What’s Wrong with Breaking Election Laws
Dear Law Keepers:
With some people it’s instinctive. They know, without any involved
explanation, why politicians and political operatives should obey the
laws that govern political campaigns. With others, it’s a little tough
to explain. To them, the rules and regulations are just suggestions to
be bent and twisted until they’re broken, and when they’re caught
they complain about the unfairness of being held to the same standards
that others have to live by. The most recent example is Josh Lopez of
the Save DC Now, Inc., Committee, the committee that promoted the
campaign to write in Adrian Fenty as a mayoral candidate in the general
election after he lost the Democratic primary. Lopez, who was fined last
Friday for his multiple violations of campaign finance law, is now
defaming the Office of Campaign Finance in the press, portraying himself
as an innocent youth caught up in the arcane and arbitrary regulations
run by a predatory city agency. Both Tim Craig, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2011/01/young_fenty_write-in_supporter.html,
and Jonetta Rose Barras, http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/01/defending-democracy-dc,
have bought into Lopez’s self-serving story.
Here’s what happened. Lopez was a ward and field coordinator for
the official Fenty for Mayor Campaign in the primary. When Fenty lost,
Lopez helped to form and became a volunteer for the Save DC Now, Inc.,
Committee. He just happened by chance to have stumbled upon posters,
yard signs, brochures, stickers, and other campaign paraphernalia that
had been bought by the Fenty 2010 principal campaign committee — he’s
never offered a credible story of how he got possession of them, and the
Fenty campaign says it never gave him any of these materials or gave him
permission to use them. And then the Save DC Now committee used those
materials with the false and misleading attribution to the Fenty 2010
campaign committee. When OCF called Lopez on the false credit line, he
cut it off some posters, using them without any attribution, and stapled
or taped a new false credit line on others, claiming they were paid for
by the Save DC Now committee. This isn’t a difficult campaign finance
rule to understand — campaigns pay for their own campaign materials;
they identify the materials they pay for; and they don’t get secret
donations. Lopez was trained in these rules by the official Fenty
campaign. His “youth” — he’s twenty-six, not a child, and the
official members of the Save DC Now campaign, Eleanor Anderson and
Junius Carter, have decades on him — is no excuse for ignorance. Even
if it were, when these violations were first complained about to the
Office of Campaign Finance, OCF didn’t impose any fines or issue any
penalties on the Save DC Now committee. Instead, it held a hearing,
explained carefully and in detail to Save DC Now, Inc., what their
violations of DC law were, issued a verbal order requiring them to cease
and desist, and then followed that up with a written order (http://www.dcwatch.com/gov/ocf101102.htm).
It is only after Lopez and the Save DC Now committee continued to use
the illegal campaign materials after they had been ordered not to, up to
and including the day of the general election, and after the OCF
gathered ample evidence of these deliberate and flagrant violations,
that OCF issued a fine to the committee. The whole process is clearly
explained in the OCF’s order imposing the fine, http://www.dcwatch.com/gov/ocf110114.htm,
and it leaves Lopez’s story of innocent mistakes without a bit of
credibility. Lopez claims that requiring him to obey campaign finance
laws somehow damages democracy and discourages naive youths like himself
from engaging in democratic political campaigns, but anyone who buys
that story would have to be pretty naive himself. Dorothy has followed
campaign finance violations in DC for several years; she has assisted
workers and volunteers in any campaign who have asked for her advice on
how to follow and obey the law, and she has filed complaints with OCF
when she believed a campaign or politician had deliberately flouted the
law. The actions of the Save DC Now, Inc., Committee are the most
blatant and unrepentant of all, however; they still claim not to
understand what they have done wrong.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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There Is No “Next Bus”: Whose Fault Is It?
Ted Gest, test (at) sas.upenn.edu
Has anyone ever got the “next bus” system to work? I never have,
despite several attempts. On January 18, I was attempting to get a 7:15
p.m. L4 southbound bus at Connecticut Avenue and McKinley Street, NW, to
Dupont Circle. It didn’t arrive by 7:30. A woman said she had been
waiting for an hour, since 6:30, for any bus going south of Van Ness. My
first call to “next bus” was cut off. My second call was referred to
a real person, who put me on hold for ten minutes (during which time I
retrieved my car and decided to drive down Connecticut Avenue, seeing
there was no assurance that a bus ever would come). She had no idea when
an L4 might arrive, but announced that the problem was a presidential
motorcade. It was all Obama’s fault!
