Business targets City Hall, Sten in bid to regain clout

Portland business A coalition seeks to repeal a new city program and recruits a challenger to run for council

Thursday, November 03, 2005

ANNA GRIFFIN

For the movers and shakers who make up Portland's business elite, the past year in city politics has pretty much stunk.

First, the guy they backed for mayor, Jim Francesconi, lost to former police chief and self-proclaimed reformer Tom Potter.

It's been downhill from there. On everything from the city's involvement in a federal anti-terrorism task force to whether Portland would buy Portland General Electric, Potter and his colleagues have stood up against a small but powerful and politically active group of downtown property owners and utility company executives.

"It's been very, very sad to watch," said J. Clayton Hering, president of the commercial real-estate firm Norris, Beggs & Simpson.

Now, the suits are striking back.

A coalition of business leaders, including the men and women who make up the leadership list at the Portland Business Alliance, is trying to gain enough signatures to force a May 2006 vote to repeal a new city program that offers taxpayer funding for City Hall campaigns.

They've also recruited a serious challenger to run against Commissioner Erik Sten next year. He's the architect of the so-called "voter-owned elections," and of the city's failed attempt to buy Portland General Electric. He was also an outspoken opponent of Texas Pacific Group's failed bid to buy the utility -- a deal that would have made small fortunes for several of Portland's power players.

"The people who are working on the repeal side and against Commissioner Sten are basically the ones who two years ago had most of the political clout and power in town," said Carol Cushman, president of the Portland League of Women Voters and a proponent of public financing. "There have been a number of changes in Portland, and these people are trying to get back what they think they've lost."

It's true that the political climate in Portland has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. For years, Neil Goldschmidt was the one business lobbyist in town who enjoyed immediate access and influence in any government office. When the former Portland mayor and Oregon governor fell from grace, caught up in the scandal surrounding his sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl and the ensuing decades-long cover-up, he left behind a leadership vacuum in the private sector.

Potter won the mayor's race last year by running as an alternative to big money politics. He refused donations of more than $25 in the primary and $100 in the general election, and didn't blanch when he lost the endorsements of the Portland Business Alliance and other influential establishment groups. He arrived at City Hall promising to make government more transparent, and to increase the opportunities for regular people to get involved.

Today, he leads a City Council that is noticeably light on private sector experience. Sten and Commissioner Sam Adams both have spent their adult lives working in politics. Commissioner Randy Leonard is a retired firefighter and union leader. Commissioner Dan Saltzman briefly ran his own environmental engineering company in the 1980s, in between working in Washington, D.C., for then-U.S. Rep. Ron Wyden and on his first run for office.

"A lot of the frustration within the business community comes from a sense that nobody on the City Council understands what they need and what they do," said State Sen. Ginny Burdick, a Portland Democrat who has begun accepting contributions to run against Sten. "Our business community doesn't want to own anyone on the City Council, but they do want to feel welcome."

Burdick describes herself as a "Portland liberal," and says she's gotten plenty of criticism for that from colleagues in Salem.

But she also works for the powerful PR firm of Gard and Gerber. That puts her squarely in the corner of "approved business candidate." Supporters of Sten and public financing say she's part of a small network fighting to hold onto their diminished clout and pay back the commissioner for his role in undermining Texas Pacific.

Some of the connections are obvious. Gard and Gerber did public relations for Texas Pacific during its attempt to buy PGE, producing ads featuring local business types touting the deal. The advertising firm also handles public relations for the group trying to kill public campaign financing, and they did PR work for Goldschmidt after his sex scandal came to light.

Not a diverse group

That coalition isn't exactly huge or diverse, at least not judging by the lists of supporters they've made public so far. A quick scan of the "First Things First" committee's list of supporters shows almost all the backers coming from a select group of big downtown property owners, vocal conservatives and people tied to utility companies and the private effort to buy Portland General Electric.

Voters should expect to hear plenty about all those personal and political ties in 2006, assuming proponents of the repeal succeed in getting the 26,691 signatures needed to put it on the ballot.

"This should be called the 'Big Business First' campaign," said Marshall Runkel , a former Sten aide who is helping fight the repeal. "It's not about city services and how the city uses its money. It's about influence."

The business community is not thrilled with Potter, although the mayor has tried to build bridges with it. His office worked closely with the Portland Business Alliance on a new downtown safety plan, and he chose a candidate recommended by the business group -- financial consultant and Urban League leader Charles Wilhoite -- to run an upcoming review of the city charter.

Yet Hering and others still grumble about the mayor's decision to pedal his recumbent bike last winter in the monthly bike protest sponsored by Critical Mass, and his office's decision not to provide a letter of support to the Mrs. Oregon pageant because lesbians were not eligible. Such critics say his early decision to control all the city's bureaus for his first six months in office has created a backlog of work that needs to get done.

Sten remains focus

But if Potter is a pesky bee in the business elite's bonnet, Sten is their bogeyman.

"There have been many, many issues on which we have disagreed with Erik Sten," said Judy Peppler , the Oregon president of Qwest.

Said Hering: "I think Sten is beatable, and I think the person running can beat him, and I think a lot of people who contribute to the economy of this city would be pleased to see that happen."

For weeks, political observers and even some of his fellow City Council members have wondered when Sten was going to start answering his critics -- and whether his relative silence, even as Burdick began to put her campaign together, meant he might not seek reelection.

It's been a difficult year for him, including his very public failure to steer a city buyout of PGE and the death of his father. Sten has been talking more frequently in recent months about the prospects of life outside city government: This spring, for example, he acknowledged that he was interested in becoming the new executive director of the Portland Development Commission. He couldn't seek the job because he was in the midst of the PGE negotiations.

Sten, however, says neither his opponents nor his friends should mistake his silence for complacency. He says he's been letting his critics have their say because he thinks they're proving the theory behind his campaign finance plan: That the electoral process has been corrupted by a few deep-pocketed donors who are scared of losing their power.

"I don't want people to think I'm not paying attention. Why should I get in the way of their soapbox?" he said Wednesday. "They're finally being honest about their ideas, and I'm pretty sure Portland voters won't agree with them."