Oregon Dems face new campaign finance, settlement agreement challenges

The revelation that a fundraising consultant for Sen. Ron Wyden brokered a $500k donation to the Democratic Party of Oregon suggests new campaign finance and settlement agreement exposure for DPO.

You guys, this doesn’t look good.

Last week, I reported that a fundraising consultant to U.S. Senator and Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) was in the middle of a $500,000 donation from an executive of crypto currency firm FTX to the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO).

Today, I’ll explore a different angle on that story. What started as a story about then-Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s conflict of interest overseeing a campaign finance probe into the DPO, which bankrolled her campaigns, keeps growing in scope and scale.

Nothing you are about to read has been discussed publicly let alone investigated by state authorities, so far as I know.

There are two inescapable conclusions based upon what is publicly known about the donation now that we are aware of the Wyden campaign’s involvement in it:

First, it seems very likely that the DPO violated Oregon campaign finance laws (again) by failing to report a transaction arising from the fundraiser’s and the Wyden campaign’s involvement in the donation.

Second, it appears last month’s facially absurd settlement agreement between the DPO and the Oregon Secretary of State may have included and been predicated upon at least one false statement of material fact.

How did I get to those conclusions? Well . . .

Diana Rogalle, a long-tenured and prominent Democratic fundraiser based in Washington, DC, counts Wyden as a client. She was at the center of the DPO donation. In a September 29, 2022, email that led to the DPO donation, Susan McCue, then a political consultant for FTX, described Rogalle as “all things Ron Wyden.”

The Wyden campaign paid Rogalle’s company, the Ashmead Group, $49,000 between August 1 and December 31, 2022, according to federal campaign finance disclosures.

“All things Ron Wyden,” indeed.

Fine, U.S. Senators, especially U.S. Senators who chair a mega-committee like Finance pay fundraisers to raise funds to help ensure they win re-election. But here’s where things get interesting.

The DPO and the Oregon Secretary of State’s office described Rogalle’s role much differently in last month’s settlement agreement. In that agreement, the DPO and the Secretary of State described Rogalle as a “fundraiser working under contract with the DPO[.]”

From the settlement agreement between the DPO and Secretary of State.

In fact, the parties relied on Rogalle’s efforts to determine the source of the donation as evidence the DPO acted with due diligence and thus was deserving of getting off easy.

The picture painted by the DPO and Secretary of State in the settlement agreement is one of a “fundraiser working under contract with the DPO” arranging the payment and nailing down the reporting details.

The problem? The DPO has never paid Rogalle or Ashmead for fundraising services or otherwise, according to state campaign finance records (search “Orestar Oregon” and pull up “Campaign Finance transactions” and search for the relevant parties - the Oregon Secretary of State’s Orestar website is down as I write this Sunday, so I can’t link).

It will not surprise you that professional fundraisers “working under contract” are usually paid for their services. In fact, arguably, there’s not much of a reason to have a contract at all if the fundraiser is not paid.

And when professional fundraisers do donate their services to a campaign committee like the DPO, the committee is required to report the value of the services as an in-kind donation. Or, if someone else is paying the fundraiser to provide the services to the committee, the committee must report the value of those services as an in-kind donation from whomever is paying the fundraiser.

In other words, the DPO should have reported some transaction pertaining to Rogalle’s facilitating the donation, whether or not she was working as a contract fundraiser for the DPO or on behalf of the Wyden campaign. No such transaction was reported.

This sure looks like a violation of Oregon campaign finance law. I’ll probably file a complaint about it this week as there is no reason to believe that either the Oregon Department of Justice or the Secretary of State is looking into such a violation.

Back to the settlement agreement. If neither Rogalle nor Ashmead were under contract to provide fundraising services to the DPO, the DPO and the Secretary of State caused to be entered in an official state administrative proceeding a Stipulation and Final Order, incorporating the settlement agreement, stating and relying upon a falsehood.

We don’t know for sure whether there was a contract between the DPO and either Rogalle or Ashmead, but it sure looks like there wasn’t. The DPO did not report any payment to Rogalle or Ashmead as one would expect if a contract existed. Further, McCue called Rogalle “all things Ron Wyden” and no publicly available emails mention the DPO being a client of Rogalle or Ashmead, suggesting she may have been working on Wyden’s, not the DPO’s, behalf in the transaction. In fact, the only suggestion that either Rogalle or Ashmead was under contract with the DPO appears in the settlement agreement.

If there was no contract between Rogalle or Ashmead and the DPO, that presents, or should present, a very big problem for the DPO. The DPO had to know at the time it executed the Stipulation and Final Order whether Rogalle or Ashmead had been party to a contract with it. If there was no contract and the DPO told the Secretary of State, the Office of Administrative Hearings and the Oregon public there was one, well, the settlement agreement and the Stipulated Order based upon it should be thrown out as fraudulent, and the people involved could face administrative penalties or even criminal sanctions.

I stress that we do not know whether there was a contract between the DPO and Rogalle or Ashmead. It’s possible there was or is one even though no one acted like it existed. If so, the Oregon DOJ, now in possession of the Secretary of State’s file regarding the donation investigation, should have a copy. Or, in the not unlikely event the Secretary of State did not verify the DPO’s claim that Rogalle or Ashmead worked under contract with it, the DOJ really ought to ask for a copy of it from the DPO.

To do that, the DOJ needs to expand its investigation, which so far includes only Nishad Singh, the putative donor, to include the DPO. There was ample reason for DOJ to do so before, and to refer the investigation and potential prosecution out to a third party who has no conflict of interest, unlike every statewide elected official and everyone who answers to them.

The more we learn about the DPO donation and the efforts of the DPO’s allies in state government to look the other way, the worse all this looks. Oregonians deserve and the law requires a fair and impartial investigation and, if appropriate, prosecution.