The Story Behind My Ethic’s Commission Fine

As you may have heard, I screwed up during the mayoral campaign. We made this hilarious video for Yes on F, which was something that I believed in. It was an honest mistake – apparently we weren’t allowed to do that – so the Ethics Commission is fining me $2,552.

The very sweet Clarice Corell started this GoFundMe in order to help me pay the fine since it’s a bunch of money I don’t have. Should you feel inclined, please add to it. Thank you!

Any extra money that results from this will be donated to an organization fighting displacement.

An explanation about how this happened:

There are so many strange rules around campaign finance that most campaigns actually get hit with ethics fines at some point. For example, anyone could get reimbursed for buying something for the campaign (pens, paper, etc) but the candidates can’t. Weird, I know.

The thing is, most campaigns have huge corporate donors or raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, so they look at ethics fines as just the cost of doing business. They also have the money to hire people whose job is to know every single tiny law. We ran this campaign on very little money, all donated by individuals, not interested parties.

It took the ethics board OVER A YEAR to get back to me about these fines which is why I’m in the predicament I’m in now. If it had been during the campaign, we would’ve had the money.

I hope that explains it a little more.

Thanks for all the love and support before, during, and after the campaign!