This morning, former (and future?) city council candidate Amanda Fritz posted a scathing critique of a mailer sent out by Charles Lewis, currently the only candidate officially running for city council. Lewis is running for Sam Adams’ seat, and he’s in it whether Adams runs for reelection or decides to run for a different office—every other potential candidate is waiting to see what Adams and Tom Potter decide.

He recently sent out a campaign mailer, emphasizing the fact that he’s running under the Voter Owned Elections program (as did Fritz in 2006). Apparently, many of the people who contributed to Fritz’s campaign received the mailer, as did Fritz herself, leading some people to wonder if she’d given Lewis her mailing list. She didn’t.

Fritz takes issue with the fact that Lewis’s mailing doesn’t say which seat he’s running for, and with the fact that donors who mail in contributions are asked to sign both the “donor” and “solicitor” part of the forms.

But what really concerns me is the letter’s instructions that donors should sign as both donor and collector of the $5 donation on the enclosed triplicate City form. The candidate says, “For mailed requests, you are your own “solicitor”. Write in your own name and address in this portion and don’t forget to sign.”

Now, last time, my donations sent by mail asked exactly the same thing. But the form was different - and that caused/allowed problems, as we saw in the fraud case. Recent program revisions were designed to address those problems, and the new form makes no sense if the contributor and the solicitor are the same person. The solicitor section now starts, “I hereby certify that I received a $5.00 qualifying contribution with the knowledge and consent of the candidate named above, that I gave nothing of value in return for the contribution….”. The donor didn’t receive the $5.00 contribution, they gave it, and the campaign received it. I’m disappointed the Lewis campaign isn’t recognizing that the fiasco and fraud in the initial cycle calls for greater effort to ensure candidates keep everything as well done as possible. Someone from the campaign should sign the lower portion of the form.

…I don’t believe that’s in keeping with the spirit of the revised form or rules. Especially with his mailing arriving at the same time the prison sentence was handed down on Golovan this week, I’m concerned that this candidate’s campaign, with brochures and envelopes championing his being “Voter Owned”, isn’t going the extra mile to follow the intent as well as the letter of the new revisions.

On that point, though, Lewis appears to be following the rules as laid out in the candidate handbook. From page 18: “If the receipt is mailed to the candidate with the $5 contribution, the contributor completes both the contributor and solicitor sections on the form.”

Lewis wasn’t happy about the post.

“If you want to get into the race, then get into the race,” he told me this morning, after I asked for his comment. “But just being on the sidelines and throwing rocks isn’t fair. What’s the issue? That I support Voter-Owned Elections? If that’s the case, it’s ridiculous.”

In other news, John Branam, the development director for Portland Public Schools, says he’s definitely in the race for city council—if Adams leaves his seat to run for a different office.