Anatomy of a winning tax campaign

Oregon has no state sales tax, so in Portland, ballot measures generally fall to property tax levies. As a result, the ballot is frequently crowded.

That was the case in November 2002, when the Portland Children’s Investment Fund went before voters and squeaked by with 53 percent of the vote. It competed with, and secured the smallest winning margin of, three measures that fall. Remarkably, all three passed, with voters also saying yes to parks and county library measures.

“This was a huge, very difficult campaign. It wasn’t like it was a cakewalk,” said Jeff Cogen, a Multnomah County commissioner who in 2002 was chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who championed the investment fund idea. “It was during the peak of the last recession. It was a tough time to be asking people to do it. We had hundreds, maybe thousands of volunteers. We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a fairly sophisticated media and direct mail campaign.”

When polling for the investment fund levy revealed an age gap, with older voters not as supportive, the measure was moved to the November ballot, which trended younger, the Oregonian reported. When polling showed less support in Multnomah County, it was limited to the city of Portland.

News stories show the levy had widespread, diverse support from business and religious leaders in addition to hundreds of volunteers delivered by a grass-roots organization, Stand for Children, run by Jonah Edelman, son of national children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman, who appeared to push for the levy.

The campaign bombarded the city with TV and radio ads, blanketed bus benches and went door-to-door. One weekend, it was the featured topic at dozens of churches.

“Our polling showed us a third of the people were going to be there for anything for kids,” Cogen said. “A third of the people were going to be opposed to any taxes. It was all about reaching the third of the people in the middle. That’s how this campaign was waged. We reached them with targeted messages about why this was a wise investment for them, whether they cared about kids or not.”