Another dust-up in the 7th district congressional race between incumbent Eric Cantor and challenger Wayne Powell, this time over Powell’s failure to file personal financial forms with the Clerk of the House of Representatives.
According to the Cantor campaign, Powell should have filed this form a year ago. In the press release on the matter, Camp Cantor says:
The Ethics in Government Act requires congressional candidates to file a Financial Disclosure Statement with the Clerk of the House once their campaigns have raised or spent $5,000.
“Individuals are required to file a Financial Disclosure Statement once they “qualify” as a candidate by raising or spending more than $5,000 in a campaign for election to the House of Representatives. Both the office-seeker’s own funds and contributions from third parties count towards the threshold.”
Powell’s campaign report filed with the Federal Election Commission for the period ending September 30th, 2011 states that he had raised $9,114.01. That clearly put him over the $5,000 threshold to file a Personal Financial Disclosure almost one year ago.
Cantor’s folks want to know “what is he [Powell] hiding?”
According to the Powell campaign, it was just a rookie mistake:
On Wednesday, Powell’s camp characterized the failure to file as a “simple oversight by a fresh new candidate” and said it filed the form this week, immediately upon realizing the error.
This is hogwash.
Powell’s campaign manager, “Mudcat” Saunders, is hardly fresh or new to Virginia politics, federal campaigns, or the paperwork requirements candidates face. The blame for Powell’s non-filing rests directly on him.
Of course, Saunders could have forgotten about the reporting deadline, what with all his media appearances. You know, the ones where he has called Cantor an unpatriotic “crook” and “bought and paid for bastard.”
Or maybe it’s just an extension of Saunders’ days flogging for disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards. Caught flouting the law? Scramble to comply, brush it off as an idle mistake, and then promptly change the subject to anything else.
