Legal Filings

Legal Filings

FEC Fines Martinez Senate Campaign $99k for 2004 Campaign Finance Violations

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter today to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), asking for an explanation behind the decision to disregard CREW’s May 11, 2007 FEC complaint against Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) for Senate. The FEC’s subsequent referral to the audit division against Martinez for Senate mirrored CREW’s original complaint.

Martinez for Senate was fined $99,000 on October 10, 2008 without referencing the original complaint CREW filed with the FEC.

CREW’s original complaint alleged the same multiple violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and FEC regulations that the Martinez campaign was found to have violated. The CREW complaint is based primarily upon the FEC’s April 17, 2007 audit of Martinez for Senate, which revealed that the campaign committee failed to comply with the most basic disclosure provisions of FECA and FEC regulations. During the course of the ten-month campaign, Martinez for Senate received no fewer than three written warnings from the Commission.

The FEC’s Audit Division found that Martinez for Senate violated several statutes by failing to disclose occupation and/or employer information for an astonishing forty-six percent (46%) of the individuals who contributed to the campaign, and by failing to provide any contributor identification information at all for approximately $320,000 in contributions.

The Audit Division also found that Martinez for Senate accepted $313,325 in excessive contributions. Virtually all of those illegal funds were spent by Martinez for Senate in order to win the 2004 general election when, in fact, they should not have been available for use. Additionally, in the twenty days before the 2004 general election, Martinez for Senate received, but failed to disclose, $140,514 in contributions.