September 15, 2004
(Updated) Three Francesconi Contributors Indicted For Illegal Donations
'No Wrongdoing' Found On The Part Of Campaign Itself
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
We experienced an interesting arc on this story earlier today, since we first read the brief item at the tail end of today's "Murmurs" column in Willamette Week:
At press time yesterday, a Multnomah County grand jury was considering whether to issue a criminal indictment against developer Tom Moyer, his assistant Sonja Tune and Moyer's daughter Vanessa Kassab over alleged illegal contributions to the city commissioner's campaign.
It was only after skimming through WW that we then turned to today's Oregonian and noticed their article, which in the morning edition was (as noted by Jack Bogdanski) far below the fold, but in the street final found its way to being one of the main above-the-fold stories:
Tom Moyer, one of Portland's most powerful businessmen, was indicted Tuesday on charges of making illegal political contributions in the city's mayoral race.
A Multnomah County grand jury also indicted Moyer's executive assistant and one of his granddaughters. All three are charged with making campaign contributions under a false name, a felony.
The article also notes that "no wrongdoing" was found on the part of the Francesconi campaign.
In addition to today's mentions, see this April Oregonian article and this April Portland Mercury article for some of the background on this story, which broke on the heels of the March revelation that Francesconi had been fundraising out of a lobbyist's office without disclosing any in-kind contribution for the use of that office (something the campaign later rectified in an amendment to their campaign finance filings).
As indicated both in the comments to Jack's entry and today's Oregonian article, defendants' attorneys will argue that the law in question is overly broad and will challenge its validity. For the sake of reference, at issue is ORS 260.402 (scroll down), which says in relevant part: "No person shall make a contribution to any other person, relating to a nomination or election of any candidate or the support or opposition to any measure, in any name other than that of the person who in truth provides the contribution."
Update
Reading through the comments on the above-linked post from Jack, we saw someone mention an aspect of the original Oregonian story that we had wanted to mentioned when we posted this -- that being the Francesconi campaign saying they returned the contributions in question last month.
As pointed out by Isaac in the comments over there, for some reason that's several months after all of this originally broke. But we'd like readers to click through to that Oregonian article again, because we'll be damned if we can find that part of the story in the version posted online, even though we do remember reading it in print. We've re-read it online six times now -- are we just being incredibly unobservant, or is it missing?
Meanwhile, today's Oregonian published an editorial about campaign finance in the wake of these indictments, which calls for more detailed disclosure of information on each and every contributor.
Finally, the same comment thread over on Jack's site also reminds us that we never got around to pointing our readers to the presentation made by Auditor Gary Blackmer (pdf) during a City Council work session on the Clean Money campaign finance reform proposal he and Commissioner Sten are pitching.
Comments (4)
Lynn Siprelle on 16 Sep 2004
What a meltdown. I've been listening to THE Francesconi commercial airing over and over on KPOJ (now that the negative ads have been axed). I think about Maggie Gibson and her neighborhood's problems, and how she says Jim Francesconi saved the day. I'm sure that at one time, Francesconi was that guy. Maybe after this race is through he can go down to Maggie Gibson's neighborhood again and remember who that guy was. Because apparently over the years he's forgotten himself.
aero(fwwpenguin) on 16 Sep 2004
Hmmmm...
"No Wrongdoing' Found On The Part Of Campaign Itself" ... unfortunately for Francesconi, and perhaps fortunately for Portlanders, in politics, guilty by association is an oft occurring dynamic.
doretta on 16 Sep 2004
What interests me is why in the world the Moyers would think it was necessary to hide those contributions.
Francesconi had collected over a million bucks by May. So much of it came from the big money boys that his many opponents didn't even have to break a sweat for that to become the most problematic issue for Jim in the primary.
Moyer just didn't want his name to be found at the top of that large list? It seemed the heat was mostly on Jim, not the contributors. Like that could compare with the possibility of getting caught and being charged with a felony? (That can't be a whole lot of fun even if you are confident you can buy your way out of it with high priced legal talent.)
Or emboldened by the success of the Bush administration he just assumed no one would notice?
I'm clearly missing something somewhere.
Rorovitz on 17 Sep 2004
Yeah, why would Moyer try to hide who was giving the money. It's not like there are giving limits on that kind of race.