Back to dirty money

Two of the leading candidates for mayor of Portland are apparently giving up (sorry, paywall) on having the taxpayers fund their election campaigns under the ciity's misguided public campaign finance system. Because they can siphon only $100,000 apiece out of the public till for that purpose, Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio are reportedly going the private-money route. They'll be taking unlimited contributions from the wealthy through political action committees.

But don't worry, folks! According to the O, everybody on the clown bus running for City Council can still get up to $300,000 apiece of tax dollars to convince you to elect them to the new book club.

This is so much dough being so poorly spent. Portland started in with this "clean money" bit (now called "small donors") in 2006. It was one of those wonderful Erik Sten Era experiments, like taking over PGE and giving out free municipal wi-fi. Since then, we've shelled out millions upon millions to finance marginal candidates' fantasies. Has the quality of the people on the City Council gotten better, or worse? To me, it seems worse. Chloe Eudaly, Jo Ann Hardesty, Amanda Fritz, the list of bad pennies is long. And most of the clunkers would never have made it to the cushy chairs without the taxpayer handouts for their campaigns.

What we get for all that "clean money."

I'm glad that Rubio and Gonzalez are leaving that 200 grand on the table. I wish the city would fold up the table and end the waste. If you can't convince enough people with money to set you up with a decent campaign war chest to work with, you aren't going to be good on the City Council, anyway.