In a ranked choice election, there are exactly zero excuses for excluding viable candidates. What a weird thing to publish on your own without anyone forcing you to.
Viability can be in the eyes of the beholder. There are 12 legally qualified candidates in District 4. I understand that City Club is having a forum for only 6 of the 12.
It is a 501 c3, organization like others involved in this now-cancelled debate after being advised any event sponsored by a 501 c3 has to include all legally qualified candidates to avoid running afoul of IRS rules.
Bob, I think that actually gets to my point. If “viability” is in the eye of the beholder, then the Examiner’s decision to define it solely by private fundraising was itself a subjective editorial choice, not some neutral fact about the race.
I’m not arguing that every 90-minute forum must include all 12 candidates. I’m questioning the framing here. The Examiner selected four candidates using one metric, Green objected because other available measures of support produced a different picture, and the Armory ultimately determined it could not host the event as structured.
Yet the headline assigns the cancellation to a “Mitch Green ultimatum,” while the article calls excluded candidates “marginal” and the original four “serious contenders.” That’s precisely why the selection criteria and the way this dispute is reported deserve scrutiny.
This is just absolutely disappointing, but admittedly not surprising.
And just to clarify the nonprofit point, Bob, the 501(c)(3) rules are more complicated than “every legally qualified candidate must be invited.”
I’m pretty familiar with this area. I’ve worked with nonprofits and news organizations, including advertising and compliance around elections.
The IRS prohibition is against partisan campaign intervention. Candidate forums are evaluated based on the circumstances, including whether candidates are treated impartially, whether they have equal opportunities to participate, how questions are selected, whether the moderator or sponsoring organization expresses preferences, and how candidates are chosen.
Inviting all qualified candidates is certainly one way to demonstrate impartiality, and the IRS identifies it as a favorable factor. But the IRS itself contemplates organizations holding forums without inviting every legally qualified candidate and asks what neutral criteria were used to determine who was invited.
Which brings us right back to the issue here: if you’re going to exclude candidates, the selection criteria matter. “Viability is in the eye of the beholder” isn’t really a defense of the Examiner’s criterion. It’s an acknowledgment that defining viability required an editorial judgment in the first place.
Cam, 1 final point. Allan says he set an objective criterion- private funds raised, and then applied it. Mitch suggested another potentially objective criterion, inclusion of city match funds.
It may be a coincidence that the result of applying that would have been the inclusion of 2 Portland DSA candidates (or DSA aligned- both sought the endorsement), which arguably could mean- if the criterion was changed- whether intended or not this constituted political campaign intervention cruelly prohibited by IRS rules.
Bob, I think this actually makes the concern somehow even more pronounced.
Who said anything about the candidates' politics? We were discussing competing objective ways to measure whether a campaign is viable. You're the one who introduced the fact that two candidates sought DSA endorsement as a reason to view one of those measurements with suspicion.
And Mitch's suggested criteria weren't invented out of nowhere. Portland's own Small Donor Elections system measures support partly by the number of qualifying Portland donors. Council candidates unlock progressively larger pools of actual campaign funding based on those thresholds. The entire system is designed around the idea that small-dollar support plus public matching funds can produce a financially competitive campaign.
So if the question is whether a candidate has demonstrated support and access to the resources necessary to run a serious campaign, considering those resources is hardly an exotic criterion.
The Examiner itself has treated these measures as meaningful before. Allan's profile of Eli Arnold specifically discussed his number of donors, and the Examiner has previously reported public matching funds when discussing campaign financing.
And, frankly, there's something rather hilarious about invoking the danger of violating IRS neutrality rules as a reason to be suspicious of a criterion because it would include two candidates associated with the DSA.
Think about what that argument is saying: the metric might be improper because of the political affiliation of the candidates who would benefit from it.
That's awfully close to using candidates' politics to decide whether they deserve equal consideration, while citing rules intended to prevent nonprofits from favoring or disadvantaging candidates based on political considerations.
If an otherwise neutral criterion suddenly becomes suspect only after you look at which political faction its application would allow onto the stage, I don't think that's the defense of impartiality you think it is.
I’ll leave it here, but one final point: Bob is not just a random reader defending this piece. He is a frequent Examiner contributor, a former District 4 City Council candidate, and has publicly supported three of the four candidates the Examiner selected for this forum.*
And Allan is the publisher and author of the piece.
None of that automatically makes their arguments wrong. But when the people most vigorously defending the publication’s framing have those relationships, that context should be disclosed.
