Friday, February 5, 2010
Council Punts on Raising Donation Limits
Politics / People Robert Gammon — Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 10:14 AM
An Oakland city council committee decided to refer a proposal from City Attorney John Russo to double campaign contribution limits in city elections to the Public Ethics Commission. Councilwomen Jane Brunner and Jean Quan, who is running for mayor this year and opposes Russo’s recommendation, also rebuffed an effort by Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente to schedule Russo’s recommendation to the full council in mid March.
De La Fuente is a close friend and ally of mayoral candidate Don Perata who would greatly benefit from Russo’s proposal because he has already burned through more than $100,000 in campaign funds on expensive consultants. Russo’s proposal would raise the individual donation limits from $700 to $1,400 this year (they recently increased from $600) and allow mayoral candidates to spend more than $750,000 on this year’s campaign — a huge sum for one election cycle.
But if the council ultimately rejects the city attorney’s recommendation, then mayoral candidates will be limited to spending $379,000 before the November election under existing city law, which means that Perata can spend no more than $280,000 this year. Quan, by contrast, is running an almost all-volunteer effort and has only spent about $7,000 so far, meaning she can still spend more than $370,000 before election day.
Ethics Commission Executive Director Dan Purnell said at the committee meeting that he would recommend that the ethics commissioners conduct at least one special meeting in the coming weeks to address Russo’s proposal. Then after the ethics commission makes its own recommendation, it would come back to the council’s rules committee before heading to the full council sometime in March or early April.
Comments (10)
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"Handsome" needs to get some facts straight. Commmissioner Paul has never met Don Perata, never met Carlos Plazzola before he came before Ethics and I'm not a side-kick of Mr. Plazzola. He left OakPAC, which I chair, to go form the Oakland Builders Alliance, of which I am NOT a member.
Throwing around mistruths (aka lies) does nothing for one's credibility nor to help create a healthy public dialogue.
Michael
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"Handsome" needs to get some facts straight. Commmissioner Paul has never met Don Perata, never met Carlos Plazzola before he came before Ethics and I'm not a side-kick of Mr. Plazzola. He left OakPAC, which I chair, to go form the Oakland Builders Alliance, of which I am NOT a member.
Throwing around mistruths (aka lies) does nothing for one's credibility nor to help create a healthy public dialogue.
Bob,
The overall limit is the only thing working against Perata in this equation. But let's not forget that unrestricted spending has been completely deregulated by the supreme court.
I expect that we'll see a ton of unrestricted spending in this campaign. Possibly enough to render the donation limits moot. If any candidate feels like they're in danger of going over the limit, they will inevitably ask their allies to form PACs instead of making direct donations. This is illegal - coordination between canditates and PACs is banned. But catching people coordinating in this way is borderline impossible.
Max,
The one piece of the puzzle you're overlooking is the real reason why raising limits will help Perata -- he has already spent more than $100,000 on his mayoral campaign, primarily on consultants. So if the limits aren't raised from $379,000 to $758,000, he'll only be able to spend another $275,000 or so between now and election day. By contrast, Quan potentially will be able to spend more than $370,000 because she has only spent $7,000 so far. Same with any other candidate who chooses to get into the race. As a result, Perata will be at a disadvantage this year -- unless the limits are raised -- because of his profligate spending to date.
JH, by your logic, the biggest beneficiary to these upped spending limits would be Dellums, who's the incumbent. Or perhaps it would be Kaplan, because if you support her and she wins, you have a friend in the mayor's office, and if she loses, you have a friend in the most powerful council office.
If incumbents are the best fundraisers, remember that Dellums, Quan and Kaplan are incumbents, and Perata and Dan MacCleay hold no office. Strange to thing of Perata as being at a disadvantage here, but by both of our reasoning, that's how it pencils out.
Of course all of this assumes that you can influence important decisions about millions of dollars of spending with an investment of a measly $1400 campaign donation. If that were really true, I think we'd see a lot more of those sorts of donations.
The reality is that influence is much better achieved by showing up than by shelling out. Turnout, emails, phone calls and such are what really drives political decisions. Special interest influence, such as from the Chamber of Commerce or the Alameda Central Labor Council can also push politicians very hard in one direction or the other. But an individual campaign donation? I really don't think so.
I've had a conversation with a councilmember where I brought up a $600 donor to her campaign and she'd forgotten who the donor even was. She knew the name, but not a thing about the man himself. My advice to people who want influence is to phonebank, walk precincts, and have smart ideas to share with politicians.
* Oops! That was supposed to say "obviously Dellums would be an incumbent" not challenger. Pardon the quick typing.
Max, I always appreciate your reasoning, but that was indeed a crazy comment. Challengers are not benefited by higher limits because in the vast majority of cases they are incapable of reaching those higher limits, whereas incumbents (holding the purse strings of the City's coffers) have little trouble raising such sums. I am willing to wager that if you did a survey of City Council challengers in the past 10 years very few (maybe 2-3) were able to hit the current max.
Your examples are a bit off too. Obviously, Dellums would not be an incumbent if he enters the race. And Kaplan, while a challenger, is also a Council incumbent so will not have much difficulty raising the funds. True challengers, meaning non-elected officials, would be hard-pressed to scrape together $700k.
Expenditure limits act as an equalizer, and make candidate ideas and vision more important than fundraising. Raising the limits will accomplish two things: 1) further entrench incumbents and 2) make it even more difficult for non-independently wealthy challengers to compete for elected office.
What nobody has said here yet is that Russo's suggestion to raise the limits actually might hurt Don Perata.
Sounds crazy, right? Wrong. The people who will be most helped by this change, if it happens, will be the people who haven't declared their candidacy yet.
It's looking ever more likely that Ron Dellums and possibly Rebecca Kaplan will enter this race. If they do, and if the fundraising limit goes up, they benefit more than Perata or Quan.
Why? Because undeclared candidates haven't raised any money yet, and they haven't spent any either. This means they get a chance to raise more and spend more in a shorter time window, which would radically improve their ability to get their message out.
I'm for raising the limit because it gives the challengers a better shot. The current frontrunners will use unrestricted PAC money if they run out of individual donations. That's even worse: we'd get no transparency, but plenty of spending anyway.
The person to watch at the Ethics Commission will be Ethic Commissioner Alex Paul. Mr. Paul is politically connected with Perata by way of his personal relationship with Michael Colbruno, a registered lobbyist, Chair of OAKPAC (Oakland's most influential PAC), and heavy-duty Perata supporter.
Moreover, Paul and Colbruno are buddies and side-kicks with Carlos Plazola, another lobbyist and big Perata supporter via his own lobbying organization, Oakland Builders Alliance. The builders group has already held one Perata fundraiser. Plazola was able to skate past an ethics complaint last year with the help of Mr. Paul, who called Plazola, "the kind of person Oakland likes to have" on the record during an Ethics Commission meeting.
Look for Paul to be unable to restrain himself in support of changing the contribution-spending limit. He'll be helping so many of his friends by doing so.
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