October 23, 1999 Chapel Hill hopefuls list donors
Author: Bonnie Rochman; STAFF WRITER
Edition: Orange
Section: News
Page: B1
Index Terms:
election
campaign
budget
Chapel Hill
Town Council
Estimated printed pages: 3 Article Text: CHAPEL HILL -- In the first election since the Town Council enacted campaign finance reforms, the two candidates for mayor each raised less than $10,000. Earlier this year, the General Assembly approved a request by the Town Council to enact campaign finance guidelines in local elections. Candidates must list the names of all contributors and the amounts donated, and no one person or committee may contribute more than $200. As of Friday, when candidates filed reports with the Board of Elections, Mayor Rosemary Waldorf had raised $9,115 and spent $3,962.29. Challenger Susan Franklin had raised $6,140 and loaned herself money. Her expenditures totaled $8,779. Traditionally, mayoral candidates here have not spent lavish sums on their campaigns. Waldorf said she thought former Mayor Ken Broun had invested the most in recent memory, when he spent $19,000 in 1991 to beat her. "It turned out OK," she said. "He was a great mayor." His wife, Marjorie, contributed $100 to Waldorf's campaign. Other noteworthy Waldorf contributors included former UNC Chancellor Paul Hardin; Lynda Baddour, the wife of UNC athletics director Richard Baddour; and council candidate Jim Protzman. Franklin, a mediation lawyer, raised money largely from residents of The Oaks neighborhood and members of the Alliance of Neighborhoods, a group that seeks to preserve the character of the town's neighborhoods. She also received $50 from council member Joe Capowski, whose term expires this year. Capowski, who is not running for re-election, has also endorsed Franklin for mayor. In the race for Town Council, nine candidates are competing for four seats. Incumbent Pat Evans has raised the most money; Don Sweezy, an engineer at GTE, the least. Evans, a community volunteer, has collected $10,386.79 from people including Roger Perry, the developer of Meadowmont, the town's most controversial development; Anne Cates, chairwoman of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees; Carmen Hooker Buell, the wife of late UNC Chancellor Michael Hooker; and council member Edith Wiggins. Sweezy, with $2,780, had received donations from council members Joyce Brown and Capowski. Jim Protzman, a business consultant, raised $8,779 from contributors including Baddour, Cates, council member Lee Pavao and the DuBose family, which sold Perry the land for Meadowmont. Incumbent Julie Andresen McClintock, an air quality specialist at the Environmental Protection Agency, collected $8,709 from Capowski, who often votes as she does on the council, and Barbara Rodbell, the wife of late Nobel Prize winner Martin Rodbell, as well as from the Alliance of Neighborhoods. Bill Strom, a small business owner, raised $6,762.53, about $1,000 less than the spending cap he imposed on his campaign. Strom pledged to limit spending to $7,684, a number he said would be equivalent to $1 per voter. Strom based his calculation on the average voter turnout in the last two elections. Strom received money from Capowski, Sweezy, council member Kevin Foy and former council member Joe Herzenberg. Jim Ward, director of the N.C. Botanical Garden, collected $6,725. Broun, Pavao and Wiggins were among the contributors. Incumbent Flicka Bateman, director of UNC Hospitals School, raised $6,355 from residents including Broun, Herzenberg and Rodbell. On Friday, Bateman said she also expected to receive a check from her in-laws sometime soon. Ruby Sinreich, the youngest candidate at 28, collected $3,244.23 from Broun, Protzman, Wiggins, Herzenberg and former council members Alan Rimer and Mark Chilton. Chilton, who served earlier in the decade, was younger than Sinreich, who works at a nonprofit Web and database development firm, when he was elected as a UNC student. Community volunteer Madeline Jefferson raised $3,059 from the Alliance, Capowski and Brown. On Wednesday, the council is set to reconsider part of its fledgling campaign finance ordinance, which it passed in July. The American Civil Liberties Union has requested anonymity for donors who contribute less than $50 on the grounds that employees may be fired for supporting candidates at odds with the employers' political views. "While disclosure laws do serve the compelling interest of deterring corruption, ... they only serve this purpose when applied to larger contributions," Deborah Ross, the executive director for the ACLU in North Carolina, wrote to Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos.