Mayoral candidate Sho Dozono tried to clear the air last week
after a December poll about the mayor’s race had raised a stink. As of
last Thursday, February 14, the Dozono campaign hadn’t reported the
poll as a campaign contribution.

Dozono’s campaign manager, Amie Abbott, released a statement late on
Friday afternoon: “Sho determined that the most transparent action was to report the poll as a contribution to the campaign
committee. Sho also decided to pay for the poll himself, even though he
received this poll information prior to the time he had decided to
qualify as a publicly financed candidate. He felt that was the best way
to ensure the campaign remains as free of politics as possible.”

Sadly, the way Dozono reported the massive $27,295 poll was
anything but transparent. Instead of reporting who commissioned the
poll—lobbyist Len Bergstein admitted he did, to the
Portland Tribune—Dozono reported it as an in-kind
contribution from himself, leaving Bergstein’s name off of the public
records.

To truly be transparent, here’s how the poll should have been
reported: As an in-kind contribution from Bergstein, or—if Dozono
insists on paying for it—as a payment from Dozono, buying it from
Bergstein. Either way, Bergstein’s name should have shown up. I
asked Dozono’s campaign manager why they didn’t take those more
transparent routes. 

“Why would [that] be more transparent in the first place?” Abbott
asked in return. Because the name of the person who actually
commissioned the poll would be reflected in the public record, I
explained. “I don’t think I’d agree with that,” Abbott
replied.

I’m not pulling ideas out of thin air. According to state law, “a
person may not make a contribution in any name other than that of the
person who in truth provides the contribution” and a political
committee can’t record a contribution “in another name than that of the
person by whom it was actually provided.” Violation of that law is a
Class C felony.

That’s not the only problem with the Dozono campaign’s attempted
fix.

The transaction was dated December 21. Dozono told me—and
plenty of other reporters around town—earlier this month that he
had no idea who commissioned the poll (that claim showed up in
the Oregonian as late as February 16). If he didn’t know that
Bergstein commissioned the poll until last week, how could he have paid
for the poll on Bergstein’s behalf in late December? It strikes me that
marking the poll down in December is an attempt to not violate a
$12,000 in-kind contribution cap as a publicly financed
candidate. The auditor claims the cap didn’t kick in for Dozono until
he joined the program on January 7.

According to Abbott, the campaign has “had legal interpretations,
and at this point the secretary of state’s office has told us that
they’re satisfied with the way we’ve handled the issue.” We’ll
see if the voters are, too.