McWaters/Wilson race lacked disclosure

General Assembly members should change this.

Yesterday’s election between Jeff McWaters and Rosemary Wilson included tons of advertising and spending. Rumors of how much was spent, and where it come from, abound.

The last time a campaign finance report was filed by either campaign was July 15th! And the way I’m reading the SBE schedules, that’s all the law requires.

That’s absurd. The current requirements for campaigns in special elections are these:

1) File reports in July and January for previous six months
2) File 8 days before the GENERAL special election

That’s it. These candidates could raise and spend a million dollars raised from anyone and spent on anything and no one would know it until we hit those dates mentioned above, well after the primary election date.

Meanwhile, candidates in November elections have to file no less than 8 reports a year, and 3 in the final 6 weeks of a campaign.

If campaign finance and disclosure is to mean anything at all, someone has got to realign these requirements. Virginia should close the special election loophole that allows nomination campaigns to forgo practically all financial disclosure until after Election Day.

Large contributions received during the 12 days prior to a nomination contest (over $1,000+ for State Senate candidates) are required to be filed within 24 hours. I’m not seeing any, so I guess we assume neither McWaters or Wilson got any $1,000 contributions since November 23rd, or State Board or VPAP is wrong.

Still, it’s silly to require large closing weeks disclosure when a nomination contest is free of filing any reports at all unless it stretches over six months.

Would we adopt the standards for primary disclosures for November races? After the June 30th period report, no candidate needs to file another report? It’s silly on it’s face.

Part of the problem is that these special elections are the result of November victories, and the window of time is usually about 3 weeks between officially announcing the election and the actual nomination contest.

At the very least, the rule for filing a report 8 days prior to the General election should also apply to nominating contests.

I think it would be a positive change.

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