I told her I had covered the White House as a journalist, had been in
many motorcades, and it was unlikely that a motorcade would prevent
buses from running for more than an hour. Her reply: “My mother worked
at the White House, too. Have a good evening. Click.”
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My Wish List for the Gray Administration
Pat Taylor, ptaylor.dc@verizon.net
My wish is for Mayor Gray to hear the pleas of River Terrace
Elementary School’s parents, students, alumni, and teachers — asking
that this school, that is the heart of their community, be kept open.
Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson proposes to close this school because
of its low enrollment. School enrollment should not automatically
outweigh the importance of preserving a community that values and
supports its school children.
In your campaign, you spoke eloquently of the importance of the
chancellor and school principals involving school parents in
decision-making. River Terrace is a prime example of a
school-and-community in which the community needs to be heard. At a
two-hour hearing held by Henderson last week at this elementary school,
about two hundred community folk came to the meeting to tell the
chancellor why this school should stay open. In essence, they said, “this
school is important to our community, and our community is important to
this school, to these schoolchildren,” (from Bill Turque’s Washington
Post “DC Schools Insider,” blog, http://tinyurl.com/4phl24n)
Its location makes River Terrace truly a community, which the DC
government should help to preserve and strengthen, not weaken. It is a
virtual island of single-family homes and row houses, tucked away inside
the barriers created by Benning Road, NE, the Anacostia Freeway, and the
Anacostia River. It is a small, safe community where all the school
children can walk to school and play with their schoolmates outside of
school. Where parents and neighbors watch over the schoolchildren. It
illustrates the old African proverb with which Hillary Clinton entitled
her book: “It takes a village to raise a child.” Which this village
community does. At the meeting Lawrence George, who has lived in River
Terrace for sixty years, said “The school is the hub of this
community.”
The chancellor and the school principal should reach out to this
community — to all who came to hearing and more; to collaborate with
them and involve them in making this a model small elementary school of
one hundred fifty students.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
National Building Museum Events, January 24-25
Tara Miller, tmiller@nbm.org
January 24, 6:00-8:00 p.m., Docent Training Open House. Share your
interest in architecture, urban planning, design, and history with
visitors of all ages by volunteering your time and talent at the
National Building Museum. Training will begin with an open house on
Monday, January 24 at the Museum, and training will run through March.
Free; registration required. For more information on docent or other
Museum volunteer opportunities, visit our web site at http://www.nbm.org
for an application.
January 25, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Building in the 21st Century: Advancing
Sustainability and Security Goals Using Architectural Smart Glass. Greg
Sottile of Research Frontiers Inc. in Woodbury, New York, discusses the
new fabrications of smart glass used in windows, skylights, and
partitions. Learn about the architectural features of smart glass and
how it can promote sustainability while increasing the comfort and
security of homes and facilities. Free; registration required. Walk-in
registration based on availability. At the National Building Museum, 401
F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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Woman’s National Democratic Club Luncheon,
January 25
Tonya Butler-Truesdale, gotonyago@gmail.com
Alice Rivlin will speak on deficit reduction at a luncheon at the
Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, at
11:30 a.m., Tuesday, January 25, 2011. The United States is on a
disastrous fiscal path. In the conflict between restoring solvency and
stimulating the economy, the president’s budget is more focused on the
latter. Yet even before the recession Medicare and Medicaid, along with
Social Security, accounted for almost 50 percent of noninterest
spending. Payouts have risen rapidly since, and these entitlements are
growing faster than the economy and tax revenues. Brookings Senior
Fellow Alice Rivlin sits on both President Obama’s National Commission
on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (chaired by Alan Simpson and Erskine
Bowles) and is the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s debt
reduction task force, also known as the Domenici-Rivlin panel, which has
now released its final report. Rivlin discusses similarities and
differences between the president’s commission’s initial report and
the Domenici-Rivlin panel and what needs to be done to get the nation’s
fiscal house in order. Members $25, nonmembers $30, lecture only (no
lunch) $10. Register at https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=21011
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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED
Legal Assistant
Jon Katz, jon[at]katzjustice[dot]com
Part-time legal assistant: criminal defense and civil liberties.
Highly rated criminal defense lawyer in the news seeks a part-time legal
assistant or clerical assistant to join with our full-time assistant.
Full details are at http://katzjustice.com/JOBS.htm#assist
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