October 17, 2011 11:15 PM UTC

"Deadbeat Scott" Tipton, Anyone?

• 12 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

TUESDAY UPDATE: The AP reports that Tipton claims to have paid this $111,000 debt after the end of the reporting period in September. No further explanation for the delay; we suppose you’ll have to wait until January to see if it was paid, you know, yesterday or anything.

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We received an interesting press release from the congressional campaign of Sal Pace today–as was reported this weekend, Rep. Scott Tipton did pretty well fundraising last quarter, bringing in a little north of $300,000. That’s well ahead of Pace’s Q3 haul of about $165,000, which means that Tipton has indeed stabilized this side of his operation after a disastrous start. The fundraiser in Aspen with John Boehner probably didn’t hurt either.

But as Pace explains in his release today (full text after the jump), there’s still a problem:

“How would you feel if Scott Tipton owed you $110,000? He has had enough money to pay off his campaign debt to a Colorado company for more than half a year, yet he has refused to. With Congress having to address serious fisca l problems in America, how can we trust Scott Tipton to make good choices whe n he can’t even balance his own budget? These types of irresponsible acts are what Americans have come to despise about Congress.”

Rep. TIpton’s latest quarterly report does show about $111,000 owed to Grand Junction-based GOP media firm Rock Chalk Media, LLC–$100,000 in the form of a campaign bonus (presumably a 2010 “win bonus”) and about $11,000 for media production work. Rock Chalk Media is frequently employed by Republican candidates to manage media buys. Prior quarterly reports show this debt has been outstanding since the 2010 election cycle.

As Pace notes, it’s illegal for a company to forgive a campaign debt–so we assume it’s going to be paid. There are a couple of scenarios that might explain the long delay paying it off, such as Rock Chalk consenting to wait for whatever reason. Or, maybe there’s been a disagreement between Tipton and Rock Chalk and Tipton doesn’t want to pay?

It’s a little curious, since paying this off would only affect his cash-on-hand, not his quarterly raised number: there’s no advantage, rhetorical or otherwise, to not paying this debt off that we can think of. And in the absence of a good explanation it looks kind of, well, bad–characterizable all kinds of negative ways, even a disincentive to do business with Tipton’s campaign.

We’ve left lots of room for a reasonable explanation, so no doubt if it exists we’ll hear it.

Here’s a Tip–Don’t Loan Scott Tipton Any Money

Not if you want to get paid back

(Pueblo)–Sal Pace released the following statement in reaction to Scott Tipton’s campaign owing a Colorado business $111,000 for nearly a year:

“How would you feel if Scott Tipton owed you $110,000? He has had enough money to pay off his campaign debt to a Colorado company for more than half a year, yet he has refused to. With Congress having to address serious fisca l problems in America, how can we trust Scott Tipton to make good choices whe n he can’t even balance his own budget? These types of irresponsible acts are what Americans have come to despise about Congress.”

Background:

Scott Tipton’s latest fundraising report showed that for nearly a year he has not paid a Colorado business more than $110,000 he owes in debt for work conducted for his 2010 election campaign.  During his time in Congress, Tipton has paid lip service to fixing America’s deficit problems.  Sal Pace is questioning how we can trust Scott Tipton to address America’s deficit when he has refused to pay off more than $110,000 in debt to a Colorado owned company.

Some details about Tipton’s debt from his FEC report:

– Scott Tipton has more than $110,000 of debt from the 2010 election cycle.

– Since the first fundraising quarter of 2011 (January-March) Scott Tipton has had enough cash on hand in his campaign to pay off the debts he owes to a Colorado business. Yet, he has decided not to pay off his debt.

– All of the $111,388 of debt Scott Tipton owes is to a Grand Junction-based company.

It is illegal for a business to forgive a debt to Congressional campaign. The FEC considers that an in-kind contribution. Forgiving a debt would be considered an in-kind contribution & it is illegal for a business to contribute corporate money to a campaign committee.

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