Santa Clara Promotes Campaign Ethics

This article describes how the City of Santa Clara promoted public trust and confidence by encouraging voters to "vote ethics."

Western City, December 2002

The City of Santa Clara won an Award for Excellence in the Public Trust and Ethics category of the 2002 California Cities Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program.

Like most jurisdictions in California, the City of Santa Clara has had its share of unpleasantness during political campaigns. The competitive spirit that resides in many strong leaders can tempt candidates and supporters alike to say and do things that they later regret. For many candidates, running for city council is their first foray into politics. They are unfamiliar with the rules, uneasy about being in the spotlight, eager to be successful and vulnerable to poor advice.

There are few municipal or state legal restrictions on how local campaigns can and should be run. Although most candidates and their campaign teams keep to the high road, it is clear that some need to be shown the way.

With the November 2000 election came the opportunity to introduce Santa Clara’s Code of Ethics and Values as a useful tool for city political campaigns. An ordinance of voluntary campaign spending limits was in place, and the community wanted an ethical campaign that followed the values they deemed important. The challenge was how to educate candidates and their supporters about the look and feel of an ethical campaign, to obtain their commitment to following voluntary guidelines, and to infuse ethics and values into the campaigns of all future municipal elections.

Eight Core Values

In the spring of 2000, the City of Santa Clara adopted a code of ethics and values designed to instill the community’s core values into the operating culture of city hall. The code was developed by a committee that included three elected officials, nine city commissioners, two community members, the city manager and the city attorney, who received assistance from representatives of the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

The committee generated a list of 70 values and attributes. These were narrowed down to eight that the community wanted to see reflected in the everyday attitudes and actions of city representatives, who should be:

1. Ethical;
2. Professional;
3. Service-oriented;
4. Fiscally responsible;
5. Organized;
6. Communicative;
7. Collaborative; and
8. Progressive.

Core Values Applied

After adoption by the city council, the code of ethics and values became the basis for a series of workshops for different segments of city government, including elected officials, appointed members of commissions and boards, and senior staff, as well as entire city departments.

Separate workshops were conducted for prospective and confirmed candidates for municipal elective office, which in 2000 included four city council seats, the city clerk and police chief. Their campaign managers and supporters also attended. Training was also conducted for current city council members who might wish to support one or more candidates.

The workshops emphasized that citizens want to have confidence in their elected leaders and trust their decision-making. They expect their elected officials to meet the most demanding ethical standards and to demonstrate the highest levels of achievement in following the code of ethics and values.

Concurrently, candidates were asked to voluntarily comply with a campaign finance ordinance that put a cap on campaign spending and limited contributions from a single source to $500 per individual contributor. (The campaign spending cap was set at $25,000, to be adjusted for inflation.) Those who par-ticipated in this voluntary action would receive special recognition in the city newspaper distributed to all residents and businesses, on the city’s government cable television channel and on the city’s website. The City of Santa Clara is one of the few jurisdictions in California to post candidates’ financial disclosure statements online, so the public can easily see who has contributed money to which candidates.

Ethical Campaigning Is Possible

The November 2000 election saw active campaigning in Santa Clara, and the strategies and tactics employed by candidates and their supporters were, for the most part, positive approaches. Almost universally, campaigns emphasized why one candidate would be a good choice for Santa Clara - rather than negative attacks on another candidate. A group of senior citizens painted small rocks with gold paint and handed them out to candidates, reminding them not to be the first to throw stones." These served as a tangible reminder to candidates to monitor themselves and their supporters.

At a follow-up meeting held after the election, candidates and their supporters evaluated the ethics and values demonstrated during the campaign. Low key, objective discussion took place about the judgments candidates and their supporters made during the campaigning period and what they would do differently in the future, based on their experience in this election.

Everyone involved with the election - candidates, campaign managers, supporters, current elected officials and voters -were more aware of and thoughtful about the ethics and values reflected in each campaign. The workshops on ethics and values in political campaigns were the catalyst for lively discussions about freedom of speech and other constitutional issues, the community’s core values, the importance of leaders as role models for citizen attitudes and behaviors, and the benefits of using positive campaign strategies and tactics.

As a result, 100 percent of the candidates in 2000 voluntarily limited their campaign spending to the recommended cap, even though several easily could have raised and spent much more. In preparation for the 2002 election, the City of Santa Clara repeated its workshops earlier in the year for prospective and declared candidates.

Contact: Carol McCarthy, deputy city manager, City of Santa Clara; phone: (408) 615-2210; e-mail: <cmccarthy@santaclaraca.gov>.