With Amanda Fritz poised to be sworn in January 3 as a pioneer in Portland’s public campaign financing, voter owned elections (VOE) skeptic Jack Bogdanski threw some red meat to his libertarian right readers last week.

Bogdanski simply notes the amount of public money spent, $482,227.79, which is enough to whip up a tempest in his comment teapot. He does not mention that this amounts to about 84 cents per citizen of Portland, and, for whatever reason, he refuses to see any value in displacing private money in our elections (including that of his arch nemesis, uber-developer Homer Williams) with a little scrap of well-regulated public money.

Meanwhile, on his OregonLive Portsmouth neighborhood blog, Richard Ellmyer asks of Fritz “Was she worth it?” and suggests we should base the answer to that question pretty much entirely on whether she joins him in his monomaniacal opposition to the lease of the former John Ball school site to Portland Hope Meadows, a non-profit, intergenerational housing project.

Say what you will about New Hope Meadows, Fritz is going to have a lot more than that on her plate come January 5. I’m willing to at least let her get sworn in before rendering judgment on whether she was “worth it.”

VOE allowed Fritz to focus on running a street-level campaign that is probably unprecedented in modern city council history. She ran a completely positive campaign and enrolled the help of countless volunteers. She is clearly different kind of candidate, and we wouldn’t be getting her voice at the table if not for public financing.