OR-4: Sid Leiken already having money trouble...

Kari Chisholm

It's a pretty simple rule, actually. If you're a candidate for office, your campaign committee can't pay a business that you own to do work for them. For example, if I ever ran for office, my campaign couldn't hire my firm to build the campaign website.

But Sid Leiken, the Republican mayor of Springfield who is challenging Congressman Peter DeFazio, seems to be having trouble with that little rule.

About a month ago, the Eugene Register-Guard reported that his campaign committee - Friends of Sid Leiken - had cut checks of $2000 and $300 to SWL Consulting, Sid's consulting firm. At the time, he claimed that they were just reimbursements for expenses that he'd paid for out of his business's account - which is legal, if handled properly. Which they weren't:

To make the records with the state accurate, Leiken’s team needs to complete the form noting that outside companies were paid by SWL Consulting, in essence showing that his business had no direct benefit from the transactions, [Secrtary of State spokesman Don] Hamilton said.

Leiken said this week that his campaign is correcting the information.

The mayor said he was unaware that he had potentially done anything wrong.

The treasurer of Friends of Sid Leiken, Dean Kortge, a Lane Transit District board member and local insurance agent, handles most of the payments from the campaign fund, Leiken said.

But when Kortge is out of town, Leiken said he pays expenses out-of-pocket himself and then is reimbursed from the campaign fund. Kortge was not available for comment Wednesday.

“(Kortge) travels a lot, and when he’s not in town, I have to make the payment myself and put in for reimbursement,” Leiken said. “Honestly, it’s very innocent.”

On June 4, Leiken's committee fixed the error... which led to another problem.

It seems that the $2000 reimbursement to SWL Consulting was made, according to the R-G, to a company called P&G Marketing and Research. The problem? No such company is registered in Oregon. And the supposed address for P&G? The same as Glenda Leiken Realty, a business owned by Sid's mom.

The DPO's Trent Lutz has filed a complaint with the Elections Division. The R-G has the story:

Campaign finance records filed by Friends of Sid Leiken with the Oregon Secretary of State show that the committee made a $2,000 payment for polling to P&G Marketing and Research — a company for which there is no record with the Oregon Corporations Division, Lutz said.

Leiken’s campaign finance reports filed with the state give the mailing address of P&G Marketing and Research as a Springfield post office box number — P.O. Box 871. That is the same address listed in the state business registry for Leiken’s mother’s real estate company, Glenda Leiken Realty, Lutz wrote.

Lutz said he questions whether P&G Marketing exists. ...

“The part that raises the biggest red flag is that there is a company that supposedly exists, named P&G,” Lutz said in an interview, “and that it is a polling firm that somehow has a P.O. box that’s the same as his family’s real estate agency.”

Here's where it gets really weird. Leiken's treasurer, the aforementioned Dean Kortge, is totally baffled:

Dean Kortge, treasurer of Friends of Sid Leiken, said he has no receipt in his records of a payment to P&G, and has no knowledge of the company.

Kortge, a local insurance agent, said the receipt to P&G is the only one missing from his campaign files.

“I have receipts on every other thing,” he said. “I’m a pretty analytical and compulsive guy.”

Kortge said Leiken told him that he had the receipt to P&G “in his stuff” and asked him to enter the name of P&G into the state campaign finance database.

Kortge said he trusts Leiken that the business exists. “It better be a legitimate company, for crying out loud. I’ll have to believe Sid it is,” Kortge said.

Stay tuned. Every time somebody pulls on this thread a little bit, it seems that Sid Leiken's reality unravels a whole lot.

By Kari Chisholm June 19, 2009