by Jim Scheppke 

With just a couple weeks to go until the election, most of the money has been contributed and spent by all ten candidates for mayor and city council. So it’s a good time to see what that looks like. Fortunately we require all major candidates to post their contributions and expenses to the ORESTAR database run by the Oregon Secretary of State, so it’s not too difficult to see what has been going on.

As of May 1st here is the big picture for our five Progressive candidates and the five conservative candidates supported by Marion+Polk First, a Republican-aligned group that has become a big player in both School Board and City Council elections in recent years.

Not surprisingly, our candidates are being outspent by more than 2:1. That has always been true for Progressive Salem ever since we began a decade ago. That’s why our strategy has always been “organized people beat organized money,” and it’s nearly always worked for us. Here is how things look going down to the individual candidate level.

Same story. Where it gets really interesting is when you look at where the money is coming from. Our candidates get a nice balance of small donations, medium-sized donations and large donations. 

It’s quite a contrast when you look at donation sizes for the Marion+Polk First candidates.

Only 4% of the money contributed to our opposition comes from small donors and a whopping 83% comes from over-$1,000 donors! They are donors like developer Larry Tokarski and his company ($57,000), our firefighters union ($14,500), the Oregon Realtors ($12,000) and retired auto dealer Dick Withnell ($10,639). The Marion+Polk First political action committee contributed $102,839 to their candidates, but $100,000 of that came from a shadowy new group called Businesses for Community who can launder their money by giving it to Marion+Polk First.

Of course all this is possible because until now Oregon has had no campaign finance limits. That is supposed to change next year with some new limits passed by the Legislature. So let’s hope this might be the last year that we have to do battle with really big spenders!

Betsy Vega wants to represent Ward 6 on Salem City Council. She just needs you to ignore a few things first. Like the fact that 86% of her campaign funding comes from Marion-Polk First and the Oregon Realtors PAC. Not from Ward 6 neighbors. Not from East Salem families. From two outside money interests with their own very specific reasons for wanting a friendly vote on the council. When developers and real estate PACs are bankrolling 86 cents of every dollar you raise, you are not a community candidate.

And what has Betsy chosen to lead with? A bold public stance on the Oregon gas tax referendum — a statewide ballot measure that a Salem city councilor has exactly zero power over. Salem City Council does not pass state law. Does not repeal state law. Has nothing to do with it. Betsy Vega has the same influence over this referendum as your neighbor’s golden retriever.

Listen, it’s clear the gas tax referendum is doomed. But the funding Betsy is so loudly opposing? It flows back to municipalities like Salem for road maintenance. Betsy Vega is campaigning against money for Salem roads while running for the body that oversees Salem roads. The PACs that built her apparently forgot to brief her on that part. Ward 6 desperately needs road improvements.

Now she’s going after Mai Vang for having a personal opinion on public transit funding too — specifically, for saying she personally supports mass transit and Cherriots while making clear that as a councilor she’d leave funding decisions to voters. But here’s the part Betsy really doesn’t want you to think too hard about: Salem City Council has no vote on any SAMTD payroll tax. Cherriots is an independent district. A Ward 6 councilor cannot impose it, block it, or control it in any way. Vega is attacking Mai Vang for a personal opinion on a tax that the seat she’s running for has zero jurisdiction over.

Yes, the candidate who reads her answers is attacking her opponent for actual thoughts.

Ward 6 has a clear choice: a candidate who was built by outside money, or a candidate who was built by this community. One of them knows what Ward 6 actually needs and what a city councilor actually does. Vote wisely.