General

Friends,

We began this journey eight months ago in front of the Skidmore Fountain, celebrating its quote about citizenship. The journey ended for me last night, at least for now, but I’m elated by what we have accomplished:

• We gathered 1145 qualifying contributions, more than any other campaign in this race.

• We promised to make this campaign an example of what Voter Owned Elections can bring to Portland’s elections, and we succeeded with a great campaign, including FIVE VOE candidates — and the winner of the runoff will be the first non-incumbent Commissioner elected with a VOE campaign!

• I had the opportunity to meet hundreds, probably thousands of citizens of Portland and learn from them about an incredible array of issues.

• We’ve impressed upon the other candidates the importance of the themes we articulated: the necessity of Portland leading the nation in creating a model for sustainable cities and the opportunities it will bring to us; and the vital need to engage all parts of our community to make Portland the city it can be.

This journey would not have been possible without your support. I am deeply grateful for all the volunteer hours, $5 contributions and the kind words I have received during the last eight months. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

I don’t know yet what’s next for me, but you can be sure that I’ll keep working to make Portland even more extraordinary…

Chris

After nine months on the campaign trail, we're getting ready to party!

Come join us starting at 7:30pm on Tuesday at Cafe Reese, 1037 NW 23rd Ave (at Marshall St.).

Under Voter Owned Elections, campaigns are prohibited from spending public funds on election night parties. So I’ll provide soft drinks myself, and we’ll encourage you to purchase coffee drinks, wine and delicious food from Glenn Brugman and his staff at Café Reese, a neighborhood small business.

See you Tuesday!

Our campaign's "strategic objective" for Candidates Gone Wild was to "not disgrace ourselves" (I suspect many of the campaigns had the same goal).

Mission accomplished :-)

Thanks to Aaron Tarfman for the photo

While I watch the big game, I'm taking the opportunity to finish off the last thank you notes from the qualifying period. One thing I've insisted on since beginning to gather contributions in September is that every contributor gets a hand-signed thank you, even if it's just a postcard.

I've just signed the last one and wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone, contributors, solicitors, volunteers and especially my family for helping us submit almost 1200 qualifying contributions.

Thank you!

The good folks at the Bus Project have generously set up table space available to all VOE candidates at their Rebooting Democracy conference this weekend.

So if you've been looking for an opportunity to add to my total of $5 qualifying contributions, come on by Montgomery Park and look for us!

I'm off to a meeting and a house party, but several people have inquired, so I wanted to give a quick update.

Thanks to help from lots of folks (and more than a bit of candidate shoe leather) we're at 762 qualifying contributions as of this morning (that's a raw number, we're going to need some extra to compensate for the few the auditor rejects).

Keep those forms coming in!

Thanks.

One of the great things about Voter Owned Elections and the interaction with voters that it fosters is that I'm ALWAYS learning something.

This week I met a woman at Southeast Uplift who wanted to contribute, but could not complete the form because she is legally blind.

Yes, the system has an accommodation for this, but I hadn't learned what it was. Now I have! The Auditor's office has an assistance form, which both she and I sign, and which allows me to fill out the form fields for her. She still has to sign the form (although there is an option for a signature stamp, for those who are also unable to sign).

She was kind enough to meet me this morning and we completed the whole process. So now I have one more contribution, and I'm smarter about accommodations for disabilities in our legal systems (she shared with me how painful it is to execute real estate documents)!