While Ron Dotzauer was managing Maria Cantwell's 2000 Senate campaign he was still in litigation over money owed to his ex-wife, Angela. Cantwell's 2000 FEC reports and some of the unsealed court records I obtained earlier suggest that Dotzauer and/or Cantwell might have been manipulating the timing and/or disclosure of payments from the campaign to Dotzauer in order to help him evade paying his obligations to Angela.
The campaign paid Dotzauer $17,500 a month (plus expenses) starting in April. Yet Angela had to obtain a writ of garnishment on his campaign earnings that September to collect what was owed to her. Angela must have been dissatisfied with the campaign's response to the writ as she subpoenaed Senator-elect Cantwell to be deposed in December. On December 12 Dotzauer unsuccessfully moved for a protective order to prohibit the deposition, characterizing the deposition in his declaration as:
purportedly to ask questions about the fact that the campaign does not owe me any money.In my brief time examining the files, I did not encounter any documentation of the deposition. but contrary to Dotzauer's declaration, Cantwell's FEC reports assert that the campaign did owe him money at that time. The "January 31 Year End" FEC report, filed in Jan. 2001 to cover transactions during November-December 2000, lists a $35,588 obligation to Dotzauer incurred during that period (p. 58). The campaign reported making the $17,500 payments to Dotzauer every month from April through November 2000 inclusive. But I find no payments reported in December 2000 or January 2001. There were $17,500 payments made in both February and April 2001 and a payment of $35,294 in May 2001. (There were also some smaller disbursements reported throughout the campaign for travel and other expenses. I gather the roughly $35,000 debt from December was satisfied in May 2001)