Iowa Democrats File Ethics Complaint Against NussleIowa Democratic Party
Today, the Iowa Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics Board against Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. After careful review of both his January state and federal campaign filings, it appears that Congressman Nussle has made expenditures from his federal account that clearly benefit his gubernatorial race, and he has failed to report these expenditures as in-kind contributions.
The specific complaints (taken from the letter submitted by Mike Milligan, Executive Director of the Iowa Democratic Party, to the Ethics Board):
1) Mr. Nussle’s state finance report fails to show any in-kind donations from the federal “Nussle for Congress Committee,” while six individuals were simultaneously paid out of both accounts. Since there is no campaign for Congress, the staff and consulting paid by the federal committee was supplementing the salary and consulting fees paid by the gubernatorial campaign.
2) The development costs of Nussle’s gubernatorial campaign website may have been paid for by the congressional campaign account, with no record of an in- kind donation to the gubernatorial campaign account.
3) Three congressional campaign expenditures, totaling $33,839.69 for media-production, were made to McCarthy Marcus Hennings in 2005. Particularly of interest is the $26,500.00 expenditure made on 4/4/05, less than one and half months before the congressman officially announced that he was running for governor. The official announcement tour of his bid for Governor was accompanied by a video, which can be found on his website. However, in the gubernatorial campaign state report there is no report of video or media production expenses to McCarthy Marcus Hennings until two months after his announcement. It seems clear that the congressional campaign paid for the initial video on 4/4/05, which was then used by the gubernatorial campaign with no acknowledgement of the contribution in the state report.
Nussle is not running for Congress and had not been running for re-election to Congress throughout 2005.