If the Examiner wants to host candidate forums and present itself as an impartial source of civic journalism, transparency about those relationships is part of earning that trust. Framing the cancellation around one candidate while leaving readers without that context does the opposite.
*Correction: I previously wrote here that I had personally met with Bob in an organizational capacity connected to the nonprofit supporting the Examiner. Bob challenged that, so I checked my correspondence and found that I had conflated him with others at the Examiner.
I originally mentioned that meeting because I believe my own prior relationship with the Examiner is relevant disclosure here. I had discussions with people connected to the publication and its supporting nonprofit about advertising, audience growth, social media, subscriptions, and Google Ad Grants. If I am going to publicly criticize the Examiner’s practices, readers should know that context about me too.
That correction does not change the point I was making about disclosure. It demonstrates it: relevant relationships should be stated accurately, and when something is wrong, the record should be corrected.
I’ll leave it here, but one final point: Bob is not just a random reader defending this piece. He is a frequent Examiner contributor, a former District 4 City Council candidate, and has publicly supported three of the four candidates the Examiner selected for this forum.*
And Allan is the publisher and author of the piece.
None of that automatically makes their arguments wrong. But when the people most vigorously defending the publication’s framing have those relationships, that context should be disclosed.
If the Examiner wants to host candidate forums and present itself as an impartial source of civic journalism, transparency about those relationships is part of earning that trust. Framing the cancellation around one candidate while leaving readers without that context does the opposite.
*Correction: I previously wrote here that I had personally met with Bob in an organizational capacity connected to the nonprofit supporting the Examiner. Bob challenged that, so I checked my correspondence and found that I had conflated him with others at the Examiner.
I originally mentioned that meeting because I believe my own prior relationship with the Examiner is relevant disclosure here. I had discussions with people connected to the publication and its supporting nonprofit about advertising, audience growth, social media, subscriptions, and Google Ad Grants. If I am going to publicly criticize the Examiner’s practices, readers should know that context about me too.
That correction does not change the point I was making about disclosure. It demonstrates it: relevant relationships should be stated accurately, and when something is wrong, the record should be corrected.
Disclosure cannot depend on readers already knowing the publication’s internal cast of characters, especially if the Examiner is operating at enough scale to justify hosting candidate debates and publishing this kind of political coverage in the first place.
A new reader should not have to know your history with the Examiner, your prior candidacy, or your political relationships in order to properly evaluate your defense of the article. That context should be made explicit.
The issue is conducting a 90-minute debate that can focus on viable candidates and their ideas on the issues. We did a "debate" two years ago with 20-plus candidates, and it was more of a circus than useful guidance for voters.
This demonstrates to me how confusing the entire structure of the Portland City Council is; pity the poor voter. But they voted for this structure; I believe, in exasperation, over the previous one.
As a 501c3, the City Club, or any other forum, must include all candidates in a debate, an onerous mob for a debate.
This is exactly why my approach to the whole debacle that is our city government election process is to independently research the candidates who actually have a realistic shot at winning and ONLY rank the ones I can live with. Everything else is just noise.
We already have a track record for three of these candidates. We’ve seen what they prioritize, and what they actually do once they’re in office. That tells me far more about what they’re likely to do in the future than a polished answer during a debate ever could.
But honestly, it’s pretty pathetic that Portland/Oregon voters get so few opportunities to see candidates actually answer substantive questions in public forums in the first place. Voters shouldn’t have to piece together a candidate’s record and positions on their own just to make an informed decision. At this point, the lack of meaningful information/debate and the resulting confusion feels like a feature rather than a bug.
I agree with Green on this one. If a candidate has met the donor requirements to qualify for Portland’s Small Donor Elections matching funds, that seems like a reasonable threshold for inclusion in a debate. It’s a logical cutoff, not an arbitrary one, and it’s only six people—which is a manageable size.
Did Mitch Green know that only four candidates were included when he agreed (some time ago) to participate? I’m guessing he did. And perhaps, maybe, just possibly, he was avoiding this opportunity to meet with his constituents because there might be uncomfortable questions about his recently revealed deleted texts wishing death to police and other similar views? Or maybe uncomfortable questions about his supporters vandalizing public property by gluing flyers (no staples for them!) to metal lamp posts, parking pay stations, etc. and writing on public sidewalks and in parks? Just a thought . . .
In a ranked choice election, there are exactly zero excuses for excluding viable candidates. What a weird thing to publish on your own without anyone forcing you to.
