Campaign-fund complaint delay irks both sides

By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Just hours after Mayor Jeremy Harris and his campaign committee filed three lawsuits against the state Campaign Spending Commission, the panel balked at its director's recommendation to slap the campaign with a hefty fine.

But Harris campaign officials now fear the dispute will merely be dragged out longer, leading to further controversy and bad publicity months closer to the November election, in which Harris plans to run for governor.

At issue is a complaint filed with the commission by its executive director, Robert Watada, which alleges that the Harris campaign improperly donated $100,000 to a Democratic National Committee "soft money" account in 2000 and failed to report it to the commission.

The complaint also charges that the Harris campaign spent more than $24,000 on expenses that were unrelated to Harris' 2000 re-election effort, such as parking tickets and trips to Washington, D.C., California and the Philippines.

Instead of validating the allegations and fining the campaign upwards of $350,000, the commission voted 3-2 to give its staff one month to compile further evidence to support Watada's complaint, and to allow the campaign a month after that to prepare a response.

But attorneys for the campaign said they had no confidence the commission would treat the complaint fairly, and urged the panel to either toss it out or approve it immediately so they could appeal the charges in court.

"I would just as soon have this resolved and not referred into some sinkhole from where it can be resurrected later on, further down, to make it more difficult for Mayor Harris to run a campaign, unless that's the intention here," attorney William McCorriston told the commission.

Commissioner Della Au Belatti, who proposed that the decision be postponed, hotly disputed the suggestion that the commission was out to discredit Harris and sabotage his run for governor.

"This is a fair body," she said. "There is no one here that is beholden to anyone."

Siding with Belatti to delay the complaint were commissioners Mona Chock and Richard Choy. Voting in opposition were commissioner Clifford Muraoka and commission chairman A. Duane Black, both of whom later said they were convinced there was already sufficient evidence to back up the complaint.

Harris declined to comment on the decision. But his campaign chairman, Rich Tsujimura, labeled the move a delaying tactic meant to drag out negative media coverage.

Prior to the vote, Harris and his campaign filed lawsuits in federal and state court to challenge the complaint and other interpretations of campaign spending law by the commission, which Harris says have harmed his gubernatorial campaign.

The Democratic National Committee joined as a plaintiff in the first of two federal suits, which argues that Watada's complaint violates the constitutional right of Harris and the DNC to freedom of speech, and that the commission has no jurisdiction over fund-raising for a national political committee.

"We joined the lawsuit because we believe the actions taken by Mayor Harris were perfectly legal and were not subject to state law," DNC spokeswoman Maria Cardona said from Washington.

Watada said he was confident his complaint was ready for a decision, and that he believed the suits were intended to stop investigators from ferreting out additional evidence of wrongdoing.

"It's sort of expected that they would use lawsuits to prevent the commission from bringing this information out," said Watada, who denied Harris' claim that Watada had launched a vendetta against him.

The second federal suit challenges Watada's contention that all contributions made to Harris since November 1998 should be counted toward the $6,000-per-donor limit in the governor's race, including those made when Harris was running for re-election as mayor.

The third suit, filed in state Circuit Court, asks that the Campaign Spending Commission be barred from enforcing that interpretation until the issue is resolved in federal court.

Reach Johnny Brannon at jbrannon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.