Carmen Rubio never imagined running for public office.
âI wasnât sure I would have access in the same way that traditional candidates have access,â says Rubio, the executive director of the Portland nonprofit Latino Network. She says she was deterred by Portland votersâ history of electing well-financed candidatesâmostly white menâas city commissioners.
But then Portland approved a new public campaign financing program: Open and Accountable Elections (OAE), a system built to give all politically minded Portlanders a fair shot at winning a local election.
To qualify for OAE, candidates for city council must first collect contributions from 250 Portlanders, each of whom has donated less than $250 to the candidateâs campaign. (The number of contributions doubles to 500 if the candidate is running for mayor.) At that point, the city will match all previous and future campaign donations up to $50 at a six-to-one rate, using money from the cityâs general fund. That means if a candidate collects 500 contributions of $25, the city will turn their $12,500 total into $75,000. (The city will only match the first donation an individual makes to a candidate.) Candidates participating in the May 2020 primary election will be the first to be allowed to use OAE.
The potential financing boost provided by OAE was enough to change Rubioâs mind about running: In early July, she became the first candidate to announce her run for city council, crediting OAE as a motivating factor. Sheâs one of several candidates hoping to replace outgoing Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who brought the idea of OAE to City Council in 2016.
âOpen and Accountable Elections allows me to be competitive,â says Rubio. âAnd it puts votersânot donorsâsquarely in the center of my campaign.â
Rubio is one of five candidates who have already registered to participate in OAEâand more have signaled their intent. Registering isnât a guarantee that an individual will actually raise enough money to qualify for OAE, but itâs given the city an idea of what kind of participation to expect.
For OAE staff, candidatesâ early engagement with the program is a positive sign, indicating that Portlanders want a more equitable way to run for office. But with eight months until Election Day, they also worry the program may be a victim of its own success. If more than two or three candidates participate, OAEâs small budget might bottom outâforcing the city to renege on its financial promises to candidates. While City Council has an opportunity to bulk up the OAE budget this fall, itâs still not clear if enough commissioners believe the program is worth investing in.
For people who support local campaign finance reform, the stakes are high.
âI donât want to see this fail,â says Commissioner Nick Fish. âIt could be the last chance we have to have publicly financed elections.â
Thatâs because Portlandâs already triedâand failedâto establish a public campaign finance program. The 2005 program, dubbed âvoter-owned elections,â was repealed by voters in 2010 after a candidate forged signatures to collect public dollars, costing taxpayers $90,000.
Fritz, who was first elected to council in 2008 using the original public funding system, is confident OAE wonât succumb to its predecessorâs pitfalls.
âUnlike voter-owned elections, this program is based on successful programs across the country,â says Fritz. âItâs tailored to fit Portland, but itâs already widely trusted.â
Portlandâs OAE was modeled after programs that have worked in San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles. To guarantee Portlandâs second attempt at public financing sticks, the city hired Susan Mottet to lead the cityâs OAE office. Mottet previously worked for the nonprofit Every Voice, where she worked to establish state and city policies regarding small-donor public financing.
Despite requesting an infallible program that would restore Portlandersâ trust in publicly financed elections, the city only gave Mottet a year to get the program up and running.
âThat was an extreme challenge,â says Mottet. âMost governments arenât designed to move that quickly.â
Mottet was tasked with writing the official OAE rules, forming a volunteer oversight commission, and working with coders to build the software that will allow the new financing program to work. That software, built by the nonprofit Civic Software Foundation, is expected to work much like state and federal campaign finance software programs. Candidates must report all campaign contributionsâand have donors verified by voter recordsâin order for them to be matched by the city.
This software needs to be in place by September 12, the first day candidates can file to run in the May 2020 election. But in late August, city commissioners learned that, while the critical elements of the software will come in on deadline, two important features will be turned in a month late. One will let candidates easily download data into spreadsheets, and the other will create regularly updated geographic heat maps to help candidates see what parts of the city donations are coming from.
