Back in 2019, it appeared that Oregon lawmakers might finally commit to ending the state’s outlier position in campaign finance.
I had just written an investigative series for my previous newsroom, The Oregonian/OregonLive. In it, we uncovered how Oregon’s lack of campaign finance limits allowed American companies to donate more per capita to incumbent politicians, leading to some of the weakest environmental protections on the West Coast. The state Supreme Court upheld the practice, arguing that campaign donations are protected by free speech under the Oregon Constitution.
Lawmakers in Oregon, one of five states with no restrictions at all, seemed willing to do something about what we uncovered. They called on Oregonians to amend the constitution to explicitly allow limits on donations, something lawmakers have repeatedly tried and failed to do. In 2020, 78% of voters said yes, one of the widest voting metrics in decades. All lawmakers had to do was write a bill to limit donations.
However, no restrictions were adopted for the next four years. When lawmakers finally set the cap in 2024, individual contributions were limited to $3,300 per election, far short of the caps in the $1,000 to $2,000 range that good government groups had previously sought. Lawmakers left other avenues open for donors to donate their time and money. It allowed corporate donations, which many states have banned, to continue. The restrictions will not take effect until 2027, when the current gubernatorial election ends.
And now, lawmakers have voted to open the spigot even further — and campaign reform advocates say they’re probably right.
On March 5, the Democratic-controlled Oregon Legislature approved a bill that proponents described as containing only technical fixes to what they wrote two years ago.
Groups seeking to limit the influence of money in politics said the change goes far beyond household chores. The new bill has a loophole that would allow companies to circumvent the restrictions by donating through affiliates, they said.
Attorney Dan Meek, a longtime key figure in funding cuts in Oregon politics, called the bill “a bill that would destroy campaign finance reform in Oregon.”
Oregon elections have not had contribution limits since a brief period in the 1990s. Former Secretary of State Phil Keisling, who advocated for these caps only to see them overturned in court, said the Legislature’s record on campaign finance was “one of the most profound public policy failures” in Oregon’s recent history.
“The limits should have been set decades ago,” he says. “The fundamental problem is that there are powerful factions within both parties that favor the current system.”
Legislative leaders defended their work.
In a speech on the floor, House Majority Leader Ben Bowman explained that the contribution limits adopted by Congress will ensure “elections where the voices of everyday people are not drowned out by the rich and powerful who make unlimited political contributions.” He explained that this year’s changes are necessary for the new system to work.
A study I worked on seven years ago found that campaign finance in Oregon doesn’t just help politicians get elected.
They spent campaign funds in ways that benefited them, such as luxury hotel rooms, dry cleaning, and car washes, and sometimes picked up the tab during dozens of visits to sports bars. One lawmaker used campaign funds to buy a new computer three weeks before leaving office. Another spent money on an Amazon Prime membership 11 days before retiring.
Money shaped public policy. As a reporter covering the environment in Oregon, I have spent more than a decade watching Congress weaken or stall efforts on climate change, logging practices, industrial air pollution, herbicide spraying, oil spill preparedness, and other issues. One former regulator said it took a phone call from a well-connected lobbyist to kill a clean air plan.
What has happened since my findings were published reveals how difficult it is to eliminate this kind of influence when the people whose donations are expected to be suppressed are those who have long benefited from the campaign.
After Oregonians voted overwhelmingly in 2020 to give lawmakers the power to regulate campaign finance, lawmakers were unable to introduce regulations in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Tired of waiting, advocates for strict limits on campaign finance have gathered tens of thousands of signatures to put a bill on the 2024 ballot that would limit donations. Labor unions, a major source of contributions to the Democratic Party, responded by threatening to file their own counterproposals. Supporters of the proposed union recently said it would encourage grassroots participation through a small donor committee and include public financing of candidates.
Meek, an advocate of campaign reform, described the union’s move as an effort to create looser restrictions with less disclosure and large loopholes.
Lawmakers also intervened, brokering an agreement hailed as a historic breakthrough. Labor unions, campaign reform advocates and big business have written legislation that Meek and others say is at least a starting point for controlling political funding in Oregon. However, it was less restrictive and had larger dollar limits than Meek and others had hoped for.
Kate Titus, Oregon state director for the advocacy group Common Cause, who participated in the negotiations with Meek, said everyone agreed that the bill’s language needed technical changes before the program went into effect in 2027. But the group, which includes House Speaker Julie Fahey, said it agreed that no substantive changes would be made without unanimous consent.
So began this year’s brief, month-long legislative session, and then a surprise occurred.
Titus explained that he saw Fahey in the hallways of the state Capitol in early February and asked him if he had any invoices from his campaign fund. Fahey’s expression changed to what Titus described as “pure panic.”
“I can’t talk,” Titus said the speaker told her, and hurried away.
(Fahey’s spokeswoman, Jill Bakken, said Fahey told Titus on his way from the floor session to the meeting that he didn’t have time for an impromptu conversation in the hallway and could arrange a time through his staff.)
Hours later, an 85-page bill with Fahey’s name on it was filed, with a hearing scheduled for early the next morning, Titus said.
This would extend the deadline for new campaign finance tracking websites established in the 2024 bill from 2028 to 2032.
The bill would cap donations to one type of political committee at $5,000 per year instead of every two-year election cycle, effectively doubling the amount allowed. A Fahey spokesperson said the 2024 provision is a “typo” that needs to be corrected because it conflicts with restrictions for other donation types.
The 2024 law prohibits multiple businesses run by the same person from making donations to the extent permitted by law. The 2026 bill would allow businesses to do so as long as they were not set up solely for the purpose of circumventing the restrictions, but a Fahey spokesperson said the change was needed to avoid a “chilling effect on the participation of community-based organizations in elections.” The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., argued that this is a loophole that makes Oregon’s contribution limits “illusory.”
In addition, the bill would remove a long-standing provision in state law that says funds spent to coordinate with candidates are campaign funds. A spokesman for Secretary of State Tobias Reid said the provision was “redundant” because the law also defines “anything of value” other than money as a campaign contribution. But the Campaign Legal Center said the change could result in Oregon’s ability to function as “no contribution limit.”
A representative from the League of Women Voters of Oregon, which was involved in the 2024 negotiations, called the bill “a complete betrayal.”
Bakken, the Fahey spokesperson, told ProPublica that organizations including the league “have been part of this conversation for many years” and will have the opportunity to be heard as lawmakers consider future changes.
As for why Congress didn’t do more to stem the flow of money into the system, Bakken said that restricting donors too tightly could divert cash from campaign coffers into commercials and mailers supporting candidates, something candidates have no legal control over. These “independent expenditures” have no monetary limits under federal law.
Meek and others were dissatisfied with the proposal, but there was nothing they could do. They threatened to return to the polls, but without the signatures they collected to return to the polls in 2024, they lost influence. The bill passed the Oregon House 39-19 and the Senate 20-9.
Sen. Jeff Golden, a Southern Oregon Democrat who opposed the bill, said its passage was the biggest surprise of his eight years in office. Given the potentially large loopholes, he said in an interview, “I thought my colleagues wouldn’t get through, and I was wrong.”
The bill is on the desk of Portland Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek. She has until April 17 to decide.
