Clean Elections Commissioner Lori Daniels discusses the fate of Rep. Doug Quelland during a hearing on May 15. Daniels later made a motion that led to a 4-1 vote to strip Quelland of his seat in the Arizona House.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted May 15 to remove Rep. Doug Quelland from the Legislature for violating campaign spending rules. The Phoenix Republican was also fined $45,000.

The commission voted 4-1 to kick Quelland out of office for spending more than he was allowed to under Clean Elections rules. The commission determined Quelland had paid thousands of dollars to a political consultant but did not report the expenditures on his campaign finance reports.

Quelland, who did not show up to the hearing, became the second Arizona lawmaker removed from office for violating Clean Elections rules. In 2006, Republican Rep. David Burnell Smith was ejected from the Legislature for exceeding spending limits.

The commission's dissenting vote came from Commissioner Royann Parker. Parker said she believes Quelland was guilty of overspending during his campaign, but she felt the commission should not remove officials from office. That action, she said, is best left to voters capable of initiating a recall or waiting for the next election cycle.

The commission, acting on the recommendations of Clean Elections Executive Director Todd Lang, fined Quelland a total of $45,500, specifically citing four violations. The commission determined he had signed a $15,000 campaign consulting contract without having that amount of cash on hand in his campaign accounts, had failed to report the contract and had violated primary election spending limits by greater than 10 percent.

Each of those charges brought fines of $15,000 each. Quelland was fined an additional $500 for using money from his private businesses in a campaign for office.

Prior to the vote, Lang presented commissioners with newly obtained evidence connecting Quelland to Intermedia Public Relations, a political consulting firm operated by Larry Davis.

Lang showed commissioners e-mail communications between Quelland and an employee of Davis proving the business relationship extended well into 2008. To date, Quelland has maintained he terminated his contract with Intermedia Public Affairs within days of its March 2007 signing.

Commission members were also shown a photocopy of a $2,000 business account check written by Quelland to Davis' firm that coincided with the contract's initial payment amount and its May 1, 2007, due date. In April, Quelland told commission members the payment never existed, and he said the lack of that specific evidence stood as proof the contract was terminated and never honored.

In addition, Davis' firm was authorized to use Quelland's campaign credit card for a year, said Lang, who also displayed an August 2008 e-mail from Quelland to Intermedia Public Relations regarding the design of campaign fliers.

Lang told commissioners that the necessary burden of proof for civil infractions is "by preponderance of evidence," a legal term that can be loosely translated into "more likely than not" or "51 percent."

Still, the evidence against Quelland was so overwhelming that the case would have been prosecutable under the more difficult standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is used in criminal cases, he said.

"This contract was enforced," Lang told commissioners.

Mike Valder, who played a key fundraising role in the 1998 ballot initiative campaign that established publicly funded campaigns in Arizona, told commission members they should remove Quelland from office even though the representative has been an outspoken advocate of Arizona's system of publicly funded elections.

Valder said his recommendation gave him "great heartburn," but that the case against Quelland was strong enough to warrant removal. The lawmaker's repeated denials of campaign overspending and his role in a "conspiracy" should also be taken into account by the Attorney General's Office, which could bring criminal charges, he said.

Quelland appeared in a 2006 PBS video entitled "Votes for Sale," and espoused the values of publicly funded campaigns, which offer a level of detachment from special interest groups and a barrier to candidates who have the ability to spend loads of their own money on a campaign.

"Getting money from special interests or buying an elections just aren't alternatives to me," Quelland said in the video.

Democrats reacted to the decision by sending out a press release that pointed out Quelland won a narrow victory last November. He defeated Democrat incumbent Jackie Thrasher by fewer than 500 votes to take her District 10 House seat.  

"In an election decided by less than a few hundred votes, it is disappointing Mr. Quelland chose to violate the rules and seize an unfair advantage during the campaign. The voters of District 10 should be disappointed, Mr. Quelland abused their trust," Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Don Bivens stated in the press release.

It is not yet clear if Quelland will appeal the commission’s decision to an administrative law judge.

Quelland did not return phone calls. His attorney, Lee Miller, said Quelland will probably take that step to ensure a more fair hearing.

Miller said presenting the case to the Office of Administrative Hearings would offer Quelland a “fair fight” because he will be able to do his own legal discovery, challenge witnesses and determine motives.

“We’ll have to see what might come out of that,” Miller said.

In 2005 then-Rep. David Burnell Smith appealed his case to an administrative law judge after the commission found he had exceeded his 2004 primary election campaign spending limit by 17 percent and removed him from office.

Smith's appeal was not successful, but the lawmaker was permitted to stay in office throughout the remainder of the appeals process. The District 7 Republican unsuccessfully challenged the commission's authority to remove sitting legislators, taking his appeal all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court.

In January 2006, the state's highest court ordered Smith to vacate his office.

Looking Back: Capitol Times complete coverage of Rep. Quelland: http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/story.cfm?id=11197