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The Portland Voter Guide, a political action committee that’s spent more than $100,000 promoting progressive candidates for city office, including mayoral candidate Commissioner Carmen Rubio, failed to disclose in its reporting whom it was spending money to support.
That appears to be a violation of state elections law, which says that PACs and independent expenditure campaigns must disclose which candidates their money is spent to support or oppose. “If a committee or independent expenditure filer makes an independent expenditure, the independent expenditure must disclose Independent Expenditure information identifying the candidate, measure or political party, indicate support or opposition and the amount apportioned to the candidate, measure or political party,” the state’s campaign finance manual reads.
Portland Voter Guide acknowledges it failed to disclose which candidates its money was spent to support.
“We were unaware that there was a mechanism for disaggregating and allocating our expenditures in the committee’s reports,” Portland Voter Guide treasurer Jenny Lee says. “We’ve reached out [to our compliance vendor], who had not previously followed up with us to include this in our reporting which candidates the Portland Voter Guide IE was supporting.”
After WW contacted Portland Voter Guide, it updated its expenditure filings to reflect which candidates it spent its money to support.
Portland Voter Guide so far has spent $103,000 on campaign materials, mostly in the form of mailers, door-hangers and online ads.
One of the PAC’s mailers urges voters to rank Rubio No. 1 on their ranked-choice ballot, rank Keith Wilson as No. 2 and rank Liv Osthus as No. 3. The mailer also urges voters not to rank Rene Gonzalez on their mayoral ballot. “Don’t rank Rene Gonzalez,” the mailer reads.
That same flyer implores voters to rank Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo and Steve Novick on their District 3 City Council ballot.
Other mailers and door hangers funded by Portland Voter Guide, copies of which the PAC provided to WW, tell voters which City Council candidates to rank in all four districts.
None of the five major expenditures reported by the PAC on political advertisements and flyers as of Friday morning reflected which candidates were supposed to benefit from the spending or were targeted for criticism. By Friday afternoon at 3 pm, Portland Voter Guide had updated all of its filings to reflect all candidates supported or opposed.
The PAC has garnered contributions totaling $336,600, according to campaign finance records. The biggest contributors to the group are political arms of major progressive nonprofits in the city. Other members of the PAC include the political arms of Basic Rights Oregon, Next Up, Service Employees International Union, the Portland Association of Teachers, and the Sierra Club.
The biggest checks cut to the Portland Voter Guide, totaling $50,000, came from East County Rising PAC—which, as The Oregonian reported last week, received at least $115,000 in recent weeks from Future PAC, the Oregon House Democrats’ political arm, marking a departure from how the PAC normally spends only on statewide legislative races.
Lee says that while Rubio is the “only candidate recommended by the Portland Voter Guide,” the PAC plans to “report our suggested ranking for the two other mayoral candidates, as well as all candidates we have supported or opposed.”