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It was a typical Saturday night at Fortune, a popular West End bar located at 614 SW 11th Ave., for young Portlanders looking to dance and flirt in a low-lit, packed space at the base of the Sentinel Hotel.
Just one thing was different as Aug. 31 rolled into Sept. 1. Near the entrance of the bar, close to where the bouncer was checking IDs, a City Council candidate named Ben Hufford allegedly gave bargoers waiting in line a proposal: Donate $10 to his political campaign, and they wouldn’t have to pay the $20 cover charge. Others recall he said that they couldn’t enter the bar unless they donated to his campaign.
Hufford, an architect, ran for City Council in District 4, which covers all of the westside and a sliver of Southeast. He’s also co-owner of Fortune. Hufford ran as a moderate who criticized the city and Multnomah County for a lack of accountability and urgency; he was endorsed by all three leading mayoral candidates, including Carmen Rubio, Rene Gonzalez and Mayor-elect Keith Wilson.
That Saturday and Sunday, campaign finance records provided by the city of Portland show, Hufford received 170 campaign donations. Nearly all were $10, or multiples of $10.
Four patrons who spoke to WW, each of whom entered the bar either before midnight on Aug. 31 or shortly after midnight on Sept. 1, said Hufford strolled up and down the line of patrons, telling them that the cover charge was $20, but they could instead pay his campaign $10 and enter the bar for free.
Another patron recalls that he and his friends were told by someone while standing in line that in lieu of a cover charge, patrons would be giving to Hufford’s campaign. They were then given a QR code to scan, which led them to Hufford’s campaign website.
“We were just like, who is this guy?” the patron recalls. “We wanted to get in, we didn’t care how. I think we were like, ‘Sure.”'
Four other patrons recall being told by Hufford that they had to donate to his campaign, or couldn’t enter the bar.
A 10th patron named Jasmine Truong says she arrived at Fortune with a group of friends just after 11 pm on Aug. 31. The line to get into the bar was long, Truong recalls.
“My friends and I didn’t have to wait long before we heard a commotion. There was someone that was willing to ‘cover’ our fee and get us in if we donated money,” recalls Truong, who, when she saw a picture of Hufford, said it had been him. “They didn’t specify for what, there was just a QR code that everyone scanned and it took us to a campaign page. That’s when I realized they were gathering funds for someone’s campaign. There was no mention of his campaign, no mention of who he was. Just to scan the QR code to get in.”
Hufford says Fortune was hosting a “fundraising event” for him that night at the bar.
“Fortune held a fundraising event for ben4portland where contributors came to the bar for an evening and I was there to meet them,” Hufford says. “The event was limited to campaign supporters, and many people contributed at the event; the suggested contribution was $10.”
“I was not aware that people were able to pay security a different amount for entry to the campaign event or to skip the line at the event,” Hufford added.
None of the 11 patrons WW spoke to had ever heard of Hufford prior to arriving in line to go to the bar. Nor were they aware they were attending a “fundraising event,” they said. They just wanted to get into the bar.
Nothing occurred at the bar that appeared to signal a campaign event, the patrons recall. A DJ in the corner played remixes of top hits and bargoers danced, sang and drank. It was business as usual.
According to two campaign finance experts, Hufford asking for a campaign donation in exchange for free entry to the bar appears to be a violation of a state elections law that prohibits using undue influence. What that means: A candidate for political office cannot offer something of value to solicit a donation. In this scenario, the item of value is free entry into Fortune.
Elections lawyer Dan Meek says: “It appears from your description that the candidate was offering, to those in line, a thing of $20 value (waiver of the cover charge) in exchange for a $10 contribution to his campaign. That quid pro quo would violate Oregon Revised Statute 260.665.”
Longtime political consultant Paige Richardson says Hufford’s proposition is “certainly against the spirit of the laws and rules governing public campaign financing. He completely gamed the system.”
Hufford’s alleged gambit is significant because he could leverage the donations for much more public money. The city’s public campaign finance system ties its distribution to the number of small donations a candidate receives—matching those donations by up to $9 for every $1 raised.
Data from the city’s Small Donor Elections program shows Hufford received 170 donations on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1: 121 donations on Aug. 31, and another 49 donations on Sept. 1, possibly in the early hours of Sunday morning as patrons arrived at Fortune. Of the nearly 170 donations that night, the city categorized 94 of them as matchable with public money. That’s equivalent to more than $8,000 in taxpayer matching funds that could have been generated for Hufford’s campaign that night if he had reached 750 donors by the end of his campaign. (He was a few hundred shy of reaching the second tier of matching funds.)
In the months of August and September, records show, Hufford never received more than 18 donations in a single day.
Across his eight-month campaign, Hufford received a total of 557 contributions. That means that 30% of Hufford’s total donations came from that Saturday and Sunday.
Hufford did not respond to follow-up questions asking if he had told patrons they could avoid a $20 cover charge if they contributed money to his campaign. Hufford also provided no details about the “fundraising event” he said Fortune was hosting that night and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. Hufford also did not respond to questions about whether bargoers, when they joined the line, had any way of knowing they were entering a political event.
Karen Bowler, a representative for Fortune, said Fortune’s co-owners were told by Hufford that he was hosting a “campaign event” at the bar for supporters, but that it was “not aware of the details” of the cover charge offer.
Hufford is one of 12 city candidates in the Nov. 5 election who are under investigation by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office for participating in donation-swapping agreements with other candidates. Those swaps between candidates were first reported by WW in early September.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that the city matched 94 of the donations made that night. That’s incorrect. The city says it did not match any of those donations because Hufford had already received the maximum amount of matching dollars—$40,000—after getting 250 donors. Had Hufford reached 750 donors, those donations would have been matched. WW regrets the error.