UPDATE: This story, published Saturday morning, was modified Saturday afternoon to account for significant errors contained in recent quarterly financial disclosure reports filed by the campaign of Republican Congressional candidate Carlos Curbelo. The campaign’s errors include misreporting tens of thousands of dollars of PAC contributions as having been made by individuals, failing to disclose nearly $50,000 from other political committees and underreporting the campaign’s total contributions, expenditures and cash on hand.
By Francisco Alvarado, BrowardBulldog.org
U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Miami, left, and Republican challenger Carlos Curbelo Photo: Univision 23
Miami Republican Carlos Curbelo’s congressional campaign was forced to resubmit its most recent quarterly finance report after failing to disclose nearly $50,000 in contributions from 21 political action committees.
In its October 15 report, the campaign listed PAC contributions totaling just $40,500 from ten political organizations that included the American Medical Association and the House Conservatives Fund. It also reported additional tens of thousands of dollars of PAC contributions in the wrong place on the quarterly report – under individual donors – meaning that anyone going to look up the campaign’s PAC contributions would find an incomplete list.
But on Wednesday, with less than a week to go to Election Day, the campaign filed an amended report that correctly listed all of those PAC contributions, while also newly disclosing tens of thousands of additional contributions from other political committees, including private interests like the National Federation of Independent Business ($2,500) and conservative former Congressman Allen West ($5,000) and House Republican leaders like House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. ($2,000).
Two Curbelo campaign staffers, who did not want to be identified, said the incomplete report on October 15 was the result of a glitch with a new software program they were using.
“Our campaign takes satisfaction in the fact that we have always adhered to the law – from following election regulations to meeting FEC deadlines. When needed we have amended our reports, as allowed by the FEC, to correct any filing inaccuracies,” said Wadi Gaitan, a Curbelo spokesman.
Curbelo’s campaign has been plagued by federal reporting problems since it was organized in July 2013. Since then, the FEC has sent the campaign more than a half-dozen so-called “RAFI letters” or Requests for Additional Information, demanding explanations for missing or unclear information that candidates are required by law to make public.
A Washington, D.C. attorney not involved in the campaign who who specializes in FEC matters said the Curbelo campaign’s financial misreporting, and the two-week delay in getting it fixed, appears intended to flummox the opposing campaign of incumbent Democrat, Rep. Joe Garcia.
“If you are deliberately misreporting how much money you have on hand you are trying to gain a strategic advantage over your opponent,” said the attorney, who declined to be named. “$50,000 is a significant amount. The Curbelo campaign had 10 percent more money than they reported having. How much your opponent has affects how you will allocate your resources.”
The Republican Party establishment is betting big on Curbelo, a Miami-Dade School Board Member since 2010 who is locked in a competitive race with Garcia for Florida’s 26th District, which includes all of Monroe County and a large chunk of southwest Miami-Dade County.
Mitt Romney, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio are three of Curbelo’s biggest endorsers. Roughly 16 percent of his campaign’s $1.9 million war chest came from national Republican political action committees.
Throughout the campaign, both candidates have attacked their personal connections to scandals and controversies.
Curbelo has told voters they can’t trust Garcia because his former campaign manager, Jeff Garcia (no relation), pleaded guilty last year to absentee ballot fraud and is currently under federal investigation for planting a ringer candidate in the 2010 Republican primary. Garcia has countered that Curbelo is not trustworthy because he will not disclose who his lobbying clients are.
Now, Garcia’s campaign is having trouble keeping track of groups funding Curbelo. Curbelo’s campaign workers said the omissions in the October 15 finance report were not intentional. They said the campaign began using a new software program at the end of September to electronically file its campaign finance reports with the Federal Elections Commission.
“While transferring data to the new program, the coding got damaged,” one worker said. “As we approached the deadline, we decided to file a report with the best information we had available.”
By acting swiftly to correct the problem, the FEC won’t sanction the Curbelo campaign, the workers insisted.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the Washington D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics, disagreed.
“It should certainly raise the attention of the FEC,” Krumholz said. “They are more concerned about discrepancies and conflicts in the reports than they are with a campaign volunteering in a timely fashion that they made a mistake.”
With only days before Tuesday’s election, it’s critical for campaigns to have complete and accurate reports on time, Krumholz explained.
“The impression is if the candidate hasn’t done a good job managing their own campaign reports, how will they be able to manage the people’s business?” she said. “We expect people to have well-organized campaigns so they don’t have such problems.”
