Multnomah County officials on Tuesday unveiled the first concept for a public campaign finance program that Chair Jessica Vega Pederson is proposing to halt in her budget.
Given the estimated launch cost of $5 million, Vega Pederson determined that the county is too cash-strapped to move forward.
The Board of Commissioners approved $500,000 in funds last year to form an implementation advisory committee and fund a 77-page report to propose the best path toward a public campaign finance program for county elections, similar to that of Portland’s. The goal was to install the program before county races switch to ranked-choice voting in 2026.
The program would allow candidates secure county funds to campaign if they reach a certain number of donors. It’s meant to help level the playing field for those running for office who may not have backing from big organizations or don’t have the dollars to self-fund their campaigns.
Due to budget constraints, including a $15.5 million shortfall in the county’s $897 million general fund, Vega Pederson is proposing to pause implementation of the program. It had been slated to receive another $500,000 in fiscal year 2026 to start building infrastructure, including setting up the internal technology needed to operate the program, hiring staff and educating voters on how it would work, budget documents show.
“This year, we’re in a different place,” Vega Pederson said. “In a very tough budget year where it is absolutely my priority to make our frontline services at Multnomah County remain intact as much as possible, I made the difficult decision not to include the implementation of this program in my proposed fiscal year ‘26 budget.”
The implementation committee recommended the county allocate $5 million by December to launch the program and roughly $4 million in matching funds each year after that. That money would be pulled from the county’s general fund, its largest pool of discretionary dollars.
Unlike Portland, which matches the first $20 Portlanders give to participating candidates 9-to-1, the county advisory committee recommended using flat grants. Those grants would be distributed across four tiers depending on the number of donors each candidate gets.
Candidates for county chair would need 200 donors to score the first grant of $50,000. Commission, sheriff and auditor candidates would have an opening threshold of 100 donors, with $40,000 grants for board candidates and $30,000 sums for the sheriff and auditor. The committee recommended capping grants funds at $650,000 for the chair’s race, $250,000 for commission seats, $100,000 for the sheriff’s office and $50,000 for the auditor.
The county committee also recommended changing the cap for donations from individuals or organizations to $350. The county set a campaign contribution limit of $588 in 2022.
The board will vote on whether to approve the chair’s budget Thursday, a deviation from previous years when it voted the day the budget was released. Once the preliminary budget is approved, the board will hold several weeks of budget sessions to potentially reallocate funds and vouch for programs board members want to save.
Even if the Board of Commissioners reject Vega Pederson’s proposal and opts to provide $500,000 for the implementation of the program in the upcoming budget, it’s unclear where the rest of the funding needed to stand up the program would come from. Vega Pederson’s budget proposes eliminating the public campaign finance program manager position. That role is currently filled by Daniel Lewkow, who abruptly resigned as deputy director to Portland’s Small Donor Elections program in November after accusing his boss of bullying behavior and widespread mismanagement.
Portland relaunched its campaign finance program in 2020 and it played a pivotal role in the November election, although quid-pro-quo donations between candidates prompted an investigation by the Oregon Secretary of State. The program moved to significantly slash its public financing for qualified candidates in December 2023 amid a tight budget and surge of City Council and mayoral candidates choosing to run in the first election held under Portland’s new form of government. The contests to fill the city’s 12-member City Council and elect a new mayor drew over 100 candidates.
Commissioner Juila Brim-Edwards raised several concerns with the recommendations for launching the program, including the recurring $4 million charge to keep the program funded. She also raised issues with the lower public matching funds for the sheriff and county auditor. Officials said that was done because those races historically have fewer candidates and less independent spending.
“The sheriff and the auditor currently run countywide, just like the county chair,” Brim-Edwards said. “And yet the limits are substantially lower, which doesn’t make any sense to me because they have theoretically the same number of voters. In some ways, it seems to be making them lesser offices.”
Commissioner Meghan Moyer was supportive of the proposal, but asked that the stipulations for how the campaign finance system would work be brought to voters for final approval.
Both Vega Pederson’s and Commissioner Shannon Singleton’s seats will be up for grabs in November 2026. Singleton defeated former Portland Mayor Sam Adams in November in a special election to fill the District 2 seat left behind by former Commissioner Susheela Jayapal.
During that race, Adams secured significant backing in the form of independent expenditures from a political branch of business coalition United for Portland. Singleton believes the small donor finance program would be a way to even the odds, she said.
“It’s just unfortunate that we’re in the financial situation that we are,” Singleton said. “Right now, the way our rules are set up, wealthy people have a distinct, significant, advantage because of no limits due to self-financing. And independent expenditures have an outsized influence when we have campaign finance limits with no public match.”
— Austin De Dios covers Multnomah County politics, programs and more. Reach him at 503-319-9744, [email protected] or @AustinDeDios.
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