End Citizens United (ECU) today filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) against Congresswoman Martha McSally. The complaint states McSally broke FEC dual candidacy rules by fundraising into two active campaign accounts and transferring nearly $1 million from an active House campaign to an active Senate campaign.
Following the announcement that she would run for Senate in January 2018, McSally set up a Senate campaign committee while still actively maintaining her House campaign account, despite indications that she was not running for re-election for the House of Representatives. In doing so, McSally has been able to maintain a sham House campaign to help benefit her Senate campaign. While still raising money into her House account, McSally illegally transferred a total of nearly a million dollars from the House account to her Senate account in two separate transactions in January and February 2018. A transfer between two principal campaign committees when a candidate is seeking multiple offices is not permissible under the FEC rules.
According to the FEC, candidates are not allowed to maintain principal campaign committees for multiple candidacies. Should a candidate keep two accounts open, they may only transfer funds between them when the candidate stops actively seeking multiple offices and effectively closes one account.
The Violation:
Complainant files this complaint under 52 U.S.C. § 30109(a)(1) against Representative Martha McSally, McSally for Senate, Inc., McSally for Congress, and Paul Kilgore as treasurer of McSally for Congress and McSally for Senate, Inc., for violating the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (“the Act”) and Federal Election Commission (“FEC” or “Commission”) regulations.
The record demonstrates that Representative McSally is running for Senate, while raising funds for a non-existent House candidacy under a separate limit. In January 2018, Representative McSally became a candidate for the United States Senate and set up a new principal campaign committee, McSally for Senate, Inc. However, she kept raising and spending funds through McSally for Congress, the principal campaign committee set up to support her candidacy for the House of Representatives. In a clear violation of the rules governing dual candidacy, she also transferred nearly a million dollars from McSally for Congress to McSally for Senate, Inc. The Commission must immediately investigate this matter and stop Representative McSally from illegally accepting funds under a separate limit.
“Congresswoman McSally isn’t above the law and she can’t have it both ways. The law is simple, and she’s not allowed to use a phony House campaign to support her Senate candidacy,” said Adam Bozzi, communications director for End Citizens United. “We realize the McSally campaign will need every dollar available in an ugly, brutal primary against her conservative opponents, but breaking the rules is not the answer.”
The illegal transfer of $1 million is the latest in a string of violations by McSally. During the 2014 cycle, over of a quarter of McSally’s donors were missing the required employer and occupation information. In 2015, the problem became exponentially worse with more than half of individual donors missing the required information. Ahead of her announcement this year, she once again got herself in hot water for polling for a possible Senate run without filing as a candidate violating federal election laws. Most recently, the FEC approved an audit of her campaign in late April that found she failed to properly disclose finances and failed to collect employment information 2018 for over 1,200 campaign donations.