for multiple candidates.

Kari:Now, what about the reverse scenario? The argument of VOE-haters is that for $150,000 you can't possibly beat the substantial name ID of an incumbent. How wrong is that argument?

Are VOE-haters really saying that? I hate VOE and would even think of saying or believing such a thing.

There are clearly other factors to consider. Let's take Erik Sten. As seen in some topics of late, in previous campaigns he received many thousands of dollars from various Fat Cats and developers and engineering firms, all of whom gain from the Sten supported New Urbanism Gravy Train.

His challengers in the earlier races had puny budgets (Liz Callison for one). But Sten didn't come close to $150,000 himself, so a challenger with $150,000 could have at least made sure that everyone knew he or she was running, and why. That wouldn't have guaranteed a win, either.

Sten simply has a following of hypocritcal supporters who looked the other way when it came to who funded his campaigns (those Fat Cats on the New Urbanist, corporate welfare Gravy Train), all while sending out Chicken Little alarms about how his opponents were the real ones doing that!

Sten should have been defeated at least because of his ineptness. Incumbency really helped, and coupled with the same $150,000 he received, his incumbency neutralized opposition just enough.

Perhaps his razor thin win showed that he's not exactly a darling of the Portland electorate any longer. But still, it's hard to think of another city council member in recent memory who's been so worshipped by the progressives while also doing what those same progressives claim to despise.

Bob Tiernan

Amanda: I chose to use it because it's the right thing to do.

You say it's the right thing to do, so it must be?

Either you haven't explained why yet, or I missed something. Anyway, my own opinion is that you ran against the wrong person.

Bob Tiernan

Buckman Res: Portland is not some hotbed of political corruption in need of sanitization by infusing valuable tax dollars into the campaigns of a few political wonks.

That's right. Instead, it's a hotbed of political corruption in need of having more voters paying attention to and caring about which candidates (including the incumbents) are or are likely to hand out corporate welfare faster than it can be counted. If more voters in Portland walked the talk and had the guts to turn their backs on someone handing out this money to Fat Cats on the New Urbanist Gravy Train, then Sten would have been booted out four years ago. His ineptness regarding things like the $50 Million water bureau blunder and his foolishness in supporting some of the corporate welfare things like the Tram and Civic Stadium renovation were just extra negatives that were not really needed in order to make the case against him.

One candidate could take a check from a developer and be called a candidate in the pocket of a Fat Cat, yet Sten took many thousands in two previous campaigns (including thousands from his buddy Serena Cruz-Walsh's family Fat Cat business), yet the Progressives by and large never noticed.

Bob Tiernan

Candidates spending less than their opponents have won in the past and politicians seen as beholding to special interests can be voted out by the citizens.

Does BoJack ever get tired of being wrong???

First Emilie B. pays back nearly $70K of the VOE money she got. Bojack was saying he'd buy dinner for anyone who got closest to the number she gave back, while snarkily suggesting the city would never see a dime. Guess you'll be buying dinner soon for someone, BoJack!

Next, he was convinced Kitzhaber would get the OHSU presidency in exchange for some ridiculous back room tram scam, or whatever. Gee, OHSU released some names today under consideration for their next president. Kitzhaber is nowhere on the list!

Can't wait for more BoJack blunders...especially after his preferred candidates continue to top out at about 25% of the vote... snicker.

Kari: Yeah, Bob. Hard to believe, but that's what some supporters of Ginny Burdick have been saying -- that $150,000 just isn't enough to beat out Erik Sten's name ID.

Then she/they are nuts. I'll grant that. Money isn't everything as one other person mentioned. Burdick had good name recognition to begin with and Sten had enough negatives to hurt him -- but to an opponent/campaign savvy enough to capitalize on that and without his or her own negatives. Burdick's ties to PGE or some such company apparently didn't help her with a large number of potential Sten waverers (and Lister was ignored by too many overall as an "also ran").

Bob T