Kuhl Campaign Audited, Owes Money

Exile at The Albany Project reports that an audit of Randy Kuhl's 2004 campaign by the Federal Election Commission found some irregularities. From a scan of the audit, it looks like Kuhl's State Senate campaign committee was working as his Congressional committee for a while, and those in-kind donations weren't correctly accounted for. The FEC says that the total of mis-stated contributions is about $118K.

It's not clear to me what the Kuhl campaign owes because of the mis-statement. Exile thinks they owe the whole $118K, because the report says so. Duh. (Updated)

Comments

"absent such evidence, the staff recommended that $118,056 be paid to the U.S. Treasury."

From page 10.

Thanks. This whole reading thing is new to me.

As I recall from the John Glen fiasco, the candidate cannot pay the debt, it must be paid by the campaign. Does Randy have enough funds to cover the $118,000?

As of 10/15, he had $209K on hand. But he probably spent most of that.

I assume the FEC will let his campaign go into debt and have a repayment plan, but that's just a guess.

That's my guess as well.

All the mailings we received and the TV spots on Buffalo stations were paided by the National Republican Congressional Committed. I did not see anything marked paid by Kuhl for Congress.

I am certain that Kuhl owes people money for work on the campaign, and they will never see it.

They might not get their last paycheck, but it looks like most of them have been paid up until now, according to his filings.

You might be surprised how long campaigns hang around. LaFalce still has a campaign committee, for example. Since parties want to recruit quality candidates, they often help out with paying off campaign debts.

FYI - Most (if not all) newspapers require cash in advance for political ads - not sure if it is the law or just a smart way to do business.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Hillary's vendors should have done the same!