Liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof insists he has “zero plans” to seek elected office again in the wake of criticism for failing to disclose he was covering people who donated to his campaign for governor of Oregon in 2021 and questions about unused campaign funds.
Kristof, who briefly left the Times in 2021 to run for governor of Oregon as a Democrat, returned to the newspaper in 2022 after he was deemed ineligible because of the state’s three-year residency requirement. Times journalists are prohibited from political activity, including fundraising or campaigning for officials seeking election, but Kristof was sitting on an unused pile of cash after thriving in the fundraising department during his short-lived bid for office.
The Times told Fox News Digital last month that it was reviewing Kristof’s work after Semafor reported that he failed to disclose that subjects of his columns previously donated to his political campaign. When asked for an update on the internal probe into Kristof’s past work, a New York Times spokesperson provided the links to nine different columns that now feature an editors’ note.
A Times spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the internal review regarding disclosure is now complete.
“The only independent press ethics expert who has looked at my conduct related to campaign donations has confirmed that everything was ethical,” Kristof told Fox News Digital.
Meanwhile, Kristof transferred roughly $1 million that remained in his campaign war chest into a new political action committee named Oregon Strong, run by his wife Sheryl WuDunn, in 2022 as he was set to return to the Times.
“In other words, nearly half the money Kristof raised for his political bid remains under family control,” Rolling Stone wrote in August 2022.
Kristof told Rolling Stone that it would use the cash to fund job training programs in Oregon. He also said that Oregon Strong would be “nonpolitical,” despite promising to support then-Democratic Gov. Kate Brown’s job-creation program.
Four years after the Rolling Stone piece, Oregon Strong has not contributed to any jobs program, according to the Oregon Secretary of State’s public transaction page.
Since Oregon Strong received a deposit of $992,031 from Kristof’s campaign on Aug. 3, 2022, the only significant expenditures have been a $100,000 donation to Vision to Learn in 2023 and a $2,000 donation to A Progressive Voice for Oregon in 2024.
The only other withdrawals from Oregon Strong are miscellaneous expenditures of less than $100 apiece and a $125 payment to Meadowlark Bookkeeping, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. There has been zero activity since 2024.
The remaining cash, nearly $890,000, appears to be sitting untouched in the Oregon Strong PAC controlled by Kristof’s wife. The significant balance and contributions to progressive political causes have raised eyebrows among political watchdogs, who questioned whether Kristof will run for office again in the future and how this affects his role at the Times.
Political insiders feel the pattern of behavior provides a clear path for him to run again, and with money from donors he has written about, as long as he maintains his Oregon residency.
When reached for comment, Kristof distanced himself from the PAC run by his wife, criticizing media outlets for asking questions and suggesting it’s “a bad-faith effort to discredit investigative journalism.”
“You should know that I haven’t been involved in Oregon Strong since 2022 and in fact was unaware of the donation you mentioned in 2024,” Kristof told Fox News Digital.
NEW YORK TIMES DEFENDS CONTROVERSIAL ANTI-ISRAEL PIECE, ‘NO TRUTH’ TO RETRACTION CLAIMS
Kristof recently penned a controversial piece featuring men and women alleging “brutal sexual abuse at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.” Critics blasted the May opinion column as “propaganda” and poked holes in the reporting, specifically a claim that dogs have been trained to sexually assault Palestinians. The Israeli government has even promised legal action, but Kristof feels any criticism he faces is a direct result of the backlash.
“This issue has been raised only to attack me for an article I wrote recently about Palestinians being raped in Israeli prisons,” Kristof told Fox News Digital. “I have zero plans to ever seek elective office.”
At least one critic of Kristof isn’t thrilled with his behavior.
“The fact pattern makes clear that Nick Kristof used his column to generate PR for his political donors, without disclosing it,” a senior Republican political operative told Fox News Digital.
“Now it’s clear he’s keeping these donors’ money in violation of his and the New York Times pledge,” the GOP operative added. “The Times clearly has a serious ethics issue on its hands.”
Among the conflicts raised by Semafor were a pair of columns, published in 2025 and 2026, that featured Vision to Learn, the organization that received $100,000 from Oregon Strong.
The pieces are among the nine that were quietly slapped with editors’ notes and now say, “This column failed to disclose that Larry Gilson, the chairman of Focusing Philanthropy, donated to Nicholas Kristof’s campaign for governor of Oregon in 2021.”
The New York Times Ethical Journalism Handbook prohibits staff members from doing anything “that might raise questions about their journalistic fairness and independence,” including campaigning for a candidate, endorsing a candidate or pushing efforts to enact legislation. They are also prohibited from marching or rallying in support of any political movement, and giving money to, or soliciting money for, any political candidate or election cause.
The ethics handbook added, “Staff members must be sensitive that political activity by their spouses, family or companions may create conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict.”
