Sue Lowden Floods Airwaves with Massive New Illegal Spending
GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden’s
campaign is so broke, she’s turned to illegally spending general election money
and six figure infusions of her own cash to fund her primary bid.
A week ago, Lowden admitted to violating federal election laws yet. Campaign manager Robert Uithoven was forced to admit they had illegally spent nearly $18,000 in earmarked general election funds in the Republican primary. Uithoven told the Review-Journal the Lowden campaign was “spending money as it comes in,” dismissing the seriousness of breaching unambiguous campaign finance laws regarding the segregation of primary and general election monies.
As it turns out, the true extent of Sue Lowden’s illegal campaign spending in the GOP primary is enormous, according to public documents filed with the FEC and Nevada television stations and obtained by the Washington Post. The Post reports records show the Lowden campaign purchased a statewide television buy on May 28th totaling $220,000.
Unfortunately for Lowden and her stormy relationship with the law, her campaign does not have the primary cash-on-hand to cover that size a buy. According to the report, Lowden “may have spent more than $100,000 in campaign funds reserved for the general election, according to a Post analysis of FEC numbers.”
“Lowden's spokeswoman, Crystal Feldman, said Wednesday that the matter has been resolved. ‘I know that we're not spending general election money right now,’ she said. ‘That issue was cleared up as soon as we were notified.’
But FEC numbers suggest otherwise. According to those records, Lowden loaned her campaign $100,000 to clear up the initial discrepancy. She has also collected about $7,000 in donations, according to the 48-hour reports that candidates are required to file in the final weeks of a race. But on May 28, Lowden's campaign purchased $220,000 in ad time from Nevada's TV stations -- more than $100,000 more than she had available for primary expenses. Either the campaign under-reported its donations in recent days, or it’s spending general election money.”
And Politico reported Wednesday that a violation like Lowden’s is taken very seriously by the FEC.
Lowden “faces the most questions regarding her campaign account. Last month, she faced allegations that she improperly accepted a campaign bus from a contributor to save on cash, which she has vehemently denied. And last week, Lowden’s campaign blamed an accounting error for spending $18,000 in general election funds on the primary campaign, which is not allowed under campaign finance laws. Her campaign downplayed the discrepancy as “half of one percent” of the $3.2 million raised by Lowden in the campaign and vowed to correct it.
But according to a review of her latest campaign records, Lowden’s campaign may have dipped again into general election funds to pay for her six-figure ad buy in the final weeks of the primary, since her personal loan and private donations don’t appear to be enough to cover half of the $220,000 ad campaign.
Brett Kappel, a Washington-based campaign finance lawyer, said campaigns are supposed to keep separate their general election and primary election accounts – and that “knowing and willful” violations of that could result in steep fines from the Federal Election Commission. He added that the FEC would “definitely pursue” allegations that more than $100,000 of general election donations were used on a primary.”
This is now the third
time that Lowden’s own admissions
of illegal activity have shown them to be in serious violation of FEC law. In
addition to the aforementioned $18,000 in illegal general election spending,
Lowden boasted to KOLO-TV in Reno that her 40-foot, $100,000+ luxury campaign
bus had been “donated” to her – a serious FEC violation punishable with
hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.