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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Now that he’s made a big deal out of it, I can’t imagine Rock Chalk (great outfit btw) will supply the enemies of their client with ammunition. If there was a problem, he should have waited for it to become public by itself.
Attribute this to Pace’s inexperience. Better luck in 2014…
That’s the stupidist thing you’ve said yet, and that’s saying a lot.
There is approximately zero chance that Rock Chalk will ever disparage a client, even if there is a problem which I doubt. This will end with Pace looking stupid after one phone call to Rock Chalk, in which they will explain that there’s no “there” here at all.
If Pace knows something we don’t, he should have waited to bring it out until it couldn’t be denied. But I don’t think he does.
the debt has not been paid. Tipton has the $. So, either it is an illegal campaign contribution, a contribution in kind or an example of an R that won’t pay his bills.
and theres no “there” there. Yeah, right.
Rock Chalk will never disparage a client.
But will they forgive a debt and put their own company in harm’s way? I don’t think so.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Rock Chalk is clearly between a rock and a hard place.
Pace’s folks trying to make the Q3 story something other than Tipton winning the fundraising battle.
No one has picked it up. Over 70 members of congress still have debts to vendors from 2010. Hell a number of 2008 folks still debts from white house bids.
I do not see anyone who cares about this. Rock Chalk Media should be sued for getting a 100k win bonus for a U.S. house race.
There may be lots of Congresscritters who owe bits here and there, but over $100,000? That seems like a lot of money for a company to leave sitting on an invoice for a year. And how many still owe their consultants a win bonus? I would expect that before the next election cycle begins at least…
about who owns Rock Chalk media? None other than Jason Chavetz’ brother (I think his name is Alan). Jason endorsed Tippy very early on in Tippy’s campaign and his brother of course got the biz. that’s how Tippy rolls.
I’m pretty sure Chavetz’ brother will not be banging down the door to get this paid. It’s in the bag.
So his only way out is to hide the written agreement.
I’m not suggesting that he is not smart enough to do that.
We’ll never know what Tipton and Roch Chalk agreed to.
And that’s just the way they want it.