October 17, 2004

Potter Again Disavows Political Committee Using His Name

PAC Issues Voter's Guide, Including Candidate Endorsements

We tacked onto the previous item a link to Friday's "City Matters" column in The Oregonian but didn't go into any of the campaign news contained within it. There is one story, however, that we want to take some time to address, beginning with what the column had to say about it.

One campaign-finance item that sticks in Francesconi's craw is a pro-Potter political action committee unbound by the limits Potter has set on his own campaign. The most recent records show the GoPotterGo! PAC raised $10,000 over the summer from three donors. PAC organizer Adrian Russell-Falla, a former paid Potter campaign staffer, and Potter both strongly deny any tie between the campaign and PAC. Russell-Falla says he started the PAC so Potter wouldn't be empty-handed against Francesconi.

Expect the PAC's plugs for Potter to start surfacing as soon as this weekend. Russell-Falla, a technology marketer, won't reveal if the PAC will again buy pro-Potter ads on radio and in newspapers. The latest records show the PAC's biggest expenditure is a $3,500 payment to Russell-Falla for what he calls strategic services, fund raising and executing communications strategy.

First, you can check these search results for our previous coverage of the PAC in question. You will note that its relationship or lack thereof to the Potter campaign itself has been a long-standing battle between the two Mayoral camps, as well as between Potter and the PAC.

Secondly, the PAC's activities that the column suggests would start this weekend appears to be the delivery of what it calls a progressive voter's guide in the form of "tens of thousands" of door-hanger messages to Portland households. This guide leads us to the latest salvo out of the actual Potter campaign, wherein the candidate once again indicates his irritation of the PAC's activities:

Potter said, "I have made no endorsements in most candidate races, and certainly none in the local races, nor do I intend to. I am furious that this group has chosen to use my name in connection with a slate of endorsements that I have nothing to do with. I am formally asking this PAC to stop using my name for its political activities."

While the PAC's guide makes a number of endorsements, we assume that the one that rankles the Potter campaign the most is that the PAC specifically endorses Sam Adams in the Commissioner No. 1 race, while Potter himself has not announced any preference between Adams and his opponent NIck Fish.

In the end, for us, the unfortunate aspect of this entire thing is that the PAC really has been little more than a distraction, and an opportunity for Francesconi to try to smear Potter for not adhering to the ideals of his own campaign. During the primary, Potter didn't need the PAC to help him overcome Francesconi's ineffective campaign. During the general election, the PAC's only real influence has been to force Potter to spend time coutnering Francesconi's charges that there is direct coordination between the campaign and the PAC. In fact, during the KOIN debate, Francesconi flatly charged that Potter created the PAC.

Given that the actual originator of the PAC in question, in the reader comments to previous items, has offered to help us try to find a viable means of funding this site, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot here. But since we strive to be honest observers of this campaign (being honest about ours biases doesn't preclude being honest from a larger perspective at the same time), we feel compelled to express our general annoyance that the PAC seems only to have generated problems for the candidate it professes to support.

Yes, both Potter and the PAC have repeatedly stated in no uncertain terms that they are unrelated and not coordinating their efforts, with Potter repeatedly asking that the PAC stop violating the principles that he himself seeks to maintain in his own campaign.

But the very fact that both parties -- but the candidate himself especially -- have to keep spending precious time and energy countering accusations from the Francesconi camp seems to us to demonstrate that the PAC has been little more than bad news for the candidate they sought to assist.

The unfortunate shame of it all is that the entire unnecessary controversy could have been avoided if all of Potter's supporters simply had agreed to play by the same rules as their own candidate.

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