I’m still sore that Portlanders, way back in 2010, ditched voter-owned elections. Check out the following chart from Street Roots:

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See that first column of percentages? That means each of the major candidates in this year’s mayoral race—even East Portland state Representative Jefferson Smith—is relying on checks from a small pool of wealthy people to spread their messages and run their campaigns.

Smith, at least, is at just 52 percent. Some 80 percent of checks written to Charlie Hales, the former city commissioner and current transit consultant, have been for at least $1,000. And businesswoman Eileen Brady isn’t much better, at 65 percent. (In fact, she’s received more large contributions than Hales has raised in total.)

Click here and read the rest of Street Roots‘ examination of mayoral fundraising—which was assembled and crunched by Janice Thompson of Common Cause. Thompson was a big backer of the push to preserve voter-owned elections in 2010. And her analysis makes a good case for why we never should have let it go.

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

10 replies on “<i>Street Roots</i> Crunches Cash Reports in Mayoral Race—Makes Case for Return of Voter-Owned Elections”

  1. Just to be clear, under Voter-owned elections, even the candidates who didn’t use the system generally limited themselves to maximum contributions of $500. It took all of one election cycle to revert to the big bucks behavior. Sigh…

  2. The $90k that Emily Boyles still owes the city and Jason Cornett’s crash and burn campaign are reason enough to scrap voter owned elections.

  3. I don’t understand the “even East Portland state Representative Jefferson Smith” part. That’s written as if this should surprise someone. Should it?

  6. I guess people thought Jefferson Smith would be the “left” candidate in the election, when they all suck.

    But the order of suckiness seems to be follow their +$1000 percentages, we will probably get Eileen who will promptly try to sell out the city to the highest bidder.

  8. @Ardennes, I get it: despite the fact that he has previously accepted lobbyist/corporation/PAC money in his legislative races, he should be expected to be some sacred progressive hero because he made some jabs at the other candidates for taking big money.

  9. Campaign spending is about the only growth industry in Portland.

    If you want a cap on donations, put it to the voters. You don’t keep a shitty program like “voter owned elections” for the ancillary benefits.

  10. Your phrasing is misleading. It’s not “80 percent of checks written
    to Charlie Hales… have been for at least $1000″, but rather, “80
    percent of the money contributed has been in the form of checks for at
    least $1000.” If you’re looking at the number of checks themselves,
    only 5% of the checks were for > $1000.

    Another interesting number is $199,010 / 45 == $4422.

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