For Immediate Release
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Contact: [email protected]
Portland, OR — Breaking new reporting from the Oregon Capital Chronicle today revealed that Christine Drazan funneled nearly $100,000 in funds from a dark-money group she and her husband founded to a consulting firm she owns, without ever reporting a conflict of interest.
Drazan’s shady arrangement raised alarm bells with local ethics experts, who noted that it creates “an opportunity for corruption and a kind of insider self-dealing” and operated as a “shadow campaign organization” for Drazan.
When asked specific questions about the process for hiring the consultant group owned by Drazan, Drazan’s campaign and dark money group “didn’t provide such information,” while Drazan “declined a phone interview through her campaign.”
“Christine Drazan has spent years lecturing Oregonians about accountability. Now she’s being forced to answer questions about nearly $100,000 paid from her dark money group to her own consulting firm with little oversight,” said Democratic Party of Oregon Executive Director Candy Emmons. “That’s the kind of hypocrisy that destroys public trust. Oregonians deserve better than another MAGA politician who thinks the rules apply to everyone except herself.”
Read more below:
Oregon Capital Chronicle: How Drazan’s Consulting Firm Pocketed Nearly $100k From Her Nonprofit With Little Oversight
By Shaanth Nanguneri
August 4, 2026
- An Oregon nonprofit founded by state Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, did not maintain a conflict of interest policy when it paid nearly $100,000 to a consulting firm she owns with her husband, missing a key step to help prove the transaction complied with tax law, records show.
- “Whenever a nonprofit organization engages in any transactions and decisions that will have a financial impact on its insiders – directors, officers, founders and leaders – or their families and businesses, there is an opportunity for corruption and a kind of insider self-dealing,” David Atkin, senior attorney at the Eugene-based Center for Nonprofit Law, said in a statement.
- $96,000 in payments from A New Direction went to her consulting firm, state business and federal tax records show.
- [Oregon Government Ethics] Commission staff provide advice to elected officials and state employees for compliance with ethics laws in letters publicly posted to the commission website. Those records show Drazan did not seek commission advice on A New Direction.
- A New Direction is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, a type of tax-exempt social advocacy organization that surged in popularity after gaining significant political spending leeway under the landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United ruling. Critics have long called them “dark money” groups due to the lack of disclosure requirements for donors.
- A New Direction had no documented conflict of interest policies in 2023 or 2024, federal tax forms show, meaning the organization missed an opportunity to follow what experts describe as best practices to avoid concerns of private inurement.
- “Our expectations should be that anyone who is elected or is running to be elected, at any given time, doesn’t have conflicts, is working in the public interest, and is keeping all of their incentives and the funding and all that completely above board,” said Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon.
- A New Direction’s most recent social media posts with original content date back to March 1, 2024. That was just four days before Drazan made her official announcement that she would be returning to state politics and running for the Oregon House. A New Direction has not made another Instagram post since then, and its most recent post on X was in July 2024.
- Titus said it has become more common in recent decades for Oregon politics to see a “shell game” of candidates passing money from one organization to another. She said A New Direction has effectively operated as a “shadow campaign organization.”
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