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Sometimes, investigations into District politicians don’t turn much up. Two cases in point: frequent Republican candidate Pat Mara and councilmember and mayoral hopeful Jack Evans, who were both cleared by the Office of Campaign Finance at today’s monthly Board of Elections meeting.
OCF’s Mara investigation, launched last April, looked into whether he violated campaign finance law by helping a conservative group raise money from his 2008 at-large campaign donors. OCF dropped the Mara investigation in September for “insufficient evidence,” OCF general counsel William SanFord told the Board of Elections.
While the Mara investigation was dropped, the investigation—-or, as Evans insists to LL, the “inquiry”—- into whether Evans’ constituent service fund had received illicit donations from subsidiary companies resolved itself when the fund paid back a few hundred dollars in donations.
Evans still isn’t sure why what he describes as a routine overpayment turned into an investigation. “What surprised me is that it got to the level that it did when it really was a relatively minor matter,” Evans says.
It’s worth noting that this is all separate from the reported Board of Ethics and Government Accountability investigation into Evans over a Foggy Bottom alley closing. The status of that alleged investigation is unclear, since the board doesn’t comment on the existence of pending investigations.
While OCF has ended two of its investigations, it’s also started a new one. Longshot mayoral candidate Frank Sewell is being investigated for his prolific flyering, which, as LL noted at the time, occurred before he officially registered as a candidate.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery