Ethics Complaint Filed Against Triebsch in Senate District 32 Race
A confidential source has provided us with a copy of an ethics complaint filed against Christine Triebsch, Democratic candidate in the special election runoff for State Senate District 32. Triebsch faces Republican Kay Kirkpatrick next Tuesday, May 16th. The former seat holder, Judson Hill, resigned to become a candidate in the GA-6 special election.
The ethics complaint states that Triebsch failed to report any expenditures or in-kind contributions on her March 31st campaign disclosure filing despite paying qualifying fees, registering her campaign’s domain name, and the procurement and display of campaign materials (shirts, yard signs, buttons, and fliers) prior to March 31. The yard signs are marked “Paid for by the Committee to Elect Christine Triebsch.” Her website domain, www.christineforga.com, was registered on February 26, 2017.
The complaint further states that (the Rule cited in the complaint was the incorrect one. It has been corrected below):
“If the expenses were deferred in accordance with Rule 189-3-.03, then, ‘an explanatory note so stating shall be prominently set forth on the report. All extensions or advancements of credit are subject to contribution limits except as otherwise provided in O.C.G.A. §§ 21-5-41 and 21-5-42.’
The Filing showed no extensions or advancements of credit to cover the expenditures.”
A copy of the ethics complaint and Triebsch’s March 31st filing can be seen after the break.
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lawtonsack
Lawton is a graduate of Georgia Southern University (the GSU) with a degree in Information Technology. He has held numerous positions within the Georgia Republican Party throughout the years.
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I guess this means Triebsch is winning.
Also, if it’s me and I hope my Formal Ethics Complaint gets traction, I proofread it before I issue this mess: “. . . the Candidate failed to disclosure any expenditures falsely reported no expenditures had been made on behalf of the campaign . . .”
I don’t think you can draw that conclusion at all. The numbers show that this is a heavy GOP District. Democrats totalled 39% in the special election. You don’t have to be winning to get an ethics complaint filed against you.
I don’t know either of the candidates and I am far from a campaign disclosure expert, but sometimes the facts are the facts.
Although the filing seems desperate to me, I admit that maybe Kirkpatrick is just running up the score. I’ll defer to your knowledge of the district.
just showing off what can be done with a little extra money to a lawyer.
Isn’t Triebsch a lawyer? Shouldn’t she actually know the law?
I’m no lawyer, but it seems like a note detailing expenses was left off. Funny that a campaign with 10 times its opponents budget is resorting to this to win. What’s promising is that the Triebsch campaign has run a completely positive campaign.
That is not how disclosure reports work. Expenditures have to be included on the report, with one exception that clearly notes that an explanatory note must appear on the report.
The qualifying fee was paid for by the deadline. The bottom line is that somebody messed up. People should not be chastised for filing a complaint for an ethics infraction.
Probably just piling on. She had to file expenditures. She didn’t file expenditures. She clearly had expenditures. I guess some people think someone has to be winning to be called onto the carpet for not doing the right thing…unless they are a Republican, then filing ethics complaints have NOTHING to do with politics.
The 39 percent (combined) that Democrats won in this State Senate special 3 weeks ago is close to the 40 percent Clinton got in the district last November and the 41 percent Ossoff took in the parts of SD 32 that overlap with CD 6. All three percentages mentioned in the preceding line are well above what Obama got in the Senate district in 2012 (31 percent) or what Michelle Nunn took in 2014 in her US Senate bid against David Perdue (32 percent), but still well short of a majority. Thus, it would be considered an upset for the Democrats to take this seat next Tuesday.
For those also interested in the CD 6 race, the portions of SD 32 overlapping with CD 6 (most of SD 32 is in the 6th District, with just a few SD 32 precincts overlapping with CD 11), accounted for nearly 60,000 (or 31 percent) of the roughly 193,000 votes cast in the first round of CD 6 three weeks ago. One wonders how turnout in SD 32 will be impacted in the CD 6 runoff without the SD 32 race also on the ballot—and how many people will show up to vote in SD 32 next Tuesday wondering why the CD 6 runoff is not on that day’s ballot?!? In the part of CD 6 that overlaps with SD 32, Ossoff as noted earlier took 41 percent, while Handel got 19 percent, Judson Hill 18 percent, Bob Gray 12 percent and Dan Moody 7 percent.
This is not Nam. There are rules.
She didn’t follow the rules.
I’m all for nailing rules-breakers but aren’t you assuming the guilt? I’m not a lawyer but not a partisan either, more of a devil’s advocate.
The complaint shows pictures of T-shirts, signs, and stickers and claims there are no corresponding expense entries. The argument that a shirt must be properly expensed prior to wearing seems a little weak to me.
As I posted yesterday I start out biased against any complaint written in garbled English. If Kirkpatrick’s people aren’t native English speakers she should find some to file her complaints for her.
The qualifying fee is missing. There is no way around that item.
Then guilty. What’s the penalty?
I’m sure it’s an honest mistake and there is no conspiracy here, but that is why you hire professionals t do these things. This is simply a distraction, but that is part of the game of running for office.
i will say this about these filings without have read either the complaint or her report, unless the filing people for the state have gotten way better in the past few years–they are awful. i’m pretty sure i still have a fine that was levied against me when i ran for school board because i ended up in the system twice, and even though i spent a lot of time trying to fix it, it never was, so the second entry kept getting dinged for not filing a report. again i nothing nothing about this case at all, but i would take care to make sure there is not a some clerical screw up on the state’s end before i accused a candidate of not filing what they were supposed to file…