After their exit from the race, Silverman confirmed to DCist that she had polled the competition and had spoken informally with Duncan and others in the ward about the vote. findings, which suggested that Goulet — who had already emerged as an antagonist among left-leaning candidates after a controversial campaign comment and because he had the backing of the big-money, pro-charter school group Democrats for Reform of DC Education – was slated to win.
Silverman said at the time that the poll was properly listed on her campaign finance reports and that she was careful not to share specifics with other candidates that could be considered a campaign contribution and would have to be were revealed as such. But now, with just over two months until the general election, Marshall is asking campaign finance officials to determine whether Silverman’s actions amounted to an unauthorized, in-kind contribution — if she used the poll for it, as the complaint, “to affect the composition of the field of candidates and the outcome of the Ward 3 race.”
Silverman on Tuesday disputed Marshall’s characterization of events, adding that the complaint is “simply not factual.”
“If candidates use public funding to settle grievances or interfere in other elections, that’s inconsistent with what we’re using tax dollars for,” said Marshall, an attorney and first-time council candidate. . “It’s possible that she shared the information and said, ‘Do whatever you want with it.’ But what we don’t know is the extent to which the campaigns cooperated.”
DC OCF spokesman Wesley Williams confirmed Tuesday that the agency had received Marshall’s complaint; The office’s director, Cecily Collier-Montgomery, will have 10 days to determine whether the matter warrants an investigation. Williams also said that OCF, after reviewing Silverman’s June 10 financial report, sent her campaign a request for additional information about $6,177 in voting expenses.
Silverman says she has not heard back from OCF since she sent them a response to their inquiry six weeks ago. She pushed back against Marshall’s claims in the complaint, including his description of the phone poll as a “postponed poll,” noting that she also polled other races before the primary, including for mayor, mayor the council and the general race.
She added that Bergmann and Duncan had approached her before the poll about a possible endorsement, and that she reiterated her message to them after seeing the results.
“These guys came up to me and said, ‘You have to approve of us.’ I said, ‘With my knowledge, I don’t think you can win’; I said that before the vote and after — they’ll both tell you that,” Silverman said. “What I told Tricia was, ‘If you feel good knowing that the amount of votes you get could be the difference in the candidate that you don’t. likes to win, and you feel good about it, then stay in the race.”
Bergmann did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday. Duncan, a longtime Ward 3 activist, said it was Education Reform Democrats’ financial support for Goulet, not Silverman’s polling, that prompted her to drop out and support Frum. She was the first candidate to drop out of the Ward 3 race, it followed the next day by Bergmann, then Cohen. Silverman is the only candidate named in the complaint.
“I thought I had a chance to win, but I saw that I was slipping. I knew she had taken the survey—she is allowed to do what she wants; it’s not like she ran that race for me,” Duncan said. “Abandoning and supporting Frum was something my campaign talked about for a while because we saw how things were going, and with that kind of money backing Eric, if he didn’t change something, he was going to win.”
Duncan said she had also received requests for additional information from OCF about expenses for some of her mailers, but she had not been contacted about the survey.
Goulet, who was ranked by Silverman’s poll for the race and accused him on Twitter after the onset of “unethical, possibly illegal conduct,” said Tuesday that it hopes to see a “thorough and prompt investigation by OCF.” Goulet is now running for the Ward 3 State Board of Education seat and is the subject of an unrelated OCF investigation over allegations he saw polling data from an outside group without properly disclosing it. He has denied the charges.
OCF investigations may result in fines. In his complaint, Marshall also asks the agency to “issue public guidance on permissible coordination between campaigns,” as well as clarity about the use of polling data.
