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The San Ramon City Council voted last week to increase the voluntary campaign spending limits in this year’s elections for mayor and two city council seats, with the goal of accounting for inflation and other costs despite generally minimal campaign expenses in recent city elections.
Under the updated resolution adopted at the June 9 council meeting, the voluntary campaign expenditure limit for this year’s mayoral race is set at $91,453 – approximately $1.75 per voter – and at $39,938 and $36,597 respectively for the District 2 and District 4 seats, approximately $2.75 per voter.
That marks an increase from the 2024 cap of $1.50 per voter for the mayoral race and $2.50 per voter in the council races, with that cap and the previous 2022 election’s voluntary expenditure limit far above the actual amounts raised for a majority of candidates in the most recent two elections.
“These are voluntary expenditure limits and very generous amounts,” Mayor Mark Armstrong said at last Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s not impossible that someone could get up to that limit – in fact I guess there’s some history in the past – but for the most part, I think most candidates are well below the maximum allowable on this voluntary limit.”
The topic had been previously taken up by the council’s policy committee, consisting of District 4 Council member Marisol Rubio and District 1 Council member Robert Jweinat, the latter of whom was absent at Tuesday’s meeting.
“As mentioned, in general I think most of us have usually stayed quite a bit below that,” Rubio said. “But nonetheless, we’re trying to be consistent with the process that we’ve had historically, and really increased it just slightly to adjust for that cost of (the) increase in inflation. Obviously, the impact of that is being felt at every level of our economy, we thought it was reasonable to maybe just go only one level above the 2024 election to account for any increased costs.”
In addition to the generally low campaign spending in recent years, District 2 Council member Richard Adler noted that the outcome of city elections doesn’t necessarily correlate with the amount of campaign spending.
“I noticed in the past results that just because you spend more money doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get more votes either, so that’s another factor just looking at the past few years,” Adler said.
One example of that point is the 2024 mayoral race, in which Armstrong won decisively over opponent Chirag Kathrani despite spending less on his campaign.
The council voted 4-0 to pass the resolution increasing voluntary campaign expenditure limits, as well as an earlier resolution to opt for a 400-word limit on this year’s candidate statements rather than a 250 word limit.
