Carole Migden's Major Campaign Finance Problems

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Carole Midgen already has paid the most fines of any sitting Senator to the FPPC (the state version of the FEC).  It looks like she will be significantly adding to that $100k fines total.  The FPPC is looking into what could end up being several hundred thousand dollars in fines and bar her from over a million in contributions she has that she has allegedly transferred illegally from other campaign accounts.  Her consultant Ritchie Ross has already confirmed that the complaints are "absolutely legitimate".
There are two pieces to this puzzle

1. Much like Joe Lieberman did a year ago, Midgen has $381k in unitemized expenditures.  By law, campaigns have to report what exactly they are spending their money on.  It is a basic piece of disclosure, so the public can be assured that it is not buying votes or engaging in other dirty campaign tactics.  Midgen has been charging a lot of things on to her campaign credit card and failing to disclose each of those individual payments.  The $381k adds up to 25% off all the money she spent.  This is not an isolated incident and this type of disclosure is a routine activity of campaigns.  There is no legitimate excuse for her not to itemize and the public deserve the right to know what these candidates are doing.  Under state law she could face fines up to $5,000 for every single individual expenditure over $100 and she could be sued up for up to three times the amount of the value of the undisclosed expenditures.  Right now we do not know how many different things they charged on the credit card, but it could easily add up to the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.  And of course three times $381k is $1.143 million.  It is rare that the FPPC issues the maximum fine, but they could still be significant totals in the end.
2. According to a complaint by the Leno campaign, Midgen has transfered over $1.3 million from her State Assembly Campaign Committee and Board of Equalization Campaign Committee accounts into her State Senate Election Committee account.  The Board of Equalization account should have been closed years ago, since it has been a long while since she has held that office.  Obviously if the FPPC blocks her access to that significant amount of money, it will make her re-election run all that more difficult, not to mention any fines she would receive on top of that.

Midgen's books are notorious for being a mess.  It appears that it is her consultant's tactic to do a poor job of reporting, then go back and pay the fines by fundraising more after the election.  That will not be able to work this time, since action is being taken now before her next campaign.  The FPPC responded to the Leno complaint in record time.  blog.sfweekly.com:

Jeffris' employer, John Whitehurst (of the highly connected City consulting firm Barnes, Mosher Whitehurst Lauter & Partners), has said he'd never before seen a letter from the FPPC acknowledging an investigation was under way in more than 20 years in the state's political trenches.

All of which begs the question: Did someone light a fire under the FPPC's bottom?

Not exactly, according to Roman Porter, the FPPC's Sacramento-based communications director. Since the Leno campaign's filing was a "formal complaint" - complete with oaths sworn under penalty of perjury - Porter notes that the FPPC was under a statutory obligation to respond within 14 days.

But this wasn't 14 days. It wasn't even two.

"Well," deadpanned Porter, "I guess we beat the statutory limitations."

The response from the FPPC indicated that the complaint was already under investigation.  They will take their time digging through the Migden records before their staff comes up with a recommendation for a fine.  Then the Commission will vote on accepting that recommendation or not.  Only then would the lawsuit over the unitemized contributions be allowed to proceed. 

This is getting a decent amount of press in the district (see this Marin IJ article) and is hampering Midgen's ability to talk about other issues, especially in the wake of her car accidents.  If the FPPC comes back with a strong ruling, then it has the potential to be a game changer in this election campaign.  The fines likely will not add up to anything really really major (relatively speaking), given the historical precedence in previous FPPC rulings, but the money transfers are a huge deal.  It just isn't that easy to make up for a million dollars that you already have in your accounts.