The board said D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman's due-process rights were not violated when the Office of Campaign Finance determined she misspent public campaign funds.
for the cost of two polls she commissioned for the Ward 3 council race ahead of the June primary. In the Oct. 28 order, OCF general counsel William SanFord said that Silverman — a participant in the city’s public campaign finance program, which caps individual donations while matching contributions from D.C. residents with taxpayer funds — violated provisions of the Fair Elections Act by commissioning polling in a race in which she was not competing.
“There was no finding of unauthorized coordination, and the case should have been closed right there,” Downs said during the virtual hearing. “But without notifying council member Silverman, OCF went out searching for other violations.”SanFord contended that an initial email sent to Silverman about the probe “indicated that we have the authority to investigate any violations of the Campaign Finance Act.” He also pushed back against Downs’s assertion that there was any promise about a timeline.
“I believe the Board of Elections will agree that an expenditure for polling to understand voter thinking in one part of the city is appropriate for a citywide candidate, whether they are under the Fair Elections program or using traditional campaign financing,” Silverman wrote. Silverman told DCist ahead of the primary that she did not share the specific results of the polls with Duncan and Bergmann but did talk to them about the risk of vote splitting and potentially helping another front-runner in that race, Eric Goulet, whom they opposed.
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