Anna Stever recently submitted a letter stating that Oregon’s Judicial Code of Conduct prohibits a judicial candidate from being told who has contributed to his or her campaign. Judicial candidate Jared Boyd responded. He claimed that OCJC 3.1(D) requires candidates to know who donated to their campaign in order to comply with other ethical obligations, and accused his opponent of “publicly misquoting ethics rules.”

But OCJC 3.1(D), the provision cited by Boyd to support his claim, doesn’t even exist.

And Boyd is wrong on the law.

Despite Boyd’s claims, Oregon statutes and ethics rules don’t address whether judicial candidates must know (or are prohibited from knowing) who their donors are. But Oregon’s Judicial Conduct Committee issues opinions to clarify the rules for judges and judicial candidates, and in 2018 the committee directly rejected Boyd’s analysis. The committee determined that because of a judge’s ethical obligations, it would violate the spirit of the rules for a judicial candidate to be told of donors’ identities, and a candidate would violate the rules outright by asking his or her campaign committee to provide donors’ names. Boyd apparently failed to review the committee’s opinions.

The Judicial Conduct Committee emphasized that, with exceptions, a judge or judicial candidate is prohibited from personally soliciting or accepting campaign contributions other than through an established campaign committee. Boyd has been personally asking supporters to make donations to local charities and to post those donations on social media. Boyd’s request circumvents the rules by enabling him to easily discover the identities of his would-be supporters, which he claims he is “required” to know.

Boyd’s cite to a nonexistent rule is simply sloppy work. His conclusion about what the law says before doing his research shows issues with his basic legal skills. Boyd’s claim that his opponent doesn’t know the law, while also claiming that his opponent deliberately violated the law, shows a problem with reasoning.

And even if Boyd had been correct when he accused a campaign volunteer of misstating the law, Boyd didn’t just point out her mistake — he assumed that his opponent intended to deceive. When judges are expected to be fair and impartial, Boyd’s automatic assumption of intentional deceit shows a disturbing tendency toward bias from the start.

Boyd’s own letter demonstrates that he lacks the qualities that are essential to being a competent, fair and impartial judge.

Anne Morrison

La Grande

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