Viability can be in the eyes of the beholder. There are 12 legally qualified candidates in District 4. I understand that City Club is having a forum for only 6 of the 12.
It is a 501 c3, organization like others involved in this now-cancelled debate after being advised any event sponsored by a 501 c3 has to include all legally qualified candidates to avoid running afoul of IRS rules.
Bob, I think that actually gets to my point. If “viability” is in the eye of the beholder, then the Examiner’s decision to define it solely by private fundraising was itself a subjective editorial choice, not some neutral fact about the race.
I’m not arguing that every 90-minute forum must include all 12 candidates. I’m questioning the framing here. The Examiner selected four candidates using one metric, Green objected because other available measures of support produced a different picture, and the Armory ultimately determined it could not host the event as structured.
Yet the headline assigns the cancellation to a “Mitch Green ultimatum,” while the article calls excluded candidates “marginal” and the original four “serious contenders.” That’s precisely why the selection criteria and the way this dispute is reported deserve scrutiny.
This is just absolutely disappointing, but admittedly not surprising.
And just to clarify the nonprofit point, Bob, the 501(c)(3) rules are more complicated than “every legally qualified candidate must be invited.”
I’m pretty familiar with this area. I’ve worked with nonprofits and news organizations, including advertising and compliance around elections.
The IRS prohibition is against partisan campaign intervention. Candidate forums are evaluated based on the circumstances, including whether candidates are treated impartially, whether they have equal opportunities to participate, how questions are selected, whether the moderator or sponsoring organization expresses preferences, and how candidates are chosen.
Inviting all qualified candidates is certainly one way to demonstrate impartiality, and the IRS identifies it as a favorable factor. But the IRS itself contemplates organizations holding forums without inviting every legally qualified candidate and asks what neutral criteria were used to determine who was invited.
Which brings us right back to the issue here: if you’re going to exclude candidates, the selection criteria matter. “Viability is in the eye of the beholder” isn’t really a defense of the Examiner’s criterion. It’s an acknowledgment that defining viability required an editorial judgment in the first place.
Cam, 1 final point. Allan says he set an objective criterion- private funds raised, and then applied it. Mitch suggested another potentially objective criterion, inclusion of city match funds.
It may be a coincidence that the result of applying that would have been the inclusion of 2 Portland DSA candidates (or DSA aligned- both sought the endorsement), which arguably could mean- if the criterion was changed- whether intended or not this constituted political campaign intervention cruelly prohibited by IRS rules.
Bob, I think this actually makes the concern somehow even more pronounced.
Who said anything about the candidates' politics? We were discussing competing objective ways to measure whether a campaign is viable. You're the one who introduced the fact that two candidates sought DSA endorsement as a reason to view one of those measurements with suspicion.
And Mitch's suggested criteria weren't invented out of nowhere. Portland's own Small Donor Elections system measures support partly by the number of qualifying Portland donors. Council candidates unlock progressively larger pools of actual campaign funding based on those thresholds. The entire system is designed around the idea that small-dollar support plus public matching funds can produce a financially competitive campaign.
So if the question is whether a candidate has demonstrated support and access to the resources necessary to run a serious campaign, considering those resources is hardly an exotic criterion.
The Examiner itself has treated these measures as meaningful before. Allan's profile of Eli Arnold specifically discussed his number of donors, and the Examiner has previously reported public matching funds when discussing campaign financing.
And, frankly, there's something rather hilarious about invoking the danger of violating IRS neutrality rules as a reason to be suspicious of a criterion because it would include two candidates associated with the DSA.
Think about what that argument is saying: the metric might be improper because of the political affiliation of the candidates who would benefit from it.
That's awfully close to using candidates' politics to decide whether they deserve equal consideration, while citing rules intended to prevent nonprofits from favoring or disadvantaging candidates based on political considerations.
If an otherwise neutral criterion suddenly becomes suspect only after you look at which political faction its application would allow onto the stage, I don't think that's the defense of impartiality you think it is.
I’ll leave it here, but one final point: Bob is not just a random reader defending this piece. He is a frequent Examiner contributor, a former District 4 City Council candidate, and has publicly supported three of the four candidates the Examiner selected for this forum.*
And Allan is the publisher and author of the piece.
None of that automatically makes their arguments wrong. But when the people most vigorously defending the publication’s framing have those relationships, that context should be disclosed.
If the Examiner wants to host candidate forums and present itself as an impartial source of civic journalism, transparency about those relationships is part of earning that trust. Framing the cancellation around one candidate while leaving readers without that context does the opposite.
*Correction: I previously wrote here that I had personally met with Bob in an organizational capacity connected to the nonprofit supporting the Examiner. Bob challenged that, so I checked my correspondence and found that I had conflated him with others at the Examiner.
I originally mentioned that meeting because I believe my own prior relationship with the Examiner is relevant disclosure here. I had discussions with people connected to the publication and its supporting nonprofit about advertising, audience growth, social media, subscriptions, and Google Ad Grants. If I am going to publicly criticize the Examiner’s practices, readers should know that context about me too.
That correction does not change the point I was making about disclosure. It demonstrates it: relevant relationships should be stated accurately, and when something is wrong, the record should be corrected.
I’ll leave it here, but one final point: Bob is not just a random reader defending this piece. He is a frequent Examiner contributor, a former District 4 City Council candidate, and has publicly supported three of the four candidates the Examiner selected for this forum.*
And Allan is the publisher and author of the piece.
None of that automatically makes their arguments wrong. But when the people most vigorously defending the publication’s framing have those relationships, that context should be disclosed.
If the Examiner wants to host candidate forums and present itself as an impartial source of civic journalism, transparency about those relationships is part of earning that trust. Framing the cancellation around one candidate while leaving readers without that context does the opposite.
*Correction: I previously wrote here that I had personally met with Bob in an organizational capacity connected to the nonprofit supporting the Examiner. Bob challenged that, so I checked my correspondence and found that I had conflated him with others at the Examiner.
I originally mentioned that meeting because I believe my own prior relationship with the Examiner is relevant disclosure here. I had discussions with people connected to the publication and its supporting nonprofit about advertising, audience growth, social media, subscriptions, and Google Ad Grants. If I am going to publicly criticize the Examiner’s practices, readers should know that context about me too.
That correction does not change the point I was making about disclosure. It demonstrates it: relevant relationships should be stated accurately, and when something is wrong, the record should be corrected.
Thanks, Cam. I think many people who are NW Examiner readers know who I am- but appreciate the reminder for those who don't.
Bob, you gotta stop proving my point.
Disclosure cannot depend on readers already knowing the publication’s internal cast of characters, especially if the Examiner is operating at enough scale to justify hosting candidate debates and publishing this kind of political coverage in the first place.
A new reader should not have to know your history with the Examiner, your prior candidacy, or your political relationships in order to properly evaluate your defense of the article. That context should be made explicit.
The issue is conducting a 90-minute debate that can focus on viable candidates and their ideas on the issues. We did a "debate" two years ago with 20-plus candidates, and it was more of a circus than useful guidance for voters.
This demonstrates to me how confusing the entire structure of the Portland City Council is; pity the poor voter. But they voted for this structure; I believe, in exasperation, over the previous one.
As a 501c3, the City Club, or any other forum, must include all candidates in a debate, an onerous mob for a debate.
Let them eat cake.
This is exactly why my approach to the whole debacle that is our city government election process is to independently research the candidates who actually have a realistic shot at winning and ONLY rank the ones I can live with. Everything else is just noise.
We already have a track record for three of these candidates. We’ve seen what they prioritize, and what they actually do once they’re in office. That tells me far more about what they’re likely to do in the future than a polished answer during a debate ever could.
But honestly, it’s pretty pathetic that Portland/Oregon voters get so few opportunities to see candidates actually answer substantive questions in public forums in the first place. Voters shouldn’t have to piece together a candidate’s record and positions on their own just to make an informed decision. At this point, the lack of meaningful information/debate and the resulting confusion feels like a feature rather than a bug.
It was designed that way. So that the unelectable in a city-wide election could be elected (and reelected ad infinitum) with just 25% of the vote +1.
I agree with Green on this one. If a candidate has met the donor requirements to qualify for Portland’s Small Donor Elections matching funds, that seems like a reasonable threshold for inclusion in a debate. It’s a logical cutoff, not an arbitrary one, and it’s only six people—which is a manageable size.
Did Mitch Green know that only four candidates were included when he agreed (some time ago) to participate? I’m guessing he did. And perhaps, maybe, just possibly, he was avoiding this opportunity to meet with his constituents because there might be uncomfortable questions about his recently revealed deleted texts wishing death to police and other similar views? Or maybe uncomfortable questions about his supporters vandalizing public property by gluing flyers (no staples for them!) to metal lamp posts, parking pay stations, etc. and writing on public sidewalks and in parks? Just a thought . . .