August 25, 2015 10:27 AM UTC

Are GOP donors satisfied with efforts to address state party's financial mess?

• 6 Comments
• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

The Colorado Republican Party’s Executive Committee met Friday, and sources say a significant amount of time was dedicated to trying to understand the financial issues plaguing the state party.

The severity of the situation, and its political ramifications, were brought into focus by a Aug. 4 email (below) by State Chair Steve House in which he wrote that he concealed the party’s “dire financial straits,” because he “really didn’t want donors thinking they were investing in debt.”

You’d think the ears of political reporters would perk up at the mention of hiding financial information from donors, but if there’s been coverage of House’s statement outside of this blog, and partisan social media, I’ve missed it.

House wrote that legal bills, which constitute part of the debt, may not be the party’s responsibility—and it’s not known whether this issue was clarified at Friday’s meeting. In any case, a review of the party’s recent state and federal financial reports do not reveal large payments to lawyers.

State party leaders continue to assure party activists, on social media and elsewhere, that the financial situation will be brought under control, but it appears not to have been resolved yet

The outstanding question is, what specific expenditures or loans, if any, have gone unreported, in violation of campaign finance law? Is the party delaying payment of expenses, which would be illegal under state law, to shine up its financial situation?

Are GOP donors being scared off by all of this, even if these problems are actually being addressed?

At the last Executive Committee meeting, you recall, members voted 22-1 to support Chair Steve House, after Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, and former Pueblo GOP chair Becky Mizel attempted to oust House due to his alleged failures on numerous issues.

Below is the text of House’s Aug. 4 email. The state party did not respond to my request for comment or verification.

Jim your questions are valid and we have to go back and redo a
bunch of reports back to last November at least to show the debt and unpaid obligations. The true debt is shown as a contribution on the sheets we sent and since we haven’t paid any of the loan off yet it hasn’t been an expense.

Once we get thru the August executive committee meeting you will see a major correction and amendment to this. It’s a matter of making sure we have it all and even this past week another bill came in from November 2014 that had never been recorded in Quickbooks and it was $42,000. A big part of the obligation is legal fees but they belong to the IEC so you don’t see those either. The monthly expenses on those quarterly reports are very high because we were paying old bills. The legal bills and the loan add up to $188,000.

We wanted to give people a sense of running rates and fund raising for now until we get the rest straightened out. I also don’t believe dumping it all without a clear understanding of what the bills are for would have been a good idea because it would have looked like I was blaming Ryan and I don’t operate that way. This was the first time anyone ever put out a quarterly report before. If you had seen the Q1 report at the very end of Q1 it would have looked like we were in dire financial straits because we were and I really didn’t want donors thinking they were only investing in debt especially since the legal bills may not be ours to pay.

Please feel free to send any other questions. You will see the
corrections before month end.