WW has learned that a new group calling itself Portland Future PAC will begin a second attempt to recall Portland Mayor Sam Adams. The new group will employ paid signature gatherers, a stark contrast to a recall group that has spent the past three months relying on volunteers to gather the 32,183 signatures needed to put a recall of Adams on the ballot.
Portland Future PAC will begin its effort on Monday —the day that the current recall effort faces a deadline to turn in the signatures it’s gathered to the city elections office. In effect, the new group will restart the clock on the current all-volunteer effort led by Jasun Wurster. That Wurster-led effort—calling itself The Community to Recall Sam Adams—claims it’s gathered more than 30,000 signatures from registered Portland voters. Wurster has offered no proof of that total. And given that some signatures are likely to be invalid, observers speculated he would need to turn in 40,000 or more signatures to ensure he had enough to guarantee 32,183 valid signatures.
Two people familiar with the new effort, speaking on background because they are not authorized to speak for the group, say Wurster won’t turn in the signatures he has gathered to the city elections office. Rather, Wurster will give the signatures to the new group so that it can ask those people to sign a second petition. Wurster, a student at Portland State University who previously worked on the campaign of City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, will reportedly take a back seat in the new effort.
Wurster did not return a call seeking comment Sunday night.
The new group, Portland Future PAC, has held a number of meetings in recent weeks. And people familiar with those meetings say it already has commitments for a substantial sum of money from prominent donors upset with Adams over his belated admission in mid-January that he had previously lied about having a sexual relationship with then teen-aged legislative intern Beau Breedlove.
Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann did not immediately return a request for comment Sunday night.
Updated at 8:45 pm: Turns out Kaufmann is not allowed to talk about the issue:
“As the current recall is a pending election measure, election law prohibits me from commenting,” Kaufmann told WW via email.
Unlike Wurster’s group, according to a source familiar with the new group’s plan, the new effort will not start the statutory 90-day clock on signature gathering until it has raised a “substantial” amount of money.
It will not be cheap to gather the required signatures.
The group Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes has spent about $900,000 so far and it gathered 250,000 signatures state-wide for the referral of two income tax hikes passed by the 2009 Legislature. That’s more than $3 per signature, although the group also incurred expenses other than just paying signature gatherers.
Wurster’s group has spent just $18,000. However, if he really has gathered more than 30,000 signatures that the new recall group can use as a base, the task might be slightly easier for the new group.
