PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – During the 2023 Oregon legislative session, campaign finance reform has been brought to the attention of both the House and Senate chambers with bills seeking transparency in political campaigns and to lessen the influence of deep-pocketed donors.
Campaign finance reform has also been under the spotlight in recent weeks after former Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan resigned over ethics concerns — stemming from her work as a paid consultant for La Mota cannabis company as her office oversaw an Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission audit of the state’s cannabis industry.
Fagan recused herself from the OLCC audit, citing plans to consult La Mota — Oregon’s second largest cannabis dispensary chain. Under the consulting contract, Fagan received $10,000 per month with the chance to earn $30,000 in bonuses.
Campaign finance records show that La Mota owners Aaron Mitchell and Rosa Cazares donated $45,000 to Fagan’s campaign between September 2020 and April 2021, in addition to other donations the company made to other Oregon politicians.
On May 1, Fagan announced she terminated her contract with La Mota and the following day, stepped down as Oregon’s secretary of state.
“I owe the people of Oregon an apology. I exercised poor judgment by contracting with a company that is owned by my significant political donors and is regulated by an agency that was under audit by my Audits Division,” Fagan said in part.
The state also saw a record amount of money spent during the 2022 gubernatorial race with candidate spending around $80 million — including funding from Nike Co-founder Phil Knight who donated millions of dollars to Republican candidate Christine Drazan and non-affiliated candidate Betsy Johnson.
Attorney Jason Kafoury, with Honest Elections Oregon, is advocating for campaign finance reform in the state.
“I think it’s a sad system right now. We have no limits on money in politics. That allowed the La Mota folks to give her $45,000 — and as it came out this week — a lot of the donations they were giving to Kotek and other politicians, were straight cash donations. We have no limits not only on how much you can give somebody, but no limits on physical currency that you can hand off to somebody,” Kafoury told KOIN 6 News.
According to Kafoury, Oregon needs to pay elected officials more. As secretary of state, Fagan earned $77,000 per year and — during a press conference — she said it was difficult to make ends meet as a single mother of two living in the Portland metro area.
“I think she was in a tough situation, she took a really bad contract, she made a terrible political move but there’s no doubt in my mind that if we had political limits on our contributions — if La Mota folks had only given her $1,000 or $2,000 instead of $45,000 — she would not have entertained them. There is a corrupting influence of money in politics and that’s why we need desperately to have campaign finance reform,” Kafoury said — noting Oregon is one of five states that does not have any campaign contribution limits.
Kafoury believes there’s three pillars needed for campaign finance reform in Oregon, including limiting the amount of money that can be donated.
“We got to put limits, that are real, on all entities to be able to give to candidates and they’ve got to be low enough so that they end that corrupting influence. You can’t give six- and seven- figures to a politician and not have that be somewhat corrupting,” Kafoury said.
Second, Kafoury says there needs to be transparency in who is donating to what campaigns and to deter companies from hiding behind political action committees.
“When people do give the donations, especially if it’s the dark outside money, we need that to be clearly put in the advertising paid for by the specific entity or person who gave that money. You can’t have a system where it says, ‘Hey, I’m a political action committee. I’m Oregonians for Good Puppies – even though I’m really Chevron—saying Oregonians for Good Puppies. You have to have a drill-down transparency thing, so we know who’s really paying for it,” Kafoury said.
Next, Kafoury says Oregon needs a public funding system for campaigns, similar to what’s in place in the City of Portland and Multnomah County.
“You get a small donation from a citizen and the taxpayers give you a matching fund on top of that. And I think that eliminates a lot of the problems we’re seeing now where people don’t feel like they can afford to run against millionaires and billionaires,” Kafoury explained.
The attorney noted the importance of eliminating so-called “dark money” out of politics to lessen the influence of donors on lawmakers and others in government.
“If somebody’s writing me a check for $1 million versus somebody writing me a check for $1,000, when I call that politician, they’re going to pick up my phone because I gave them a million bucks and they’re going to listen to what I want for them to do,” Kafoury said.
He added, “I think if we can figure out a way to level the playing field so that Citizen A and Phil Knight are both limited to the same amount of money they can give a politician, that is how we’re going to have a healthy democracy in Oregon.”
The 2022 race between Andrea Salinas and Carrick Flynn to represent Oregon 6th Congressional District also saw millions of dollars in donations. Flynn received millions of dollars for his campaign from Protect Our Future PAC, which was backed by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.
“What we see in that race is that big money is going to try to influence politicians, it’s just a fact and they’re going to keep giving millions and millions of dollars,” Kafoury said.
Oregon voters passed Measure 107 in 2020 to let the legislature and local governments make laws to limit campaign contributions. However, the measure became tied up in courts. And during her 2022 race, Gov. Tina Kotek made a campaign promise to limit contributions.
Oregon lawmakers have introduced bills during the 2023 legislative session to address campaign contributions, including House Bill 2003 whose chief sponsors include House Speaker Dan Rayfield and Reps Paul Holvey and Andrea Valderrama.
The bill would establish campaign contribution limits accepted by candidates and political action committees. The bill would also create the Small Donor Elections program in which state representative and senatorial candidates would receive a six-to-one match on small-dollar donations.
Kafoury says Honest Elections Oregon is in contact with Speaker Rayfield’s office — advocating for fixes to loopholes the organization identified in the bill.
On the Senate side, Oregon State Senator Jeff Golden introduced SB 500 in the 2023 session, which bans candidates for state office and political committees from accepting contributions of “excess amounts” and from unspecified sources. The bill would also develop a task force to research ways to publicly finance campaigns in Oregon.
In Kafoury’s view, these bills have a “slim path” for passage, especially amid GOP walkouts at the Oregon Capitol.
Kafoury says he wants national experts, such as the Campaign Legal Center in Washington D.C. — which works on campaign finance reform across the country — along with good government groups to weigh in before Oregon implements reform.
“I think a new momentum has happened these last couple weeks with news stories trickling out about what happened with Shemia Fagan, the cash donations that Kotek and Fagan and other representatives and senators were getting from La Mota,” Kafoury said. “The legislature is at a point right now where it’s hard not to do something here because the voters are really angry, and they deserve to be angry about what’s happening.”
Kafoury favors Seattle’s Democracy Voucher model in which voters choose to donate to a campaign. According to the city, the voucher program is funded through a voter-approved property tax and costs the average household about $8 per year.
Kafoury added, “I think there is a movement to say we need to have big money donors be identifying the advertising and we need to drill down and find out who’s actually giving the money.”