Seth Woolley Files Complaints Against Loretta Smith for “Anonymous” Contribution

“It is not plausible that [Smith's campaign] received $6,000 in cash in ‘approximately 25’ envelopes and then lost the envelopes and all information about the donors.”

Commissioner Loretta Smith speaks after finishing second in the primary vote for Portland City Council in May. (Walker Stockly)

Seth Woolley, a campaign finance watchdog who works with the group Honest Elections Oregon, filed complaints this week with state and city elections officials over a $6,000 anonymous contribution Smith's campaign disclosed July 15.

Smith, a former two-term Multnomah County commissioner, is running against Dan Ryan in the Aug. 11 special election runoff to replace late City Commissioner Nick Fish, who died of abdominal cancer in January.

The $6,000 contribution was puzzling for three reasons: Smith is participating in the city of Portland's Open and Accountable Elections program, which limits contributions to candidates to $250 per donor; second, the filing reported the money was received April 21, which meant, under elections law, it should have been disclosed by April 28, before the May primary; and third, state elections law does not allow anonymous contributions.

Related: City Council Candidate Loretta Smith's Campaign Makes a Highly Unusual Contribution Disclosure

Smith's campaign manager, Jerome Brooks, told WW there was a good explanation.

"The contribution in question is actually a group of individual contributions where the donation envelopes were lost before they could be logged, so ultimately they couldn't be attributed to the individuals who made the donation," Brooks said last week. "With all of the changes to how things got processed during this time period in light of shutdowns for COVID-19, the batch of envelopes (approximately 25) were unable to be located."

Brooks said he spoke to state and city elections officials about the best way to reconcile the error. The campaign then disclosed the contribution as "anonymous" because it couldn't determine the sources of the contributions and, because anonymous contributions are not allowed, donated the money to the Oregon Food Bank.

That did not satisfy Woolley, a former Pacific Green Party official who himself ran unsuccessfully for the City Council seat in May and has long kept an eye on candidates he thinks aren't following campaign finance rules. In 2012, for instance, Woolley filed a series of complaints and later a lawsuit against mayoral candidate Charlie Hales, questioning whether Hales' longtime residence in Washington made him ineligible to run for office in Oregon and might have been an effort to dodge Oregon income taxes.

Woolley also filed an elections complaint against Smith in 2017, alleging she violated county rules that do not allow a sitting commissioner to run for another office. The secretary of state fined Smith $250 for failing to update her political action committee to reflect that she was then a candidate for the City Council seat being vacated by the retirement of then-Commissioner Dan Saltzman.

In the complaints he filed July 22 with the Oregon secretary of state and the city, Woolley made it clear he's not buying the explanation Smith's campaign provided to WW.

"It is not plausible that the Committee to Elect Loretta Smith received $6,000 in cash in 'approximately 25' envelopes and then lost the envelopes and all information about the donors," Woolley wrote.  "That explanation would require that the average cash contribution per envelope was $240. I have worked with and on candidate and ballot measure campaigns in Oregon for over 16 years. I have never seen even a single cash donation that large."

Brooks, Smith's campaign manager, said Woolley's complaints were the result of a "coordinated attack on Loretta as ballots drop between the Willamette Week and Seth Woolley." (WW did contact Woolley about the original $6,000 contribution and quoted him in our initial story about it.)

"This retaliatory move isn't surprising as we called the Willamette Week out in their biased and targeted coverage of leaders of color over the years and declined to participate in their endorsement process," Brooks added in an email.

"We consulted both the city and secretary of state on how to proceed and followed the guidance that they provided that keeps us in compliance. That's why there is no fine or penalty levied, we are still in good standing with the Open and Accountable Elections program, and are focused on talking to voters about the real challenges ahead of our city.

"I'm sure [Woolley] has filed with every possible agency he can; it's what he's done for years. But again, not surprised—this is what happens when you call bullies out. We remain unafraid and focused on the task at hand."

Ballots for the runoff between Smith and Ryan, the former executive director of the educational nonprofit All Hands Raised, were mailed to voters earlier this week and will be counted Aug. 11. WW endorsed Ryan in that race.

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