Gonzalez successfully argued that the city auditor violated his due process rights because he was penalized without a hearing, in a process written into city code.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A pair of penalties against Rene Gonzalez for campaign finance violations during his 2024 run for mayor have been overturned by a circuit court judge, Portland City Elections announced Thursday.

While the judge’s determination does not concern the merits of the campaign violations, Gonzalez successfully argued that the process under which he was penalized — which is written into the city charter’s section on campaign finance — did not afford him due process rights under the U.S. Constitution because he was not afforded a hearing.

In October, the Portland Auditor’s office determined that then-Commissioner Gonzalez violated campaign finance laws when he used city funds to hire an independent contractor to advise his staff on making edits to his Wikipedia page, fining him $2,400.

Initially, Gonzalez had prevailed in his argument that the edits to his page were to “correct errors” and counter misinformation. But the auditor’s office later said that Gonzalez’s office had misled them about a key document in the investigation, and that they found evidence that the Wikipedia edits were done to forward Gonzalez’s campaign, including adding that Gonzalez considers himself a “Democrat” — something he repeated often during his campaign for the nonpartisan office.

After Gonzalez’s loss in the mayoral election, the Portland Auditor’s Office fined him another $9,180 for a number of campaign contributions that exceeded the legal limit.

But Gonzalez did not take the penalties lying down. He appealed both decisions to the Multnomah County Circuit Court citing federal due process concerns. On Thursday, Judge Melvin Oden-Orr reversed the two determinations.

When the Portland Auditor’s Office made its determinations against Gonzalez, it did so under city charter Article 3 “Campaign Finance in Candidate Elections,” Section 3-305. The section is relatively brief: the auditor receives a complaint, investigates to determine if there was a violation, allows the recipients of the complaint to submit evidence for or against, then delivers a decision.

But a separate (and much more convoluted) area of city code governing the Small Donor Elections Program also describes a process for adjudicating penalties. This chapter stipulates that someone impacted by a determination made under the Small Donor system is allowed a “timely, effective, and impartial appeal” before a hearings officer.

Judge Oden-Orr determined that the auditor should have penalized Gonzalez under the Small Donor Elections Program code instead of the campaign finance section, since Gonzalez was a part of the program — even if the penalties weren’t necessarily for violations of that code — providing him with his day in court, so to speak.

“Considering the process afforded some other participants in the Small Donor Program, it is difficult to accept Respondent’s argument that the process under Section 3-305 is adequate to avoid error,” the judge wrote, in part.

“We enforced the City’s campaign finance law as approved by Portland voters,” said Auditor Simone Rede in response to the decision. “We appreciate the court’s guidance and are assessing options to make any necessary changes to the law. We will work with City Council to support voters’ interest in fair and transparent elections while respecting candidates’ individual due process rights.”