‘I learned there may have been reporting issues’

While Lt. Gov. Hall-Long has not given any interviews on the trouble in her campaign and with her finance reports, her statement to WHYY News essentially repeated and piggybacked on a series of written statements her campaign has released since Sept. 28 — 16 days after her campaign launch.

Her Sept. 28 statement said that “while preparing to launch my campaign for governor, I requested a review of my past campaign finance reports and learned there may have been reporting issues that require attention.”

That statement, which came after she had canceled the events with Carney and other supporters, said she was “working with independent campaign finance experts and forensic accountants to thoroughly audit the finances.”

She also said in the statement that she would be “amending any reports as needed.”

On Oct. 26, the campaign released a new statement that said “an internal review conducted by a compliance firm … found that Bethany and her husband covered various campaign-related expenses using personal credit cards and loans that were not accurately reflected in previous campaign finance reports.”

The campaign said the Delaware-based firm Summit CPA reviewed records and found that “while reporting errors were made,’’ the couple loaned the campaign more money than they were repaid, and “no wrongdoings or violations were found.”

Hall-Long said then in a statement that after her team “identified these discrepancies, we immediately took the responsible step of halting our fundraising efforts and bringing in a CPA firm to examine our records. We also took the extra step of informing the public of this self-initiated process.”

She added that finance reports would be amended and that she was “now ready to resume fund-raising.”

And on Friday, the campaign announced that the reports had been amended to “correct categorization errors” that falsely listed loans as expenses.

It said Hall-Long also paid for campaign expenses such as “television advertising, yard signs, campaign literature, and consulting” on her personal credit card “as a loan.” The amended report for 2017, for example, shows that more than $7,700 was paid to “American Express” and “Chase Credit Card.”

“As our campaign grew from the kitchen table around which I started my first legislative race to that of a statewide elected official, we should not have continued to take on the responsibility of managing the finance reporting,’’ Hall-Long’s statement last week said. “Going forward, our campaign reporting will be handled by experts in this field.”

Hall-Long’s statement also used a medical analogy.

“As a nurse, I deal in facts,’’ the statement said. “When a patient presents with a problem, you assess and diagnose, and then you take action. We’ve diagnosed the problem and we have now acted to amend any issues with the reports.”

Meyer says voters have ‘a lot more questions than answers’

Hall-Long’s public amendments and explanations have left many political observers unsatisfied.

Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of Common Cause Delaware, a grassroots group that aims to protect and strengthen democracy, stressed that voters who contribute to campaigns “need to be able to trust that their money is being spent on legitimate campaign expenses rather than lining candidate pockets.”

She said that while it’s “encouraging” that Hall-Long amended the reports, the gubernatorial candidate should release the audit too “because that should go a long way in terms of restoring public trust. People do have questions.”

Doing so, she said, would let voters “be able to see for themselves and would help strengthen the public trust.”

Meyer, who announced his candidacy in June, said he agreed and noted that he doesn’t select the auditors of county government finances, and that all audits are made public.

Meyer also said while he hasn’t “scrutinized’’ the issue as deeply as others, it’s a “fair question’’ to ask his primary opponent how she could sign off on finance reports that year after year did not properly disclose what she now says were loans.

“Today, there’s historic levels of mistrust in government and historical levels of mistrust in elected officials and the only solution to address that mistrust is honesty and transparency,” Meyer said.

“Transparency means providing answers and Delawareans, including me, have a lot more questions than answers right now regarding this situation.”

Julianne Murray, who heads the state Republican Party and ran against Carney in 2020, said she and others were caught off guard when Hall-Long suddenly stopped raising money for her nascent campaign and announced a review of her finances.

“Everybody was surprised and intrigued by that,” Murray said. “You know, why wasn’t that taken care of before you announced?”

Murray joined others who say the audit should be released.

“If there’s no issues there, if all you needed to do was amend the reports, why not put out the audit findings,’’ Murray said. “Because she is not putting out the audit report, the people are starting to go, ‘Well, wait a minute. Why not?’ There’s only so much that endorsements and people saying there’s nothing to see here will carry the day with everyday Delawareans. I  think it’s hurting her.”

Neither House Speaker Valerie Longhurst, who has endorsed Hall-Long, nor Senate President Pro Tem Dave Sokola, who served with her in the Senate but has not made an endorsement, responded to requests for comment.

Yet more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers publicly announced their support for her candidacy in recent weeks, albeit without mentioning the questions about her campaign finances.

State Sen. Stephanie Hansen, who also represents the Middletown area, told WHYY News she believes her friend and her husband made honest mistakes and is giving them the benefit of the doubt. She said the state’s campaign finance reporting system can be confusing.

“If this was an honest mistake compounded over the years, I can see how the final number of the amount that has been mischaracterized is going to be very large,” Hansen said.

Hansen said that even though she properly disclosed a loan to one of her campaigns, she can see how Hall-Long might have erred.

“I think they were just thinking of it as an expense,’’ Hansen said of Hall-Long paying for a television ad with her credit card. That’s where it becomes a judgment call and a wrong one if you decide, ‘Oh, that’s an expenditure, not a loan.”

Snyder-Hall said that regardless of how one views Hall-Long’s actions, it has definitely generated voter interest in a primary election that’s still 10 months away in a state where even gubernatorial races usually don’t heat up until the summer. She also said the controversy could be a pivotal factor.

“I guess voters have to decide,’’ the Common Cause director said, “whether they think this is something that was an unfortunate oversight or if it was something else.”