Current News

New legislation would delay voter-approved campaign finance limits if Oregon Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of donor caps.

Seven Portland City Council candidates including incumbent Commissioner Chloe Eudaly have qualified to receive taxpayer dollars to help fund their campaigns, leading to more than $550,000 set to be doled by the end of January, according to the city.

Oregon is among a handful of states with no limits on campaign contributions in elections. The 2020 session offers lawmakers another chance to change that.

The Oregon Capitol (Salem Reporter archives) Rep. Dan Rayfield, D- Corvallis, wants to keep the campaign field for candidates level this year as courts and legislators untangle campaign finance reforms but he wants to short circuit a voter-approved measure to do that. Dan Meek, a longtime campaign finance reform advocate,[Read More...]

Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, writes that big-dollar contributions to elected officials and Oregonians' distaste for such donations underscore the simple need for Oregon to adopt strong campaign finance regulations.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told reporters on Friday that the state Legislature should not pass campaign contribution limits during the short session that begins in February. She did not cite any specific benefits of waiting until at least 2021. Voters will decide in November whether to amend the state Constitution to allow contribution caps.

Councilmember M. Lorena González is proposing legislation to protect our democracy from the corruption of big money and foreign influence.

Advocates are pressing a crop of political candidates to abide by local campaign finance limits, which were passed by voters last year but quickly faced legal challenges.

Ronald Buel, a member of political action committee Honest Elections Oregon, filed complaints with the Portland City Auditor’s Office claiming that since September, Wheeler accepted 15 donations that exceeded $500 and Ozzie Gonzalez and Jack Kerfoot each accepted four.

Mayor Ted Wheeler and three other local political candidates are facing scrutiny for accepting hefty donations that clash with local campaign finance regulations passed by voters. On Thursday, a Portland resident who campaigned for the new policies filed official complaints against those four candidates, kicking off an investigation that could land the candidates in court. In 2018, Portlanders voted by an overwhelming majority to approve Measure 26-200, a campaign finance reform initiative that, among other...

Editorial board memo covers recent campaign finance decisions in Connecticut and New York.

NCSL maintains extensive resources on various aspects of campaign finance, from states’ disclosure requirements to public financing programs and limits on contributions to candidates. This page serves as a table of contents for NCSL's campaign finance resources.

This month Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler donated $16,000 to charities that originally came as campaign donations from the man at the center of last week's impeachment inquiry hearings, Gordon Sondland. One KATU News Viewer wanted to know why Wheeler didn’t give the money back. Turns out, politicians have a lot of freedom in what they can do with campaign donations in Portland and Oregon.

A proposed initiative to change the way Oregon draws its legislative and congressional boundaries could remove the conflict of interest inherent in the current system and deserves greater debate, the editorial board writes.

Oregon Supreme Court justices pepper attorneys with questions about whether the court should uphold a Multnomah County ordinance allowing strict limits on donations.

Given that political-action committees have shelled out millions on the 14 candidates still in the running for Seattle City Council, it's no wonder some voters are experiencing advertising overload.

On the heels of massive spending in Seattle's council races, Lorena Gonzalez is continuing to fight for a bill to curb that spending in future elections.

Wheeler’s campaign announced Nov. 8, 2019 that he won’t enroll in the city’s new public campaign finance program. He is seeking to become Portland's first two-term mayor since Vera Katz.

Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) says she’ll go her own way.

In one key way, Oregon lags other states in making voting easy. Its closed primary system locks out hundreds of thousands of non-affiliated voters who now make up one-third of Oregon's registrants. Oregonians should keep up the pressure on the parties to open their primaries and on the secretary of state candidates to also make this a central part of their platform.

The top three Democrats vying for the state’s second-highest office are all planning their own proposals for limiting money. 

Timeline of Money in Politics

history of campaign finance reform in the U.S. and a timeline of campaign finance legislation