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Campaign statements from candidates in two key local legislative races—former 16th District Assemblymember Wilma Chan in Senate District 9 and Berkeley physician Phil Polakoff in Assembly District 14—do not appear on the official ballot pamphlets for the June 3 primary, some of which have already been mailed to voters. 

Chan does not have a ballot pamphlet statement because the former Assemblymember has decided not to sign the Proposition 34 voluntary campaign spending limits, but Polakoff says his failure to have a statement on the ballot was simply an oversight after he changed his mind on the spending limit pledge. 

Chan's opponent in the Senate 9 race—14th District Assemblymember Loni Hancock-and Polakoff's three rivals in the race to succeed Hancock in the 14th AD—Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, Richmond City Councilmember Tony Thurmond, and East Bay Regional Parks Director Nancy Skinner-have all signed the Prop 34 spending limit pledge and have campaign statements in the official ballot pamphlet. 

Under Prop 34, passed by California voters in 2000, legislative candidates may have a 250-word statement in the official ballot pamphlet if they sign a pledge stating that they will abide by campaign spending limits. The current limit for state senate candidates is $724,000 in a primary election; the limit for state assembly candidates is $483,000 in a primary. 

Although candidates who sign the campaign spending limit pledge are entitled to have a campaign statement on the official ballot pamphlet, such statements are not free. There's a fee which depends on the number of registered voters in that particular district. For Assembly District 14 candidates, the fee for having a statement in the ballot pamphlet is $1,500. 

According to a spokesperson for the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office and records available from the California Secretary of State's office, Chan did not sign the voluntary spending limit form, but Polakoff did. 

Polakoff said by telephone that “because I had the lowest amount of name recognition” of the four candidates in the Assembly 14, “I originally thought I was going to need more money to run my campaign,” and therefore he intended to opt out of the spending limit pledge. Polakoff said that he later determined that he was not going to spend more than the $483,000 limit after all. So he signed the pledge, but his campaign did not remember he was entitled to a ballot pamphlet statement “until it was too late. It was an oversight. In hindsight, I probably would have had a statement.” 

Chan's campaign reported spending $54,000 between January and March 17 of this year, with $507,000 cash on hand, Her campaign has raised another $50,000 in donations of $1,000 or more since that time. 

Polakoff reported $38,000 in expenditures between January and March 17 of this year, with a cash balance of $56,000. His campaign has raised another $34,000 in donations of $1,000 or more since then.  

The next round of campaign finance statements from the assembly and state senate races-including statements of expenditures since March 17-will not be available until between May 17 and May 22. Because candidates are not required to report either expenditures or donations of under $1,000 between the March 17 and May 17 official reports, how much the campaigns have actually raised or spent since mid-March won't be known until May 17.