Ally Wants Investigation of Campaign Finance Office that Fined JLG

A top D.C. Council ally of Janeese Lewis George is demanding an investigation of the office whose bombshell ethics ruling against the mayoral candidate threatened to upend last week’s primary.

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau wants to know whether the city's Office of Campaign Finance improperly inserted itself into the election by declaring days before the vote that Lewis George had violated campaign finance rules, a charge the candidate denied.

Worse, Nadeau said, the office has done the same thing before.

In a letter released Thursday, Nadeau requested that D.C.’s inspector general investigate whether the Office of Campaign Finance “acted improperly.” The letter mentions the fine levied against Lewis George days before the polls closed last week, as well as a 2022 situation when it made a separate headline-grabbing last-minute finding against at-large Councilmember Elissa Silverman. That ruling was ultimately reversed — but not before Silverman lost the election. (She was re-elected to the Council in a special election last week.)

“That didn’t sit right with me,” Nadeau told City Cast DC on Thursday. “ … Entities that are meant to be providing justice or compliance guidance need to be mindful of the impact their actions have on electoral results.”

In the most recent case, the Office of Campaign Finance accused Lewis George of illegally coordinating with labor unions and an independent expenditure committee, fining her $16,000. Lewis George vowed to fight the allegation, which came the Friday before Election Day.

Nadeau at the time called it “a threat to free and fair elections from within our own government.”

The letter from Nadeau asked the inspector general to look into whether the office followed its own investigatory procedures, “including any procedures that are intended to prevent enforcement actions from being announced at a time when they could improperly influence the outcome of elections.”

Nadeau said Thursday that she doesn’t know if such a policy, formally or informally, exists regarding the campaign fines so close to an election.

“It’d be interesting to see what any of the internal conversations were about that,” she said.

Nadeau, who did not run for re-election, also asked for an inquiry into “whether anyone influenced (or tried to influence) OCF to issue enforcement actions just before the election in order to tarnish a candidate, affect the election’s outcome, or otherwise achieve an improper purpose.”

The OCF in 2022 fined Silverman’s campaign more than $6,000 for allegedly using funds to conduct polling about Ward 3’s Democratic primary — even though she was not a candidate in that ward. The fine came 12 days before the election. The Board of Elections later overturned the fine. But Silverman lost her election to Kenyan McDuffie, who also ran against Lewis George in this mayoral contest.

“I don't want to [assume], but I think it’s curious that he was the opponent in both those cases,” Nadeau said. “I’m sure it’s not him, but there may be supporters of his or boosters of his that engaged OCF or have influence at OCF, I don’t know.”

McDuffie’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The inspector general's office responded Friday that it has received Nadeau's request. "My team will review the matter and respond as appropriate," wrote Matthew Wilcoxson, acting principal deputy inspector general. The campaign finance office did not immediately respond to City Cast’s request for comment Thursday.

When the fine against Lewis George was announced on the Friday before Election Day, both campaigns groused about it. Lewis George’s opponent, McDuffie, claimed that the office had sat on the bad news until after people had started voting early. And Lewis George claimed that the agency had made a damaging charge at a moment when it was too late for her to rebut it before the election.

There are clearly still hard feelings among some in Lewis George’s camp. The unfairness of the fine was mentioned from the stage at her victory party on election night.

A winning candidate has good reason not to just ignore old campaign finance controversies. For much of his mayoral term, Vincent Gray had to deal with fallout from alleged federal campaign finance misdeeds during his successful 2010 run. They remained a damaging, distracting issue during his unsuccessful 2014 re-election campaign.

Correction: We incorrectly reported which agency from which Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau was awaiting a response to her investigation request. We regret the error.