(The Center Square) - Questions over the legality of donations continue to rock the campaigns in the Colorado gubernatorial race.
The campaign for Democratic candidate Phil Weiser, the current state attorney general, met Tuesday's deadline to submit a notice to "cure" or refund reportedly illegal excesses of 46 campaign donations. Under state law, donations can't exceed $1,450. Jack Todd, the Secretary of State’s Office's communications director, told The Center Square in an email that the campaign had issued that notice. But the notification document remains unavailable on Colorado’s TRACER website, which tracks campaign donations. The investigation into Weiser remains pending.
Following a separate Secretary of State's Office investigation, Republican gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx’s campaign was recently fined nearly $60,000 for what the state says are 210 violations exceeding the legal limits for donations. The campaign is appealing the fine.
On Oct. 2, the state Elections Division’s administrative hearing officer, Macon Cowles, issued a 27-page decision recommending Marx’s campaign be fined $57,647.16 for 210 contribution violations. According to media reports, it's the largest election-related fine in the state's history.
Marx’s campaign was first alerted over potential violations over campaign contributions on May 8 when a complaint was filed by a Republican political operative from Colorado Springs, Darcy Schoening, who previously served as the special initiatives director for the Colorado Republican party.
Schoening filed 20 more complaints throughout the proceeding months, with the last complaint being filed on Sept. 22. The complaints can be found on the TRACER website.
The state says Marx's campaign committed 210 violations. Of those, 200 came from individual donations that the state says exceeded the $1,450 legal limit. The remaining 10 came from cash contributions totalling $1,045. The cash donations exceeded the $100 legal limit, according to the state.
Per Colorado law, complaints are submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office's Elections Division.
Once the division validates a complaint, the campaign has 10 days to issue a notice of intent to "cure" or fix the problem. This means the campaign has acknowledged the alleged violations and has submitted a notice with plans to resolve the issue.
But according to the Elections Division, by July 17, almost a month after the initial alleged violation was filed, Marx’s campaign had only refunded $61,029 in contributions – falling nearly $22,000 short of the prohibited amount collected.
Marx’s campaign called for a reduced fine since it had attempted to refund the prohibited contributions, but the Elections Division determined the campaign had not effectively cured all violations, nor substantially complied with state election finance law.
Cowles noted that per the “aggravat[ed] circumstances,” the campaign would face a 100% enhancement of the base fine for the unprecedented violations.
Marx’s campaign treasurer, Gregory Carlson, was heavily criticized during the Elections Division's Oct. 2 hearing, with state election officials noting his lack of experience in handling campaign finances. Officials said Carlson had never informed one of the companies accepting contributions to refuse any amount over $1,450, and as a result, the campaign accepted more than the allowed amount.
Roger Hudson, a spokesperson for Victor Marx’s campaign, said that “Marx and the campaign are appealing this egregious fine recommendation, which we believe is politically motivated, and we fully expect to prevail.”
He noted that every one of more than 50,000 donations was “fully reported” and that “nothing was ever hidden …”
“Every overage, which added up to less than 0.3% of total campaign revenue, has been refunded. The only real dispute is over a 10-day refund deadline that doesn’t appear anywhere in the Secretary of State’s own Campaign Finance Manual," Hudson told The Center Square.
Rule 10.6 of Colorado Campaign and Finance rules states that contributions exceeding the allowed limit must be refunded within 10 days of its findings. That means any amount in excess of $1,450 goes back to the donor.
Two complaints were also filed against Weiser, in early September by a Colorado real estate agent, Danielle Neuschwanger, who found 46 instances across both complaints that Weiser had accepted more than the allowed amount for individual campaign contributions.
On Sept. 22, the state’s election division issued an opportunity for Weiser’s campaign to submit a notice with its intent to resolve the excess contributions. The campaign had until Tuesday to respond with a notice of intent to cure - the deadline that the state says the campaign met.
Weiser’s campaign spokesperson, Nate Jackson, told The Center Square that the campaign had already “cured all the alleged violations.” However, at the base of Neuschwanger’s complaint was that the refunds reportedly were not made within the 10-day period required after a campaign discovers excess contributions were made.
Under Colorado law, the 10-day period to issue refunds starts as soon as the campaign discovers excess contributions were collected. The period does not start after the state issues a formal opportunity to cure, nor does it start when a complaint is filed.
Weiser’s campaign would have to effectively plead that once they discovered the excess donations, they did, in fact, issue the refunds within 10 days of their findings.
Weiser’s campaign did not respond to The Center Square’s request for further comment.
