D.C. Mayor Is Burned by a Contractor's Participation in His Election
While I was on vacation last week, the biggest story in local
government ethics appears to have been, once again, in the District
of Columbia. According to <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-releases/2014/businessman-pleads-…; target="”_blank”">a
press release from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia</a>
and the charges brought by the U.S. Attorney (attached; see below), the
CEO of the parent company of a major D.C. government health care
contractor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to channel over $2 million
in illegal contributions to and in-kind expenditures in support of two
D.C. mayoral candidates and multiple D.C. council candidates between 2006 and
2011.<br>
<br>
In his press release, the U.S. Attorney stated, “Election after
election, Jeff Thompson huddled behind closed doors with corrupt
candidates, political operatives, and businessmen, devising schemes
to funnel millions of dollars of corporate money into local and
federal elections."<br>
<br>
To make these illegal contributions, Thompson has admitted to using
over 75 conduits, including relatives, friends, employees,
independent contractors, and his company's senior management, using
personal and corporate money to reimburse them.<br>
<br>
He also admits to having secretly made large in-kind contributions coordinated with
candidates, which have been called "shadow campaigns." He even
agreed to pay a mayoral candidate more than $200,000 to withdraw
from the 2006 mayoral race. Hiding these payments and corporate
reimbursements led to many acts of accounting and tax fraud.<br>
<br>
The mayor insists that he broke no laws and that he knew nothing about the "shadow campaign" made on his behalf.
But he raised an interesting issue in an interview with the
Washington <i>Post</i>. According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeffrey-thompsons-guilty-plea-re…; target="”_blank”">a
<i>Post</i> editorial last week</a>, an associate of Thompson's, who has
also pleaded guilty, says that she asked the mayor on Thompson's
behalf to expedite a settlement. The mayor, who had sought
Thompson's (legal) fundraising for his campaign, responded to this
allegation, "what if she had? Is that illegal?”<br>
<br>
The problem is that it is legal for the council president, as a
mayoral candidate, to ask a major contractor to raise funds for his
campaign. Once this request is made, no matter how legal the
contractor's conduct may be, it will look to the public as if, once
elected, anything the mayor's administration does to help the
contractor is a quid pro quo.<br>
<br>
In this case, everyone knows that no government contractor is going to spend hundreds
of thousands of dollars clandestinely supporting candidates if the contractor
believes that those candidates will not know what the contractor has done for them. The contractor's
secrecy is meant to hide illegal conduct from the authorities, not from
those candidates the contractor supports. <br>
<br>
Bringing contractors and others seeking special benefits from one's
government into one's campaign is playing with fire. A candidate who
does this should recognize that he is taking a serious risk that he
will be burned the way the District's mayor is being burned when more news of an illegal campaign-related conspiracy comes out during an election year. The best way to protect oneself from this risk is to
push for a law that limits contractor participation in campaigns. If
no such law can be passed, a candidate can still keep himself and his
campaign separate from those seeking special benefits from his
government, thereby minimizing the risk of being considered
corrupt, whether or not the contractor does something illegal.<br>
<br>
For more on this matter, see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/knowledge-fear-retaliation-and-ethics…; target="”_blank”">a 2012 blog post of mine</a>.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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