This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s office has wrapped up its hearing on campaign finance violations against Victor Marx, the Republican candidate for governor. The Marx campaign has admitted to the allegations, and the hearing officer in the case indicated he would plan to make a decision on the dollar amount of any fines in a week.
The state accused the campaign of accepting 203 contributions well over legal limits to the tune of about $83,000. State rules require the original contributions to be refunded, or if that’s not possible, donated to a charity.
The state's attorney said the Marx campaign failed to refund all the money it should have, or provide adequate documentation for the refunds it completed.
The state has asked for a $51,000 penalty in addition to the refunds.
“They accepted donations that on their face exceeded the $1,450 limit, they just didn’t care,” said attorney William Hauptman representing the Colorado Secretary of State’s Elections Division.
Colorado’s constitution bars candidates for governor from accepting cumulative contributions from any one individual above $1,450. Marx's campaign admits it accepted excess contributions, and blamed the campaign’s inexperience. The campaign’s attorney Chris Murray said the state’s requested penalty is “out of whack with the nature of the conduct” and said a roughly $9,700 penalty would be appropriate.
“You're going to learn that it's made some mistakes in its reporting,” said Murray in his opening remarks. Murray said the campaign is eager to get its books completely cleaned up.
“It's been a little bit clunky in some of its methods because of frankly, the registered agent that worked on this committee, who you're going to find out, is an honest, transparent, truthful guy, it is the biggest campaign he's ever handled.”
The campaign’s registered agent, Gregory Carlson, testified that he takes campaign finance very seriously and never once tried to hide or deny any of the overages and in fact was the one who reported it to the state.
“The reason the complaints were able to be filed in the first place was because of the reports that I put into TRACER,” he said of the state’s campaign finance reporting system.
“We knew that we needed to refund it and I'm sorry that we didn't refund it faster, but the entire time I've tried to be as transparent as possible,” he said.
He pointed to the challenges of handling a large campaign with tens of thousands of donors.
“As soon as I was aware of the nature of the problem when we received our first notice of complaint, I got to work to get those refunds done,” he said.
Administrative Hearing Officer Macon Cowles said he planned to write an initial decision within a week, noting that rules do allow him additional time. He will send the decision to the Colorado Deputy Secretary of State.
“There is a lot of evidence here I need to go through carefully,” Cowles said.
The hearing falls under the Colorado Administrative Procedures Act.
