Mapping the Mayoral Money Race

Portland Mercury:

Much has been made in recent days about the money flowing (or not) into the mayor's race and who's giving it (or not). We've seen a stunning drop-off in contributions and endorsements for Jefferson Smith. And we've also seen Charlie Hales' decision to conveniently sidestep a promise to limit campaign contributions. Less mentioned—unless it's to criticize candidates for taking out-of-state contributions—is where the money's coming from. Paul Cone, a Smith volunteer whose city job has him building maps for the transportation bureau, took a crack at answering that question. He hopped onto the secretary of state's campaign finance website, downloaded spreadsheets of the two campaigns' reports as of October 13, and used a free Google tool to plot each and every gift large enough to come attached with an address. The numbers don't reflect some of the recent tectonic shifts, which is one big caveat. Nor does the Google toolbox support making "heat maps" that would also show the size of each contribution. But at first blush, it looks like Smith's contributors are a bit more diffuse than Hales', who seem to be more concentrated in the Pearl, the West Hills, and Irvington. Says Cone: "I just wanted to do a comparison so we could see which neighborhoods are putting their money where there mouths are." (And, yes, if you zoom out far enough, you can also see all those non-Oregon contributions Smith has racked up, too.) Hit the jump to see embedded versions of the maps, or click on the links to open up in Google, where you can run some extra filters on 'em. [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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