Serin Bussell, who chairs the volunteer OAE Commission, says the software delays were caused by coding bugs that have since been squashed.
â[Mottet] saw problems and decided to solve them on the front-end, instead of after the software is up and running,â Bussell says.
Mayor Ted Wheeler didnât take the news well.
âI support the values of the program,â Wheeler told Mottet at an August 29 council meeting. âBut I want to continue to express my ongoing serious concerns about the viability of the program overall. What can you say to give us confidence that this program is ready to go?â
Bussell says she was struck by how quickly Wheeler criticized Mottet for pushing back the developerâs deadline in order to fix coding problems that would have created future headaches for the city.
âThe city should be supporting that kind of leadership,â Bussell says.
Mottet blames the delays on the short window of time she was given to get OAE off the ground.
âIâve told council, âThis is a problem of your own creation, and Iâm trying to fix it,ââ says Mottet. âBut it makes me nervous that it makes City Council so nervous.â
âIâve told City Council, âThis is a problem of your own creation, and Iâm trying to fix it.âââSusan Mottet, director of Open and Accountable Elections
Thatâs because City Councilâs faith in the new program will likely determine its success. If a large number of candidates choose to participate in OAE, leading its budget to run out of matching funds before Election Day, Mottet will need councilâs approval for additional funds.
Beginning in 2017, the city promised OAE an annual budget of $1.2 million. City Council wasnât able to fully fund the program in its inaugural year, however, which kept the city from staffing the program until 2018. OAE is still owed $950,000 from that initial budget, and Mottet expects to request those funds in October, when the council redistributes unused budget dollars.
Depending on OAEâs success, that infusion still might not be enough.
âIf everyone is participating in the program, and we have all run-off elections,â says Mottet, âitâs possible that this election cycle might need more than $950,000.â
Bussell, the OAE Commission chairperson, says requiring additional funding is a âgood problemâ for the program to have.
âTo me, that says this program is working,â she says. âThat proves that candidates truly need public financing to feel qualified to run.â
Fritz, whoâs made the success of OAE one of her final goals as commissioner, says she knows Commissioners Chloe Eudaly and Jo Ann Hardesty are âfirmly in supportâ of fully funding the program. But since Eudaly and Wheeler might both seek reelection in 2020âpotentially barring them from voting on the programâs budgetâdispersal of any additional funds could rely on Fishâs approval. And while Fish might be rooting for OAEâs success, that attitude might not determine how he votes in the fall.
Fish initially voted against the creation of the OAE when Fritz brought it to City Council in 2016, suggesting it was unfair to not let voters decide how their tax dollars were distributed. Now, like Wheeler, heâs concerned about the program meeting its software deadlines.
Still, when it comes to deciding whether to fully fund OAE, Fish says heâll âkeep an open mind.â
âI donât want to hobble the system and then blame the system afterwards,â he adds. âWeâve got to give it a fair chance to succeed.â
Fish says âtime will tellâ whether the city gave Mottet enough time to prepare the program. Candidates relying on public funds for the upcoming May 2020 election, however, donât have time to spare.
In early August, mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone announced sheâd collected the 500 small donations required to participate in OAE. An urban policy consultant, Iannarone says she intentionally built her campaign around the new financing program and is relying on its success.
âRunning as a candidate on progressive platform, without big political donors... thatâs a big risk,â says Iannarone. While Wheeler has yet to formally announce his plans to run for re-election, Iannarone says sheâs prepared to face the notoriously well-funded candidate. âOpen and Accountable Elections is a huge reason this feels possible,â she says.
Iannarone, who previously ran for mayor in 2016, says relying on small donors has changed the way she campaigns. Instead of prioritizing âtransactionalâ conversations with deep-pocketed donors, Iannarone says sheâs now able to engage with more voters.
Regardless of her campaignâs outcome, Iannarone says she hopes her publicly funded race serves as an example to political hopefuls who may be deterred by campaign costs.
âI want to show that running a campaign isnât out of reach for an average Portlander,â she says. âIt has the ability to be transformative.â