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.