A government watchdog group alleges that outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) spent more than $100,000 in campaign funds on her personal travel and entertainment after declaring that she would not run for reelection.
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On the day of her farewell speech on the Senate floor, outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) was hit with a complaint alleging that she used campaign funds for personal expenses on trips across the country and abroad.
There was a real disparity between her remarks and the behavior she is accused of.
“In recent history, both parties have wrestled with the importance of norms and rules, and both parties have viewed these norms and rules as outdated, constraining, or simply obstacles to their short-term victories,” the senator said in her farewell speech.
According to a complaint that the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Wednesday, there are some campaign finance rules that Sinema may have viewed as outdated, constraining, or simply obstacles to her short-term gain.
Specifically, CREW alleges that the senator’s campaign disbursed more than $100,000 after she had made clear that she would not seek reelection and suspended campaign activities. That includes $3,000 that were spent in Italy.
However, according to the Federal Election Campaign Act, it is not permitted to spend campaign funds on activities that do not have a campaign purpose. Therefore, it will be interesting how Sinema justifies spending money in Rome three weeks after announcing that she would retire from the Senate at the end of her term.
That’s certainly how Noah Bookbinder, the president of CREW, feels.
“The rule of thumb is that any dollar your campaign spends has to be for the campaign — it can’t just be for your own personal benefit,” he said. “It’s hard to see how any of this spending was for the benefit of the campaign.”
And it wasn’t just a trip to Italy, but also other jaunts to California’s wine country, and to Massachusetts for the Boston Marathon.
According to the complaint, Sinema had justified trips to the marathon as a campaign-related activity because it offers opportunities for fundraising.
This year, however, CREW said it was unable to identify any campaign-related event (which makes sense since the senator had already declared that she would not seek reelection at that point). In addition, the campaign raised a total of $1 since Sinema declared in March that her first term in the Senate would also be her last.
Still, since then, she kept using campaign funds to pay for hotels, travel, and food.
That could now land her in hot water.
CREW is calling on the FEC to conduct an investigation “and impose sanctions appropriate to these violations and take such further action as may be appropriate, including, but not limited to, referring this case to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution and/or an audit of Sinema for Arizona.”
As for the senator, she emphasized the importance of guard rails in her farewell speech.
“We’ve also witnessed what happens here in this chamber when we give in to the temptation of taking the easy way out and abandoning those guard rails,” Sinema said, adding later in her speech that senators “must choose the better angels of our nature.”
CREW clearly does not feel that this happened in this case.
“The law applies to you whether it’s your first week in office or your last,” Bookbinder said. “Spending thousands of dollars of campaign contributions on yourself is even more troubling when it comes after you’ve announced you’re no longer a candidate.”
