In the contest between two left-leaning candidates for Oakland’s District Two seat, Allison – a small business consultant and community activist running as a Green Party candidate – has tried to paint Kernighan as the candidate supported by for-profit housing developers and corporate interests.

Kernighan – an attorney first sent to the council in 2005 when her then-boss City Councilman Danny Wan unexpectedly vacated the District 2 seat – said she has never voted in support of a subsidy for a corporate developer. She added that she recently voted for the city’s inclusionary zoning policy, which sets aside a portion of new housing development for low-income residents.

But an analysis of campaign contribution documents filed with the Oakland City Clerk’s Office shows financial backers of the Kernighan and Allison campaigns come from vastly different camps.

A quarter of all donors to Kernighan’s campaign were business entities ranging from residential developers to Clear Channel Corp., according to city records. The affiliation listed by most individual donors revealed close ties to the Bay Area’s business community, including officials at the Port of Oakland, the independent city agency that plays a key role in the important downtown development project Oak to Ninth.

Allison’s campaign has not accepted contributions from corporations or businesses, a vow she has repeated often in her campaign. The city’s Public Matching Fund Program – ushered in by city council approval of a publicly-financed elections law in December 1999 – has given Allison’s campaign more than $17,000 since April, making it her campaign’s largest individual donor source. According to campaign financial records, the Green Party and five union-backed groups have contributed $8000 total to Allison.

The most recent campaign contribution documents on file show that Kernighan has raised $113,000 since July, while Allison has drawn $83,000 over the same period.

The Kernighan campaign has relied upon a smaller pool of donors giving large contributions, while a larger donor pool giving small contributions has fueled the Allison campaign. Funding from donations under $100 was eight times higher on average for Allison than Kernighan, with one-third for the Allison campaign and one-twenty-fifth for the Kernighan campaign coming from the under $100 category.

Donations over $100 must be “itemized” in publicly-reported campaign finance records, while donations of $100 or less are not required to be itemized in reports. The total number of itemized contributions was similar between candidates with Kernighan having 261 and Allison having 243.

Kernighan donors spent more per capita, with 44 percent giving $600 per contribution, the maximum level allowed to candidates who agree to the voluntary expenditure ceiling under Oakland’s public campaign financing law.

Campaign contributions of $600 make up about 18 percent of Allison campaign donors, which include Ella Baker Center Executive Director, Van Jones, former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, and a handful of local small business owners in District Two.

Controversy about the role of special interest campaign contributions in local elections has heightened the intensity of the neck-and-neck race that observers say is still too close to call one week before the November 7 election.

The controversy stems from a late October ruling that temporarily lifted local restrictions on “independent expenditures” that political action committees can make to support candidates. Independent expenditure committees could spend a maximum of $600 to endorse or counter a candidate under the restrictions.

OakPAC, the political arm of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, argued the case before a federal judge, citing an infringement upon free speech. The group has endorsed Kernighan and, in the days immediately following the ruling, spent over $15,000 on mailings to support her re-election.

But on October 26 Oakland Mayor-elect Ron Dellums and OakPAC Chairman Michael Colbruno announced they had reached an agreement that would uphold the restrictions until after the upcoming election.

Dellums said the timing of the OakPAC lawsuit was “inappropriate” and discussion about changing limits on campaign contributions from political action committees should wait until after the election.

“This is not the time to change the rules,” said Dellums Thursday at a press conference in front of city hall attended by Kernighan, Allison and their supporters.

Under the Public Matching Fund Program the city matches the first $100 of every campaign contribution of a donor who resides or has a business in Oakland, provided that the candidate respects a “voluntary expenditure ceiling” of about $100,000 per primary and runoff election required by the law.

The funds are capped at around $30,000, or thirty percent of the ceiling provided for in the ordinance. Candidates have to raise an initial $5000 to be eligible for the matching funds.

But both adhering to the expenditure ceiling and participating in the matching program are voluntary for candidates. Kernighan and Allison have both agreed to the voluntary expenditure ceiling of $100,000, but Kernighan has opted out of receiving matching funds to be able to funnel over $30,000 of her own money into her campaign’s coffers.

Whether a correlation exists between campaign contributions and subsequent political favors is uncertain, according to Steven Levin, a researcher with the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies based in Los Angeles.

“There’s a perception problem,” said Levin, who researches public financing of local and state election campaigns nationwide. “If you take money from business, then it just looks like you’re doing favors for the people who contributed to you.”

This “perception problem” is one reason why Levin says publicly financing political campaigns, particularly at the local and state levels, is a good strategy for counteracting the disillusionment with the political process that many voters express.

Levin praised Oakland’s public financing program, but mentioned that only candidates for district city council races are eligible for matching funds, which limits the program’s ability to clean up campaigns citywide.

Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission Chair Ralph Kanz said the city’s public financing program for elections has been inconsistent primarily due to limited funding from city council. The result, said Kanz, is the persistence of the “status quo” with little impact on creating cleaner elections.

“There’s never been clear, complete support from the city council for the process,” said Kanz.

For more information on public campaign financing in Oakland visit: www.oaklandnet.com/government/public_ethics/webpage.html or call 510-238-3593.

To learn more about the candidates, visit www.votepat.com and www.aimeeallison.org.