Gonzalez and his campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Portland Auditor Simone Rede’s office caused him “constitutional harm.”
PORTLAND, Ore. — Former Portland city commissioner and 2024 mayoral hopeful Rene Gonzalez is bringing a second lawsuit against the city and Auditor Simone Rede’s office — this time in federal court and seeking monetary damages.
Gonzalez previously sued Rede’s office in Multnomah County Circuit Court, winning a ruling last July that overturned two campaign finance violations he’d incurred during his campaign for mayor, with fines totaling $11,580.
That ruling did not touch on the merits of the violations, but rather on how they were adjudicated. Rede’s office pursued them under a section of city code governing campaign finance violations which allowed her to assess penalties without the matter going before a neutral hearings officer, which the judge determined did not afford Gonzalez his due process rights.
The city of Portland had to refund the fines. In March, city council passed an amendment fixing that part of city code to align with the judge’s determination.
Now, Gonzalez is asking a U.S. District Court to award him damages because of the state court finding.
“Due process is more — not less — important in a campaign, precisely because the stakes are so high and decisions made at the ballot box have long shadows. Enforcement mistakes carry both monetary and reputational consequences that last long past the election at stake,” Gonzalez said in a statement, in part. “We hope this lawsuit reinforces the importance of careful, fair, and constitutional investigations and enforcement in matters that directly affect elections.”
KGW reached out to the Portland Auditor’s office for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Fines in an election season
Gonzalez had an early brush with alleged violations of the city’s Small Donor Elections program when he ran for city commissioner in 2022. SDE Director Susan Mottet found that Gonzalez’s campaign was paying just $250 per month to the company of real estate developer Jordan Schnitzer — a supporter of the campaign — to rent their 3,185-square-foot downtown headquarters.
Mottet determined the reduced rate to be an illegal in-kind donation, leveling against the Gonzalez campaign a total of $77,140 in fines and penalties.
The penalty was short-lived. An administrative judge determined that the city did not sufficiently demonstrate that the discount constituted an illegal in-kind contribution. The SDE program was forced to pay out the matching funds it had withheld, and the auditor’s office withdrew its campaign finance violation.
But the campaign finance violations at issue in Gonzalez’s new complaint occurred in 2024, as he ran for Portland mayor. He came under investigation by the Portland auditor’s office that August, after a report that he’d used city funds to hire a contractor for help updating his Wikipedia page. While Gonzalez acknowledged doing as much, he argued that his office had “legitimate interests” in doing so, unrelated to the campaign.
Rede’s office initially decided not to issue a violation in the case, but they reversed course in October after finding evidence sufficient to conclude that the Wikipedia edits were motivated by his political designs. His campaign was fined $2,400.
In the November election, which was Portland’s first using ranked-choice voting, Gonzalez came in third.
Less than two weeks after the election, the auditor’s office hit the Gonzalez campaign with another fine, this one totaling $9,180, after determining that the campaign accepted 18 contributions exceeding Portland’s campaign finance limits under the Small Donor Elections program, in which Gonzalez was again participating.
‘Constitutional harm’
The complaint filed by Gonzalez focuses on the excess contributions and suggests that the auditor’s office doggedly pursued his violations without acting similarly for other candidates.
Gonzalez’s campaign was in touch with staff at the Small Donor Elections program, the complaint claims, and reported to them “excess or over-the-limit donations,” but were in essence told not to worry too much about them.
Mottet is quoted in the complaint as telling the campaign that they “just like to see refunds” and that excess donations are treated as loans “up to $5K.”
“Consistent with that guidance, the campaign did not attempt to retain over-limit amounts. Instead, it treated excess amounts as needing to be returned, and it began refunding excess amounts when identified,” the complaint states. “The campaign did not need loans, and it worked to refund excess amounts as soon as practicable.”
Rede’s office had determined that the campaign did not refund 18 of those excess contributions, totaling $3,060, within an allowable seven-day grace period. It instead took “weeks or months” — up to 223 days at the longest.
The complaint does not detail timelines for the refunds. But it does allege that Rede’s office pursued those violations without consulting with SDE, which city code requires.
“Had the Auditor asked the SDE program to determine whether the serial contributions at issue … violated SDE program rules, the SDE program would have advised the Auditor of its position regarding belatedly refunded serial contributions, an issue that multiple campaigns had already raised with the SDE program,” the complaint states.
Gonzalez’s complaint goes a step further, however, by alleging that Rede specifically avoided taking the matter to SDE, because she “knew” they were aware of those contributions already and did not consider them a violation.
According to the complaint, the auditor’s office had been “put on notice” that other candidates’ campaigns had similar issues with excess contributions, though they were not ultimately subject to any enforcement actions.
“The selective enforcement was not accidental. It reflected a deliberate choice to deploy the enforcement process against Plaintiff while declining to use the same interpretation or enforcement tools against Plaintiff’s similarly situated opponents and other campaigns,” the complaint alleges.
The complaint spends considerably less time on the violation related to the Wikipedia edits, beyond noting the state court’s findings which led to both fines being overturned. However, Gonzalez does allege that the auditor’s office “wrongly publicly accused” him and his staff of attempting to mislead their investigators, which became an aggravating factor in the size of the penalty.
Gonzalez’s lawsuit concludes that his campaign suffered a diversion of time, attention and resources in the run-up to the November election; reputational harm from the campaign finance violations; plus financial harm in the response and attorneys’ fees for the subsequent legal action.
The complaint does not make a specific prayer for relief, but leaves the door open for “compensatory damages in an amount to be proven at trial,” plus reasonable attorney fees and costs.