2 Chapel Hill winners say funding allowed more time on streets

By Gregory Childress

gchildress@heraldsun.com; 918-1046

Chapel Hill -- Supporters of the town's voter-owned elections are calling the pilot program a success in the wake of victories by two candidates who took public money to run their campaigns.

On Tuesday, Councilman Mark Kleinschmidt, one of the two voter-owned candidates, was elected mayor and the other, Penny Rich, won a seat on the Town Council.

"The voter-owned election is the way to ensure you still get a good strong competition even when the costs of running a campaign accelerates," said Josh Glasser, director of local campaign finance reform for Common Cause.

Glasser said the voter-owned money allowed Kleinschmidt to meet Councilman Matt Czajkowski, who was also running for mayor, on even terms.

"The Chapel Hill example proves that voter-owned elections can work at the local level in North Carolina. It's time for the legislature to afford other cities the same opportunity to conduct reform and strengthen democracy," Glasser said in a news release.

Kleinschmidt and Rich were the only candidates among 12 running for mayor and Town Council who received public money to run their campaigns.

"The voter-owned fund played a crucial role in making sure that I could get my message out to voters," Kleinschmidt said. "This was one of the most substantive campaigns I've ever been a part of, and a lot of that is because participating in the public financing program took the focus off of money and put it on issues."

Rich, who finished sixth in the 2007 council race, said the voter-owned program was a difference-maker for her campaign this time around.

"The voter-owned elections program really required me to get out into the community and talk with voters early in the campaign," Rich said. "Asking people to invest $5 in my campaign felt good -- and really helped strengthen my relationships and my understanding of issues facing Chapel Hill. I would not have made the leap from sixth to first without the voter-owned election program."

Legislation pending in the state legislature would give more than a dozen larger cities -- those with populations of 50,000 or more -- across the state authorization to enact public financing programs, Glasser said.

"The legislation is permissive, it's not mandatory" Glasser said. "They would have to initiate the public financing programs."

He said mayors of Greensboro, Durham and Concord all have expressed interest in such a program.