Advice for Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates

Mayor Potter is scheduled to announce his decision on whether to seek re-election as Portland’s Mayor, later today at 11:30 a.m. – coinciding with a day where my schedule is packed from 7:45 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., with four meetings as well as the usual school and family timelines. So I prepared this Top Ten list over the weekend, for posting before the announcement this morning. Regardless of which way Tom Potter chooses to go, after his announcement there will likely be more candidates finalizing their plans to run for Mayor or for City Commissioner. The seats currently occupied by Sam Adams and Randy Leonard are on the ballot in the May primary, too.

I hope all candidates, incumbents and challengers, use the Public Campaign Finance Fund program. At a minimum, it reduces the amount of special interest money influencing elections for Portland City Council. That should increase public confidence in subsequent votes of elected officials – along with electing people who will help clean up the system in other ways.

So far, one candidate has signed up to try to qualify for public funds in a run for City Commissioner, and two for Mayor. Many others may enter one of the races soon. Most of those named in speculation as interested in running for an open seat on the Portland City Council have never run for public office before. Several people who attempted to qualify for public financing last time and were unable to collect the required number of $5 contributions may try again. To date, I am the only person without previous campaign experience who has qualified for and used public campaign funds in Portland. So, here are some of my insights and suggestions for others considering or currently running.

1. Place the honor of Portland’s Public Campaign Financing system higher than your personal political ambitions.

If approved by voters in 2010, the Public Campaign Financing program can make a far greater difference to the future of Portland than any one person could hope to achieve by winning an election. When considering campaign actions, events, spending, and advertising, don’t ask yourself just “Will doing this help me win the election?”. Ask, “Will doing this reflect well or poorly on Public Campaign Financing?”. And particularly, “If this action I’m about to take ends up on the front page of the Oregonian, will I send copies to my friends and relatives?” Treat every action you take, public or private, as potentially appearing in the media as a reflection of the success or failure of Public Campaign Financing. Critics, especially the Oregonian, will be looking for ANY discrepancies, large or small, to highlight how terrible they think this program is. Run your campaign so the brightest searchlights reveal only good things.

2. Ask lots of questions.

Public Campaign Funding is a new program, one which is still getting the kinks worked out. It’s not as well understood by administrators as traditional campaign finance rules (although those are convoluted and hard to navigate, too). If in doubt about whether something complies with the program rules or not, ask staff in the Auditor’s office. And ask people outside the Auditor’s office, too. Sometimes you won’t get a simple answer from the Auditor’s office, anyway. Their job is to protect the City’s interest, not to give you legal advice. Their staff will often refer you to the relevant section of the manual rather than answering a question with Yes/No. Find a small group of volunteers with skills and careful attention to detail and ethics, to help you figure out what the rules are and how to follow them.

3. If in doubt, err on the side of caution. Do not attempt to cut corners even if doing so may be legal.

There aren’t rules for everything. And regulations, generally, are often baseline standards. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” rather than “Emptying the dishwasher/taking the trash out, once in a while, is good for a marriage”. As well as meeting the standards in the regulations, think, “Is this the best possible way to do this?” Your choices may translate into helpful revisions for when the program is referred to voters. For example, I chose not to use public funds for my election night party. It didn’t seem right to me to spend taxpayers’ money on it, so I donated the expenses and reported them as such. The latest amendments of the rules incorporated that prohibition as a standard.

I posted at the end of last week my concern with having mailed in donations signed by only one person as both donor and solicitor. While that is indeed legal under the program rules, it doesn’t safeguard candidates from claims that the entire donation form was forged. Having the donor sign as contributor, and a volunteer from the campaign collect the $5 and sign as solicitor, is a better way to go.

I personally don’t agree with the “seed money” component of the program. I think asking some donors for up to $100, with a total limit of several thousand dollars for such donations, makes qualifying easier for candidates with rich friends than those whose supporters may sacrifice to give even $5. And that’s not fair. Plus, seed money donors don’t have to live in Portland. I urge candidates to choose not to collect seed money in amounts over $5, even though it’s allowed under the current rules.

If you do collect seed money, ask only people with whom you have longstanding relationships, and be prepared to publish and justify the list of those who donated more than others to your campaign. To me, your mom giving your campaign $100 is very different from someone unrelated to you doing so who regularly does business with the City Council. I didn’t accept any seed money donations in my campaign, so qualifying without taking more than $5 from any Portlander has been done. Try it, you’ll be glad you did.

