In May of 2016, South Dakota State House candidate Clara Hart grabbed notice from South Dakota media as being the beneficiary of having caught presidential contender Bernie Sanders’ eye. Hart was featured by the Democratic – Socialist candidate, and took in a tremendous amount of money directly as a result of an endorsement by Bernie Sanders soliciting his national fundraising list for several statehouse candidates.
But, while things started out in what could have been a star-making turn, in the end it seems that the campaign gave most of it away.
When this all started, Clara Hart, through her campaign committee Hart for House, in the 2016 pre-general report reported a very large donation from ACTBLUE SOUTH DAKOTA, which at the time was allowed to act as a bundler of funds. The Democrat group reported donations to Hart’s race for the State House in the amount of $76,639.20, making it one of the best fundraising hauls in the state for any state legislative race that year.
A candidate in a state legislative race can do a lot with that kind of money. But, what kind of steward was Hart with those dollars? In the election, Hart spent heavily in her race without a lot to show for it. In one instance, she reported a massive campaign expense of $22,537.24 – an amount nearly equal to all other campaign expenditure for “consulting.”
Clara Hart PreGeneral by Pat Powers on Scribd
By the time Hart was done with the pre-general election, she’d spent $81,405 of income down to $21,171.59 – over $60,000. And Hart lost the election trailing the second place vote recipient by over 2800 votes. It was a massive loss.
The 2016 year-end report filed on 1/10/17 showed that in the last 2 weeks of the election, Hart raised a few more dollars, and spent a relatively minor $3,050.93, leaving her with $19,402.67.
And here’s where things start to get interesting. Because this was the last campaign finance report filed with the Secretary of State. No additional reports were filed with the state after 2017. Not that we’ll ever know what happened with the original campaign account, because it has seemingly sipped through the cracks.
As of this morning, according to Kea Warne, Director, Division of Elections with the South Dakota Secretary of State, “Our office has no public records regarding formal administrative or legal enforcement action taken against that committee.”
So, where did nearly $20,000 in campaign funds go? When we do pick up the trail again, it appears that Hart shifted finds from her original campaign account without reporting it, and her last run for office drained the coffers dry. Despite the fact there wasn’t actually a race for her to run.
In September of 2017, Hart made a formal announcement at the downtown library in Sioux Falls that she would be running for City Council for the seat being vacated by former Councilman Rex Rolfing, after having filed a statement of organization in August of her candidacy. Acting as treasurer for the new committee was Democrat activist Kyle Boese of Harrisburg.
In January of 2018, Hart filed a city campaign finance report noting that she was shifting $18,334.03 from Hart for House to Clara Hart for City Council. Despite the fact no termination report was filed with the Secretary of State.
Clara Hart City Filing January by Pat Powers on Scribd
After shifting the money to her new City of Sioux Falls account, Hart added a few more dollars from various sources and spent some minor amounts on her campaign. Feeling generous, Hart sent Democrat Candidate for Governor Billie Sutton $500, Democrat Congressional Candidate Tim Bjorkman $1000, and Democrat hanger on Rick Weiland through his “Takeitback.org” Political Action Committee received $5000, leaving Hart with $11,667.43.
Shortly thereafter, the floor dropped out from Hart’s latest campaign:
Her most recent bid for public office—in the city’s 2018 municipal election—was rough on Hart.
She called the race one of the worst events in her life. Her attempt at a City Council at-large seat stopped short when she failed to get her signatures in by the Feb. 23 deadline for Sioux Falls city elections.
One of her campaign helpers disappeared with the bulk of her signed petitions, Hart said.
“I was so embarrassed,” Hart said. “I mean, I’ve been through hell in my life, but that …”
While Hart was passing around the campaign cash she’d collected via Bernie Sanders, she had missed an item.. arguably the most important one. To be a candidate for office, you have to get on the ballot. And she failed to do so.
By the time of the 3/6/18 report, Hart had spent another $2914, leaving her $8753.43.
Her campaign having crashed around her, Hart held on to practically everything in her 4/5 report, but by the time of her 6/13/18 termination report, it appears that Hart zeroed out her account by donating it to other candidates, with the largest donation ($3500) going to Kyle Boese, her campaign treasurer who was a candidate for the state legislature in District 6.
In less than two years, from $81,000 to zero.
Are there any takeaways to this story? I’m not sure there are many, but it’s fascinating to watch how this campaign committee had all the cash it could ever want, only to be picked down to the bone. Whether that was someone being overly generous or pure folly or a little of both remains to be seen.
This was a tremendous amount of money spent in one legislative race, and one partial city race, and a lot of it going for purposes other than what people were making donations for. I doubt the Bernie Sanders donors wanted to give Rick Weiland’s PAC $5000. Or give $3500 to Kyle Boese. When these people donated, they were donating to a candidate that Bernie Sanders was touting as important for them to support.
What does seem a little irksome in this tale is that if you weren’t looking closely, a person wouldn’t know the shift of cash ever took place. And that was a failure of the system.
If I hadn’t written about the city race at one point, I would have missed that the cash was shifted to from the State House committee to the City Race. Who knows what’s still out there, as there are still unknown funds and/or expenditures in the Hart for House campaign? If a person is transferring over $18,000 from one campaign committee to another, you would think that should be reflected somewhere.
The prior Secretary of State noted that the committee was delinquent in filing. Not that anything was ever done about it at the time. It seemingly evaporated after that.
In 2017, the legislature passed a law noting “the secretary of state may commence the contested case procedure pursuant to chapter 1-26 to remedy the violation or impose a civil penalty. The secretary of state may refer the complaint to the Division of Criminal Investigation for an investigation pursuant to chapter 23-3 and shall notify the subject of the affidavit of the referral by certified mail.”
That’s all well and good, but if no one is paying attention to campaign finance disclosure, you can have as many laws as you want, but they don’t mean much.
Public disclosure of campaign spending is tremendously important in our system of open government. As is making sure the rules are followed in the first place.
That might be the only thing that we can fix when it comes to stories such as this.
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