One other native candidate working for a Georgia Normal Meeting seat is going through a grievance linked with marketing campaign funds.
The state ethics fee was already wanting right into a grievance in opposition to state Senate District 52 candidate Jeff Lewis. It contends he has failed since 2012 to file required reviews for his state Home committee, which nonetheless has $75,000.
Now, Luke Martin, who’s working for the Home District 13 seat, is going through a grievance that is considerably the reverse.
In his newest submitting, protecting the interval between Feb. 1 and April 30, Martin reported $7,931 money readily available after taking in donations totaling $11,223.
That quantity consists of a minimum of $6,000 that was transfered from his state Senate District 52 marketing campaign when he registered his Home District 13 marketing campaign on March 25. Martin launched a Senate bid in August 2021 however as an alternative certified on March 10 to run for the Home seat. He additionally used $400 from his Senate marketing campaign to pay his qualifying charge.
The query of if that is a authorized use of the cash is awaiting a ruling from the state ethics fee.
Georgia regulation limits what a candidate can do with leftover marketing campaign funds to, basically, returning the contributions or donating them to a charity or different political committee.
Martin’s itemizing signifies he donated his Senate funds to his Home marketing campaign as an “allowable switch” between committees of the identical candidate.
Nonetheless, in a heated change on the Floyd County GOP Girls’s luncheon final week, member Diane Lewis pointed to a restriction saying the committees should be for a similar workplace.
“Watch the adjudication course of and watch this be dismissed,” Martin responded.
Lewis, who served within the state Home from 1992 to 2008, has not transferred any of that cash to his state Senate marketing campaign. The grievance in opposition to him is that he stopped reporting its existence to the company tasked with monitoring it.
The complaints in opposition to Lewis and Martin could possibly be dismissed administratively if staffers reviewing them flip up no errors. In any other case, they will be dropped at the ethics fee — the Georgia Authorities Transparency and Marketing campaign Finance Fee — for a listening to.
The company met final on March 16 and doesn’t have a date for its subsequent assembly scheduled but.