McSally campaign acknowledges fundraising errors

Rep. Martha McSally’s campaign said Friday “clerical errors” caused the campaign to report milions of dollars more on Federal Election Commission filings than the campaign actually raised during the 2016 campaign cycle.

McSally’s reported $5.6 milion sum would have put the freshman Republican Congresswoman from Arizona well above her House colleagues and square in the middle of the presidential field.

But the FEC, which has had several questions on the accuracy of numbers in her previous filings, notes the Arizona Republican’s total contributions on its website as $1.69 million – a combination of the $1.05 million she reported raising the second quarter, April through June, and $644,000 raised the first quarter.

The Tucson Sentinel first reported on the latest filing discrepancy.

Weston McKee, McSally’s campaign manager, told The Hill in a statement that while the aggregate numbers are “inaccurate due to past filing errors,” the quartly fundraising figures are accurate. 

“The number raised for the first and second quarters along with the cash-on-hand numbers-figures the campaign highlighted-are all accurate,” his statement said. “We are working diligently to correct any inconsistencies that are a result of past errors.”

McSally’s FEC filings since she began her political career in 2012 show 14 separate letters by the FEC questioning the accuracy of some numbers. The FEC has not filed any inquiry into her July filing, which has only been public for a few days.

The latest FEC inquiry into her April filing gave her until July 15 to correct a number of potential discrepancies in that report.  The commission identifies 19 potential inaccurate figures, including her net contributions number, on that report. The FEC has not posted any response to those concerns on its website by Friday, a few days after that deadline. 

One of those potentially incorrect numbers noted by the FEC was her total receipts from the 2016 cycle. Despite noting that she only raised $644,000 in the first three months of the year, her year to date figure was at $4.6 million.

It’s possible that the campaign mistakenly included much of its haul from the 2014 campaign in that calculation, when it raised about $4.8 million.

In response to FEC inquiries about her 2014 year-end reports, McSally for Congress told the FEC that it is aware of the issues and is working to address them.

“We are undertaking an in-house review to determine the appropriate course of action to identify and correct each one of them,” the committee said in the letter.

“Due to the extensive amount of data and documentation involved we are asking for more time to complete this task. As each period is complete, we will amend the report to correct the public record.”

McSally barely defeated Rep. Ron Barber (D), who had taken over the seat when his former boss Gabrielle Giffords stepped down because of injuries she sustained in a shooting. McSally is a former Air Force colonel who has been a vocal supporter of the A-10 Warthog airplane, which had been on the chopping block in Congress.