Push To Open Up Mayor's Races In S.F., Public Financing Measure Designed To Level Playing Field
After watching Gavin Newsom outspend their leading candidate by a 5-to-1 margin on the way to a narrow victory in the 2003 mayor's race, San Francisco's liberal progressives are on the verge of a political victory they hope will level the financial playing field for the next election.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up -- and is expected to pass -- a public financing measure for candidates running for mayor.
Backers say the system -- mirroring one already in place for supervisorial elections -- would blunt the influence well-heeled private donors wield in mayoral contests and increase the pool of viable candidates for the city government's top elective office.
"We want to reduce the time that candidates have to spend trying to raise money so they have more time to engage with people and discuss the issues,'' said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a Green Party member who has carried the legislation at City Hall.
Critics, however, say there are better uses for the millions of dollars in taxpayer money that would be handed over to mayoral candidates every four years, particularly when City Hall faces chronic deficits. Some potential beneficiaries of public financing of mayoral campaigns could be members of the Board of Supervisors who will be voting to approve the program.
And Newsom, while saying he believes in public financing, questions the timing, suggesting he thinks the measure is aimed at him.
"It guarantees that there will be a half-dozen people running against me that are well financed,'' said Newsom, looking ahead to a re-election campaign next year. "There's no question it will make for a more competitive mayor's race, and having gone through the last one, might as well go through another one.''
The mayor said he won't decide whether he will support the legislation until seeing the final version. But nine of the 11 supervisors have signaled support for the measure, including Newsom allies Bevan Dufty and Fiona Ma, both moderates.
Dufty, who accepted campaign contributions of only $100 or less and only from people who lived or worked in San Francisco when he ran, said public financing could go a long way to build public trust in the electoral process.
"I really do think that the benefit far outweighs the cost, and you simply can't put a price on it,'' Dufty said.
Public financing laws already have been enacted, in one form or another, in such cities and states as Los Angeles, Sacramento, Long Beach, Tucson, Portland, Ore., New York City, Maine and Arizona. A version of public financing has been used for San Francisco Board of Supervisors campaigns since 2002.
San Francisco's proposed program for mayoral contests would cost an estimated $1.5 million a year -- about $6 million per election cycle -- and could change the dynamic of the races by giving more candidates a better shot at contending with the big spenders.
Campaign money buys air time and mail, and pays for polls that can help candidates tailor their message.
"It's about leveling the playing field,'' said Rob Arnow, who is spearheading the campaign for public financing in San Francisco mayoral races. "We want to create a situation where the voters have an opportunity to make a decision based on the candidates and not so much their fundraising abilities."
In the last mayor's race, Newsom spent $5.7 million to the $900,000 spent by his chief rival, then-Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonazalez. Newsom won in the December 2003 runoff, 53 to 47 percent.
The dynamic of the contest paralleled the race four years earlier between then-incumbent Mayor Willie Brown, who raised $3.4 million, and Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who raised $369,000.
In the 1999 race, as in 2003, the more liberal progressive candidate waited until relatively late in the election cycle to start his candidacy -- Ammiano ran as a write-in candidate -- in part to conserve what promised to be a smaller campaign fund and to shorten his exposure to attacks from the better-funded foe. In 1999, Brown wound up having an easier time than Newsom would four years later, winning 60 to 40 percent.
Observers on both sides of the debate agree that public financing will mean candidates who attract less in the way of private campaign contributions will be able to afford to get in the races earlier.
Under Mirkarimi's measure, candidates would not have to participate in the public financing program -- the U.S. Supreme Court made sure of that -- but the trend in places where such a system exists shows that the longer it is on the books, the more office-seekers choose to opt in.
The push for a taxpayer-financed campaign program in San Francisco -- an initiative that supporters dub "voter-owned elections'' -- comes as the demand for campaign finance reform has hit fever pitch at the national level amid fallout from revelations of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's donations to federal lawmakers.
"What we want to do, essentially, is reduce any pay-to-play instinct ... that often engulfs candidates and politicians,'' Mirkarimi said.
Supporters point to a series of examples where contributors to San Francisco candidates landed lucrative development deals with the city.
One involved contributions to Brown's 1999 campaign. For that race, 13 Forest City Enterprises executives gave the legal maximum of $500 each to Brown's re-election effort.
Meanwhile, the company pumped another $50,000 in unregulated so-called soft money into a political action committee that campaigned on its own to help re-elect Brown. A year later, the company won the right to develop a retail and hotel complex South of Market at the site of the old Emporium department store, and it received a $27 million subsidy from the city's redevelopment agency.
Paul Ryan, associate legal counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., which advocates for campaign finance reform, noted that publicly funded campaigns like the one San Francisco is contemplating wouldn't eliminate the potential influence of special-interest money in campaigns.
"But the potential of the corrupting influence is reduced as more candidates over time start to rely on public money instead of private donations," he said.
Under the scenario envisioned for San Francisco, candidates still would have to raise money from private donors to qualify for matching funds from the city.
Participants would have to agree to a spending cap of $1.375 million. Candidates who raise $525,000 on their own would be eligible for $850,000 in city money.
The cap on spending by participating candidates would be lifted if another candidate who doesn't take the public funds spends more than $1.375 million. In such cases, publicly financed candidates would have their expenditure limits raised to whatever their fully privately funded opponent has spent. Additional city funding would be available for the campaigns, if there's still money left in the pot.
Similarly, expenditures by independent committees that raise and spend money to elect or defeat certain candidates could activate the lifting of the spending cap for publicly financed candidates. That would happen if the committees' expenditures -- either on their own or when added to money spent by the candidate who benefits -- exceed the $1.375 million ceiling.
The push for public financing in mayoral elections has its roots in the city's political left -- groups such as the Green Party, the Tenants Union and Global Exchange were early backers, for example.
But the plan also has picked up support from the Democratic Party, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, the League of Women Voters and the San Francisco Labor Council. The city's independent Ethics Commission, which oversees local campaign finance and lobbying regulations, gave the proposal its unanimous endorsement.
But representatives of the San Francisco Republican Party call it a waste of public money. So does the San Francisco Taxpayers Union.
"We tend to feel that taxpayers should not pay for races; the candidates should pay for them,'' said Mike DeNunzio, head of the local GOP.
Ironically, said political consultant Jim Ross, who worked on Newsom's 2003 campaign, conservative candidates, who have had little traction politically in San Francisco since the 1960s, could benefit most from public financing in San Francisco, because they don't have the political infrastructure in place that more liberal candidates do.
"In San Francisco, we have no shortage of progressives in office,'' Ross said. "Who it helps are people who don't have a natural fundraising base, and in San Francisco, those are the people who tend to be more conservative."
How it would work
Here is a look at the proposal for public financing for San Francisco mayor candidates:
To qualify
Candidates would have to receive at least 250 donations, in increments of $100 or more, from San Francisco residents before public funding would kick in.
Allocation
Qualified candidates initially would receive $50,000 in public money. For the next $100,000 in private contributions raised, candidates would get matching funds of $4 for every $1 raised. For the next $400,000 in private contributions, the public match would be $1 for every $1 raised.
Spending cap
Participating candidates would have to agree to a $1.375 million spending cap. The limit would be increased if another candidate in the race, or a committee working on his or her behalf, spent more than $1.375 million.
Donation limit
No candidate in the race could accept individual donations that exceed $500.
Funding
Money for the candidates would come out of the city's general fund. The cost would be capped at $2 per resident per year. At the current population, that would amount to about $6.2 million every election cycle.
E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon@sfchronicle.com.
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