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Jan 29, 2024

Elissa Silverman ordered to refund Ward 3 poll expenditures after probe

D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) was ordered Thursday to

D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) was ordered Thursday to reimburse the city for the cost of two polls she commissioned for the Ward 3 race ahead of the June primary election — but she plans to ask the city's Board of Elections to reconsider the matter.

The city's Office of Campaign Finance said Thursday that Silverman should not have polled the crowded Ward 3 Democratic primary when she was not a candidate in the contest, an assertion that Silverman says she disagrees with. The conflict arises less than two weeks before Election Day; Silverman is fighting to retain her at-large seat against several other candidates, including independent Karim Marshall, who in August asked the city's Office of Campaign Finance to investigate whether Silverman violated any rules or improperly coordinated with other candidates while polling the race.

Three candidates in that primary race eventually dropped out to support Matthew Frumin, the eventual winner — and to fend off Eric Goulet, another leading candidate.

Silverman is a participant in the city's public campaign financing program, which caps individual donations at small-dollar amounts while matching contributions from city residents, 5 to 1, with taxpayer funds. She has maintained that the poll was properly reported and that she did not share specifics with other candidates, which would need to be disclosed as a campaign contribution. But in an order sent to her and Marshall's campaigns Thursday, OCF's general counsel, William SanFord, said that while there was insufficient evidence to back Marshall's complaint about coordination, he found that Silverman violated provisions of the Fair Elections Act by polling the Ward 3 race.

At SanFord's recommendation, OCF Director Cecily E. Collier-Montgomery ordered Silverman to reimburse the city's public financing program for the two polls, which cost a combined $6,277.52.

"She chose to expend Fair Elections Funds on a poll regarding a Ward Primary Election in which she was not a candidate. Clearly, this was not an acceptable expenditure of campaign funds," SanFord wrote.

Silverman, in a statement, said she believes the Ward 3 polls were lawful and that she plans to ask the city's Board of Elections for a full hearing on the matter as a form of appeal.

Silverman's campaign also contended Thursday that OCF had promised that it would not render a decision in the investigation until she fully responded to the inquiry within 90 days, which would be Nov. 21, and instead moved up its timeline.

She said that OCF "appears to have rushed a decision to issue an order at the end of the election, in contradiction to written promises its staff provided to my counsel at the start of the investigation."

OCF spokesperson Wesley Williams said in a statement Thursday that the timeline was not moved and that 90 days is the window to complete an investigation, not one to provide a response. He also noted that Silverman's campaign was granted three extensions to provide additional responses and never provided OCF more information. "The Office stands by its Order," he wrote.

At-large D.C. Council candidate requests probe into Elissa Silverman's Ward 3 poll

About a week before the June primary, Silverman confirmed to DCist that she had polled the Ward 3 race and broadly discussed the conclusions — namely, that Goulet was projected to win — with two of the candidates who had dropped out of the contest. She and others who opposed Goulet often cited that he had the support of the pro-charter school group Democrats for Education Reform D.C. (DFER), which over the years has poured significant money into the city's elections.

In responses to questions from campaign finance officials detailed in the order, Silverman said she polled the Ward 3 contest to explore an automated polling system before the general election and because she wanted to be "well-informed of Ward 3 priorities." She also noted that two of the candidates who dropped out, Ben Bergmann and Tricia Duncan, had asked for her endorsement; endorsing a candidate in the ward who was not aligned with her own interests could affect her own reelection chances, Silverman wrote.

She also told the campaign finance office that she did not conduct any other ward-level polls ahead of the primary election because DFER's spending was focused partly in Ward 3, in addition to the Democratic primary races for mayor and council chair. Silverman said that she talked about the risks of potential vote-splitting with Duncan and Bergmann, and discussed how their staying in the race could benefit Goulet, who had DFER's backing, but she claimed that she never directly urged them to drop out of the race.

"At bottom, the polls were conducted at Councilmember Silverman's sole direction and for her own electoral benefit," Silverman wrote.

But SanFord contended in the order that the polls did not ask respondents about their priorities or educational reform, and said that testing out different polling systems did "not justify the expenditure of public funds in a ward race in which she was not a participant." He also took exception to Silverman's discussions with Bergmann and Duncan.

"One of the goals of the Fair Elections Act was to provide an incentive for more candidates to compete in the electoral process," SanFord wrote. "Thus, Councilmember Silverman should have been an advocate for the integrity of the Fair Elections Program as opposed to suggesting to the candidates whom she decided not to endorse that they could better serve the residents of Ward 3 by reducing the level of ‘vote splitting.’ "

Julie Zauzmer Weil contributed to this report.