Abe-Koga addresses campaign mailer fracas Abe-Koga addresses campaign mailer fracas (September 10, 2004)

Candidate will file it as county expense only

By Jon Wiener

City council candidate Margaret Abe-Koga clarified her stance Tuesday on a campaign finance controversy stemming from $2,800 she spent on a political mailer. She said she intends to report the expense of a mailer to the city clerk by the Oct. 5 filing deadline, but not as part of her city council campaign.

Abe-Koga, embroiled in a controversy over an earlier statement to the Voice that she would not file the expense as part of her council campaign, also stated her intention this week in a letter to the editor. Since she has two campaign accounts open, one for her city campaign and one from her successful 2002 campaign for the county Board of Education, she must submit finance statements for each of them to both the city and the county.

Abe-Koga sent the mailer, which details her accomplishments on the education board, just as she was filing nomination papers with the city. Despite representing school districts in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, Abe- Koga sent the mailer only to Mountain View residents living within the Mountain View-Whisman School District boundaries.

Abe-Koga said she sent the flier to a limited number of Mountain View residents, rather than her whole district, mainly because she didn't have enough money left over from her 2002 campaign for the board to send more.

"My district covers over 100,000 people. If I had more money, I might have done something different," she said, adding that she worked most closely with the Mountain View-Whisman district while on the board.

Abe-Koga also said that she had been planning to send the mailer since the spring but was waiting for the details of the state budget to be unveiled. It was mailed to between 9,000 and 10,000 households.

Her county campaign report for the first half of 2004 indicated that, as of June 30, she only had $10 left, which paid for the mailer.

This raised suspicions that Abe-Koga had raised funds for the mailer as late as July in an effort to skirt city campaign finance disclosure rules. In fact, Abe-Koga simply did not carry forward her remaining balance of $3,157 from 2002, one of several oversights in her filing records, according to Mary Watson of the county Registrar of Voters.

Abe-Koga was also fined $100 by the county Registrar of Voters for not filing her 2003 statements on time. She said her campaign had no activity and thought she did not have to file a report. She filed those reports Tuesday.

City Attorney Michael Martello was reportedly determining whether to declare the mailer a campaign piece. If he does, Abe-Koga will be required to count the expense as part of her city campaign and the $16,882 voluntary spending limit pledge that she signed. Abe-Koga maintains she has not violated any laws.

"It was county money raised for county purposes," she said.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com.

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