After the Mercury reported late last month that state attorney general candidate Dwight Holton was waiting until after election day (May 15) to officially disclose “in-kind contributions” received from his current employer, white-collar law firm Lane Powell, the campaign has apparently done an about-face.
State campaign-finance records now show a $350 contribution from Lane Powell for use of its offices and facilities, backdated to April 1. The donation was recorded, however, on May 1.
Holton, whose campaign rents a headquarters downtown, had previously acknowledged also doing some campaign work at Lane Powell, which hired him after he left the US Attorney’s Office. But Holton’s campaign had said it was waiting for Lane Powell to send one combined invoice for after the election. The combined total is expected to top out at $500.
“Our compliance officer said it was our choice,” Jillian Schoene, a spokeswoman for the Holton campaign, told me. “But after our discussion with you, we went ahead and reported the very little time that campaign work has required that Dwight make the occasional phone call or review materials while he’s at Lane Powell.”
It might have been my post (which mostly questioned an in-kind contribution for Holton’s opponent, Ellen Rosenblum) that goosed the campaign into shifting strategy. But the campaign might also have been reacting to rising concern about Holton’s work for Lane Powell, which defends large corporations, as well as an April 30 letter (PDF) sent to the Secretary of State’s office from an advocate for campaign-finance reform.
The letter, sent by attorney Dan Meek, cites the Blogtown post, references Oregon law that says contributions must be recorded with in 30 days of receipt (except in the final six weeks before an election, when the time frame shrinks to a week), and asks for “a public clarification of the applicable law.”
If Oregon law allowed campaigns not to report in-kind contribution until they are quantified or invoiced by the contributor, as Ms. Schoene seems to believe, then entire campaigns could be run by means of in-kind contributions not reported until after the election, thereby entirely defeating the purpose of the campaign finance reporting system.
Schoene says the invoices reflect just a smattering of time spent on campaign work, all from March and April.
As for questions about Holton’s actual work for Lane Powell, they came up in a stinging letter that some activists tried to deliver to Lane Powell on May Day. The letter notes that Lane Powell lists Holton as a member of the firm’s “white collar criminal defense” team.
Given the nature of his work at Lane Powell, the suspicious timing of his resignation as U.S. attorney and subsequent hiring by your firm, plus the fact that Lane Powell is currently providing non-financial assistance to Mr. Holton’s campaign, these events all cast doubts on the belief that Mr. Holton can be an independent advocate for the people of Oregon.
Your clients are a who’s who of corporations that regularly face prosecution for mortgage fraud, price-fixing, pollution, and violating worker’s rights. As Attorney General, the people of Oregon would be counting on Mr. Holton to defend them from the formidable resources of these corporations.
The letter was not answered. Holton’s bio at Lane Powell does list him on the white collar defense team, but some of the attorneys on the team specialize in federal sentencing guidelines and in work responding to government audits.
So I asked for some clarification about Holton’s job at Lane Powell. Schoene says Holton has “never represented a corporation at Lane Powell, or ever,” and said his only clients have been “Indian tribes and individuals.” She would not go into further detail, but did trot out a campaign talking point by adding “he’s the only candidate in this race who’s put a CEO in prison for failing to play by the rules.”
Not that Indian tribes don’t also have money to throw around. Interestingly enough, another recently reported Holton contribution comes courtesy of an Indian tribe, the Confederated Tribe of Umatilla Indian Reservation, which gave Holton $1,000.
“Your clients are a who’s who of corporations that regularly face prosecution for mortgage fraud, price-fixing, pollution, and violating worker’s rights.”
By this ridiculous logic, Atticus Finch would be morally equated with a convicted rapist.
Lawyers are paid to advocate legal positions for clients with legal issues. Lawyers are not actually their clients. Holton should be judged by his perceived capacity to do the job of AG (I didn’t vote for him), not by the caricatures some people wish to draw about the many disparate clients of the large firm Holton works for.
@1 Your analogy fails because Atticus Finch didn’t work at a law firm specializing in defending rapists. Lane Powell’s client list, however, is replete with big, bad corporations.
Unless Mr. Holton can guarantee that he won’t take a job at Lane Powell or a similar law firm after he’s done serving as AG, then his performance as AG will be negatively affected. Thinking about his post-AG career, he could be ineffective prosecuting future clients for a powerful law firm like Lane Powell. This may happen either deliberately (unlikely) or in more subtle, unseen ways.
It’s the same reason why members of Congress should not be allowed to work as a lobbyist after they retire.
@ 2, I see the potential conflict, but I don’t believe you can expect that Holton foreclose the rest of his career to SERVE THE PUBLIC as Oregon’s AG for a few years.
If Holton wins, and then gives any favorable treatment to LP clients in any way, Holton and the party are obviously aware of how bad that would look, and how they would potentially all suffer at the polls for it the next time around. In short, democracy already has an answer for this problem.
Holton resigned on the 4th, started at Lane Powell on the 7th, then announced his candidacy on the 11th. He knew he was going to run when he resigned as U.S. Attorney.
He also had to have had conversations with Lane Powell about potential employment there. In those discussions, the prospect of Mr. Holton working in the White Collar Crimes division had to have been discussed, and also, the possibility that he’d run for Attorney General. Don’t the citizens of Oregon have a right to know whether a run for AG was discussed? and if it was discussed, shouldn’t we know what boundaries, if any, were drawn around his involvement in cases that might put him in a conflict of interest if elected?
And now in this story, we get the tidbit that Holton’s clients are “Indian tribes and individuals.” Nice to see that the Confederated Tribe of the Umatilla Indian Reservation saw fit to contribute to his campaign recently. It’s a pretty good investment/innoculation against future prosecution if Holton becomes the AG.
In the future when Holton is prosecuting Well Fargo for mortgage fraud on behalf of the state, and Lane Powell is on the opposite end of the table, how do you think that’s going to work out for us?