Street roots., February 17, 2012, Page 8, Image 8

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street roots
Feb. 17, 2012
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P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F A M A N D A FR ITZ
PH O TO CO URTESY OF M A R Y NO LAN
The dollars and cents behind the race for City Council, Position 1
BY JANICE THOMPSON
Janice Thompson is
C O N T R IB U T IN G
the executive director
for Common Cause
Oregon. She is the
former head of
Democracy Reform
Oregon (which was
previously known as
the Money in Politics
Research Action
Project). Common
Cause is a
nonpartisan,
nonprofit advocacy
organization founded
as a vehicle for
citizens to make their
voices heard in the
political process and
to hold their elected
leaders accountable to
the public interest.
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C O L U M N IS T
ncumbent City Commissioner Amanda
Fritz is being challenged by
Representative Mary Nolan who has
represented southwest Portland in the
Oregon House since 2001. In other words,
two current elected officials are facing off in
the Position 1 race for Portland City
Council. A third candidate, Teresa Raiford,
has filed to run in this election but has only
received one $102 contribution.
So far, Mary Nolan has raised $212,248
for this contest and has $171,503 on hand
while Amanda Fritz has raised $75,831 and
has $41,065 available now for continued
campaign spending. (These figures are
based on data downloaded from the state’s
campaign finance system, ORESTAR, on
Feb. 12., Oregon’s campaign must report
each contribution within 30 days after it is
received and within seven days of receipt
during the six weeks prior to an election.
This continuous reporting means that these
figures will have been updated by the time
this article is published.)
Fritz started her fundraising from zero
because she won her City Council position
using the Voter-Owned Elections reform
program. An under-reported element of that
reform program was that if a participating
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Table 1 - Fundraising by
three contribution size
groups as reported through
Feb. 12: dollar amounts and
percentages of total
undraising and numbers of
contributors
Candidates
Mary Nolan
Amanda Fritz
candidate was elected, he or she retained no
war chest and was barred from fundraising
between campaigns. Retention of the reform
system was defeated in November 2010 by a
narrow 49.6 percent margin.
Nolan had $13,740 in her campaign
account at the beginning of 2011 but did not
raise additional money during the legislative
session in the first half of last year due to a
fundraising ban adopted as a rule of the
Oregon House. These dollars are part of her
current ending cash balance of $171,503.
Nolan has raised $103,577 from 59
donors who wrote checks of $1,000 or more
with these dollars representing 49 percent
of her total contributions to date. Nolan’s
largest contribution is $20,000 from the
Portland Metro Fire Fighters PAC. Thirty-
seven percent of her fundraising, or
$78,745, came from 249 donors writing
checks between $101 and $999. Her
contributions of $100 or less add up to
$29,926 or 14 percent of her total
fundraising from an estimated 597 donors.
The total number of contributors to the
Nolan campaign is estimated to be 905.
(See Table 1.)
Fritz, in keeping with her previous run as
a reform program candidate, is not
accepting any contribution greater than $50.
Contributions in this category come to
$25,403 or 33 percent of her fundraising
thus far of $75,831. The rest of her
campaign fund is $50,428 of self-financing;
small in-kind contributions and two loans of
$25,000 from Fritz to her campaign in June
and December of 2011. This self-financing
comes to 67 percent of her total
contributions to date. The total number of
contributors to the Fritz campaign is
estimated to be 1017 donors. (See Table 1.)
Typically, financial underdogs who self­
limit contributions, like Fritz in this race,
are not successful unless they have
significant name recognition. The major
exception in recent Portland history is when
in 2004 Tom Potter, a popular former chief
of police with 30 years of public service,
beat Jim Francesconi who raised over a
million dollars.
As an incumbent Fritz does have name
recognition, however, Representative Nolan
is also well known and has proven
fundraising capacity. The same could be said
of Francesconi who in 2004 was a member
of the City Council, however. Voters mark
their ballots for a number of reasons, and in
this contest one reason could be the
different fundraising strategies of the two
candidates.
Contributions
$1,000 and up
$103,577
49%
59 contributors
Contributions
$101 to $999
$78,745
37%
249 contributors
Contributions
$100 or less
$29,926
14%
597 contributors*
Total Fundraising
$212,248
100%
905 contributors
$50,428
67%
1 contributor - self-financing
by Fritz
$0
0%
0 contributors
$25,403
33%
1016 contributors**
$75,831
100%
1017 contributors
* Contributions o f $100 or less do not have to be itemized by individual donor. Rather those
contributions are reported as aggregated dollar amounts. This means it is impossible to know
exactly how many donors are giving in the contribution category o f $100 or less. But our
standard procedure to develop an estimated number o f donors is to assume that each o f these
small donations is $50.
commissioner Tntz is self^mposmg a $50 cap on contributions. For this reason the procedure
used to develop an estimated number o f small dollar donors to her campaign is to divide the
dol ars for which contributions are unitemized by $25, an assumption that each contributions is
half o f her $50 contribution limit.
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