In a repeat of years past, state lawmakers will wrap the legislative session without tightening Oregon’s loose campaign finance laws, falling short on a key pledge to do so.
House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, convened a group of Democratic lawmakers this spring to hammer out limits on political spending. But Tony Lapiz, Rayfield’s legislative director, told a House committee June 8 that the legislators couldn’t agree on a proposal during that process.
They’ll continue to meet after the session with the goal of referring the issue to Oregon voters in 2024, Lapiz said.
Democrats have tried repeatedly in recent years to advance new campaign finance models or cap contributions, to no avail. Unlike the vast majority of states, Oregon law allows unlimited donations from corporations, unions, individuals and other entities to candidates for governor, state offices such as secretary of state and the Legislature.
Incredible sums of money have flooded recent elections including the three-way race for governor in November, during which spending topped $70 million.
On the campaign trail, Gov. Tina Kotek pledged to limit political spending, and after she won, she “was clear with legislative leaders that she expected to see action this session,” said spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard.
“The governor is very disappointed that lawmakers were not able to get it done,” Shepard said.
The result follows a well-worn path of failed efforts in previous sessions, including a 2019 package sponsored by Rayfield to cap donations and shed light on “dark money” nonprofits. Those proposals died in the Senate. Two years later, lawmakers negotiated for months with major donors and good government groups but momentum fizzled late in the session.
If lawmakers refer the issue to voters next year, their proposals would likely compete with those from citizen groups including Honest Elections Oregon, a group of Portland attorneys behind Multnomah County’s voter-approved campaign finance reforms in 2016 and Portland’s in 2018.
Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, said in a newsletter last week that lawmakers made “very modest” progress toward campaign finance reform that “was swept away by the walkout,” referring to the six-week Republican boycott of the state Senate. Golden did not respond to requests for comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive. Lapiz also told the House committee that the walkout was a factor.
Senate President Rob Wagner of Lake Oswego, Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber of Beaverton and Rep. Khanh Pham of Portland were among the Democrats that Rayfield convened to discuss campaign finance reform, Lapiz said. Lapiz also said he met with a smaller group of lawmakers’ chiefs of staff, nonprofit advocates, including Honest Elections, and business leaders.
Dan Meek, an attorney with Honest Elections, said he’s not surprised that lawmakers didn’t push reforms across the finish line.
“The Oregon Legislature has never in its history adopted limits on campaign contributions,” Meek said.
However, Meek noted that legislators passed a law this year barring candidates, political committees and petition committees from accepting more than $100 in cash in a year. The law, passed with bipartisan support, followed reports in Willamette Week that the duo behind the beleaguered cannabis company La Mota donated tens of thousands of dollars to Kotek, Wagner and other Democrats in cash.
Former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a Democrat, resigned last month after Willamette Week reported that she had taken a lucrative side gig consulting for La Mota.
Democrats introduced two proposed reforms early in the session. Kotek’s plan, House Bill 3455, would have allowed individuals, corporations, unions and other entities to donate up to $1,000 per primary or general election cycle to candidates for state offices and up to $500 to candidates for the Legislature.
Rayfield’s proposal, House Bill 2003, would have limited contributions to $3,000 for a candidate for state office, $2,000 for a state Senate candidate and $1,500 for a state House candidate.
Honest Elections and other campaign finance experts criticized those bills for containing significant loopholes. In particular, both proposals would have allowed “small donor” political action committees to raise virtually unlimited amounts to spend in Oregon elections. Neither bill defined how much money a small donor committee could give to a candidate.
Kotek’s proposal would have immediately become law if passed, while Rayfield’s would have been referred to voters for approval. Neither bill received a public hearing.
In April, Golden planned to introduce a pair of amendments mirroring two 2024 ballot initiatives pushed by Honest Elections and the League of Women Voters. Meek said he believes Golden dropped the amendments because “he knew that they would not be seriously considered.”
One of the ballot initiatives, Initiative Petition 9, would prevent corporations, unions, limited liability companies and other entities from directly contributing to campaigns. It would incentivize candidates to rely on small donations.
Donors could give no more than $2,000 to candidates for governor and other state offices and $1,000 for state House or Senate candidates per election cycle. The initiative, which has been approved for signature-gathering, would also require candidates to disclose the true source of their funding in political advertisements.
Another proposal, Initiative Petition 23, would establish a public campaign financing system modeled on Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program.
Meek said good governance groups are in the process of trying to qualify those two initiatives to go before voters in 2024 and plan to submit two others for potential circulation to voters.
–Grant Stringer; gstringer@oregonian.com; @Stringerjourno
