I have received a number of anonymous election law complaints filed with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office. The first is related to the Committee to Elect House Republicans (CTEHR)
The complaint purports to identify several significant discrepancies amounting to nearly $170,000.00 in missing funds for which there is no obvious expenditure in the available campaign finance reporting.
ctehr-missing-funds-1-1The above also questions the expensing of funds from the CTEHR to Rep. Joe Sweeny (item 4) totaling roughly $10,000.00 for digital ads in 2023 to a company that the complaint shows was dissolved in 2022.
An additional complaint was filed against Rep. Sweeney for failing to properly report campaign expenses for ads.
sweeney-attack-ads1And another separate complaint was filed anonymously, accusing Majority Leader Jason Osborn of failing to file campaign finance reports as the law requires.
osborne-failure-to-fileFiling errors are not uncommon. We’ve documented numerous campaign finance reporting issues on both sides of the aisle over the years – local, state, and federal. Still, we believe that leadership needs to set an example for the caucus and the chamber, and some of these discrepancies, if correct, and if they remain unaccounted for, are significant.
I reached out to Speaker Packard and Reps Osborne and Sweeney on Sunday morning for comment. Jason responded.
We acknowledge that a report covering a seven-day period from two years ago was inadvertently missed. As an all-volunteer organization, our focus at the time was on the recount process and protecting our one-seat majority. While this does not excuse the oversight, had Rep. Kaitlyn Kuttab—who filed the “anonymous” complaint—or any other individual brought the matter to our attention, we would have promptly addressed and corrected it.
The remaining issues appear to be minor amendments or adjustments, which we believe are largely related to the state’s online filing system. We routinely file amendments to ensure our reports are as accurate as possible. Given that we are the largest all-volunteer organization supporting House Republicans in New Hampshire, occasional errors may occur.
This is not unlike the situation involving Rep. Kuttab herself, who appears to have solicited contributions from candidates to fund advertisements on their behalf—an action that may raise legal concerns regarding campaign finance regulations.
Update
Correction: Our apologies to Katelyn Kuttab for sharing the PDF screen grab sent to us by Jason with his comment. I have since been informed by several sources that Katelyn did not file any complaints with the SoS or the AG.
This story is developing…