City campaign cash anything but a handout

Monday, December 05, 2005

Sometime this week, neighborhood activist Amanda Fritz will be getting a check for $39,775 of taxpayers' money.

In February, she'll get $104,000 more to run her campaign against City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who is up for re-election in May.

Fritz is the first Portland resident to take advantage of the city's trial run of its new campaign-financing plan, intended to encourage women and minorities to run for City Council. Four others are in the process of collecting the thousand $5 donations they need to qualify before the March 30 deadline.

Bruce Broussard, one of two black candidates, is running against Saltzman, too. But after supporting what his Web site called "this new and bold approach," Broussard recently opted out in protest of city rules that don't require donors be registered voters or at least of voting age.

"I'm just going to do it the old-fashioned way," Broussard says.

The process -- which is under threat of repeal by business groups -- is not as easy as critics think. Even Fritz, who has been actively involved in city goings-on for more than two decades, struggled to come up with her initial list of potential donors.

"One thousand people is a lot of people," says Fritz, who between her campaign and her job as an OHSU psychiatric nurse puts in 17-hour days. "I didn't think it was going to be easy, but it was even harder than I thought it was going to be."

Because Portland's process is untested, arbitrary rules make it harder for candidates to qualify. For example, it takes only one wrong signature or address to disqualify the whole list.

"We're still working on taking the theory to reality," says Sue Francois, who runs the campaign-finance program for the city auditor. "So there will be improvements in the next go-round."

It took Fritz about three months to collect 1,045 donors, who also questioned her about police, PGE and tax abatements. Even her close associates didn't pull out their wallets right way.

"It wasn't just their five bucks, it was going to commit city dollars," Fritz says. "So even some of my best friends said, 'That's very interesting, I'll check your Web site and get back to you.' "

She quickly realized that asking friends for money, even $5, has the potential to strain relationships. "You can't help but remember," Fritz says, "who said 'yes' and who said 'no.' "

Money trickled in over the Internet, in the mail and from 22 house parties in 17 different communities. The rest came from 100 volunteer solicitors collecting $5 donations from all but five of Portland's 95 neighborhoods.

For the most part, Fritz had to depend on folks she encountered during her years of activism and volunteer work. A woman from Arbor Lodge agreed to help because of Fritz's 2003 fight with the city over developers squeezing two- and three-story homes onto lots as narrow as 15 feet.

A Portsmouth woman volunteered because she saw Fritz plant trees in North Portland. Two other women, one from Hazelwood and another from Woodland Park, were on a citywide parks group led by Fritz.

A Cully resident remembered how Fritz helped win neighborhood-friendly amendments in the city's subdivision code revisions. A Northwest man liked what Fritz wrote on a News4Neighbors blog posting. And a Southwest resident who, like Fritz, protests the OHSU tram, collected signatures for her in the Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood.

Based on Fritz's experience, it's clear it will take more than race, gender or cursory interest to get access to the city's $150,000 campaign gift.

"People are really not willing to hand over five bucks just on a casual, five-minute conversation," Fritz says. "This is one of the beauties of the system; it's so participatory."

But like anything else worth having, you have to want it bad enough to work hard for it. Even free money will cost you something.

S. Renee Mitchell: 503-221-8142; rmitch@news.oregonian.com; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland OR 97201