Janeese Lewis George’s Mayoral Campaign Hit With Last-Minute Accusations

If U.S. presidential elections have been known for their October surprises, D.C.’s mayoral election just got its own version – a Friday surprise.

That’s because of the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance’s late-Friday announcement that it was fining mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George $16,000 for campaign finance violations for what it said was impermissible coordination between her campaign, a number of local unions and a union-supported independent expenditure committee, Safe & Affordable D.C., that has spent on ads and mailers attacking her main opponent, Kenyan McDuffie.

OCF similarly said it was fining Safe & Affordable D.C. $4,000 for its own apparent role in the coordination.

The accusations – which were detailed in a 40-page report – sparked an immediate political furor in the hotly contested race’s final days, with voters already casting ballots and the Democratic primary, almost certain to determine the overall winner in the deep-blue city, on the horizon. Lewis George called the findings “absurd” and “politically motivated” and said she would immediately appeal, while McDuffie referred to them as “pretty egregious” and “deeply disturbing.”

The OCF investigation was kicked off in April after Kevin Sobkoviak, a McDuffie supporter, filed a complaint claiming that Lewis George’s campaign was illegally coordinating with local labor unions and the Safe & Affordable D.C. independent expenditure committee. Those types of committees can raise and spend unlimited funds during political campaigns, but they can’t coordinate with any candidate.

The OCF investigation determined that such coordination had occurred, largely because of “virtually non-existent” firewalls between Lewis George’s campaign – which had “leased” some of its senior employees from unions – the unions themselves and Safe & Affordable D.C.

“Entanglement between ‘leased’ union workers, the Campaign and super PACs and independent expenditure committees support to the Campaign based upon knowledge supplied by shared high level union employees are insurmountable evidence of coordinated activities,” the report said.

The OCF report also said Lewis George’s campaign had impermissibly reimbursed two campaign staffers for tens of thousands of dollars worth of expenses; D.C. law generally limits such reimbursements to $50.

“The findings are jarring,” McDuffie said during a hastily arranged news conference Saturday afternoon. “It is incumbent upon her as somebody who is seeking the highest office in Washington, D.C., to be honest with residents across the city about what she did and what she didn’t do. And on its face, the allegations speak volumes to a really serious problem that occurred with her campaign.”

Lewis George and her allies disputed the report’s findings; Jos Williams, the chairman of Safe & Affordable D.C. and a former labor leader, said OCF “[did] not find any specific facts constituting coordination with the campaign under D.C. law, and instead baselessly ‘presumes’ coordination where none exists.”

They also took a more direct aim at OCF itself. Lewis George’s campaign said the report was “riddled with factual errors” and violated due process; it claimed that various people whom OCF said it had interviewed hadn’t even been contacted. (The first version of the report included typos and what appeared to be notes-to-self by the author; it even included the wrong date that the report itself was published.)

Lewis George and her supporters also questioned the timing of the report, coming only days before Tuesday’s Democratic primary. She called it a “last-ditch attempt” to derail her campaign; D.C. Council member Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who has endorsed Lewis George, agreed.

“This is not the first time a reckless OCF finding has come down on the eve of an election with the perceived intent to influence its outcome,” Nadeau said in a statement. “In fact, it’s also not the first time this has happened to an opponent of Kenyan McDuffie.”

That was a reference to a similar situation that occurred in 2022, when OCF issued a report accusing D.C. Council candidate Elissa Silverman – who at the time was in a tight race against McDuffie – of campaign finance violations. That report was also issued in the closing days of the campaign. Silverman lost the election, but months later won an appeal in the campaign finance case and had charges tossed out.

Even McDuffie agreed that the timing of the report’s release wasn’t ideal. “I think the public should have gotten this information a lot earlier, because ultimately, this election is about trust,” he said.

Any appeal from Lewis George won’t be settled until after the primary. An independent expenditure committee that is backing McDuffie’s campaign texted thousands of voters on Saturday with a link to the OCF report, saying that “voters should be aware of these violations of law before casting their ballots.”

Through the end of Saturday, more than 19,000 people had voted via mail ballot, and more than 10,000 during a weeklong period of in-person early voting. More than 132,000 people voted in the city’s last mayoral primary election in 2022.

The last-minute political drama involving Lewis George comes against a backdrop of a mayoral election that has been flooded with outsized spending by independent groups supporting either her or McDuffie.

Safe & Affordable D.C. has raised and spent more than $1.5 million – largely from unions – to run ads and mailers attacking McDuffie; the local chapter of the Sierra Club has added $200,000 of its own. On McDuffie’s side, People for a United D.C., another independent expenditure group, has raised and spent more than $800,000 against Lewis George, while Opportunity D.C., a pro-business committee, has also raised $800,000.

For context, Lewis George and McDuffie, both of whom are participating in the city’s public financing program for candidates, have each pulled in more than $3 million for their own campaigns. In that program, candidates cannot accept more than $200 from any individual, and donations coming from D.C. residents are matched 5-to-1 with public funds.

When a NOTUS reporter asked McDuffie whether he could pledge to D.C. voters that his campaign has not coordinated with the outside groups supporting his campaign – the very charge Lewis George has faced – he responded: “Unequivocally. Yes. I could tell voters that. And there’s been no allegations of such, either.”