4. Look for potential ways to improve the process to make it more open, transparent, and useful, and suggest them to the Auditor’s office.

Think about ways to improve the rules and practices as you find issues with them. For instance, the form used to document donations last time didn’t have space for phone or e-mail contact information, making it difficult to check on illegible or mis-written addresses. We suggested changes; the Auditor’s office was able to amend it as an administrative action, and candidates collecting signatures later than my campaign had verification information more easily available.

5. You have to be able to trust your campaign treasurer with your life. Literally.

You may end up in jail if that person is incompetent or dishonest. You personally are on the line for big fines and penalties if reporting and spending mistakes are made. Pick someone outside your family, who you know well. And have someone else (or even several people) double check records and deadlines, even though you trust your treasurer. Even the best people make mistakes, and it’s a lot of work and pressure to be the only one checking and reporting.

6. If you qualify for public campaign funds, hire an accountant familiar with employment tax law.

You will be filing federal Employer tax forms, perhaps for the first time in your life, and like other federal tax issues, they aren’t simple.

As far as practicable, I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates avoid employing people as campaign staff who helped solicit and collect qualifying donations.

7. Seek inclusion of all other candidates using the Public Campaign Finance system, whether or not they qualify for public funds.

In the traditional system, the decision about who is a “viable” candidate is made largely by the media, and money. Portland is at risk for continuing to allow the media to frame elections and electability.

Having funds is only part of leveling the playing field. Campaigning is arduous and time-consuming. People sign up to run because they have something to say which they believe is important enough to put the rest of their lives on hold. Listen to other candidates. In the campaign last time, my co-challengers and I referred to each other as “co-stars”. We truly liked each other, and appreciated the different perspective each of us brought to the campaign. As with the eight unfunded neighborhood stalwarts who challenged Randy Leonard in 2004, we did not run against each other, rather talked about how each of us would offer different skills and qualities compared with the incumbent.

8. Whether challenging an incumbent or in an open race, the use of public money calls for new ethics in campaigning.

I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates accept nothing personally as a gift, unless you declare it as an in-kind donation. Making the threshold for donations zero-or-declare-it is easy and clean. Even now, I don’t accept coffee or lunch as courtesies from people who may want to influence my decisions if I ever have the power to make some that matter.

I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates talk about issues and actions they disagree with, rather than the character and performance of other people.

I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates avoid negative campaigning or false positive claims, particularly in advertisements paid for with public funds.

I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates don’t use robo-calls. As I said in my post on the topic, enough people find them irritating that the benefit of using them to get your message out is outweighed by the negative effect on the honor of Public Campaign Financing. In my opinion, many Portlanders don’t want their tax dollars used to send them automated phone messages.

I suggest Public Campaign Finance Fund candidates don’t use the public records of other candidates’ $5 donations to solicit for their own campaign.

9. Promise, in writing, that if elected you will refer the Public Campaign Finance system to the voters in November 2010.

It may seem like a small detail. The current Council can’t bind the 2010 members to refer the issue to voters. If you believe in the system, and trust Portland voters, pledge to refer the program in 2010 if you’re elected.

10. Keep in touch with the people who help you maintain perspective and balance.

Campaigning expands to fit the time available. When you’re trying to reach 100,000 voters in a primary, and you don’t know for sure which of 370,000 registered voters those people might be, there are clearly not enough hours in the day, or days before the Primary. Being a candidate is unbelievably hard on relationships with family members and friends in your real life. Literally – I know you won’t believe me until you’ve experienced not seeing your loved ones for more than five minutes a day for nine months. But it’s those people who really care about you. It’s those people who love you enough to tell you if you’re about to make a big mistake, or perhaps merely that you look horrible and should take the day off to sleep.

Remember, in nine months you may have won the election and lost your sweetheart. You may have lost the election and be welcomed back to your loved ones. Or you may have lost the election and also your relationships. Those who win election and keep all their true friends are in the very small minority. Public campaign financing gives people a better chance to survive running for public service without harming your family budget, without begging for big money from people who don’t really care about you. That ought to leave a little more time for nurturing your own spirit and those of people you love. Don’t mess up the program, don’t mess up your life. Make good use of this opportunity the men of the Portland City Council gave you when they voted to implement this enlightened program.