After a six-hour hearing Thursday on the campaign spending of Democrat congressional candidate Aftab Pureval, the Ohio Elections Commission dismissed all but the most minor infraction, and slapped him with a $100 fine.
The most serious allegation, that he used $16,400 donated to his local clerk-of-courts campaign to buy polling services for his congressional campaign, apparently lacked sufficient evidence to bring a conviction.
Another allegation that he used his local campaign account to pay for staff travel associated with his congressional campaign was also dismissed.
The only violation found was a $360 payment to a photographer who shot pictures of his campaign kick-off event on Jan. 31, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Pureval is seeking to unseat Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH-1) in one of the most watched congressional races in the 2018 cycle.
After six hours in session, the Ohio Elections Commission could not decide whether a violation occurred with the poll, conducted by a Washington, D.C. firm known for having Democrat congressional clients.
That brought smiles to the faces of Pureval and his supporters.
“Today, we are vindicated—the Ohio Ethics Commission agrees,” Pureval told reporters at a news conference in Cincinnati late Thursday afternoon. “Twenty-eight out of 29 complaints were dismissed as utterly baseless. The one issue found was a mistake, a clerical error that resulted in a $100 fine, because one of my staff members hit the wrong number on Venmo.”
Pureval’s former campaign manager, Sarah Topy, admitted in testimony before the commission Thursday that she made a “mistake” by paying a photographer out of the wrong account.
“This was a mistake, and it was my fault,” Topy testified. She said she accidentally paid photographer Mark Byron with the wrong credit card, according to a report in The Enquirer.
Topy resigned Tuesday night after revelations broke in another scandal unrelated to the campaign-spending issues. The Enquirer had reported that one of Pureval’s campaign workers had “infiltrated” the Chabot campaign as a spy and accessed sensitive computer data.
Pureval, however, spent Thursday celebrating the dismissal of most of the charges filed with the Ohio Elections Commission.
Topy said she split the polling bill, roughly $30,000 in total, between Pureval’s clerk-of-courts and congressional campaigns.
Despite the fact that he isn’t up for reelection to his clerk-of-court position until 2020 while the congressional race is in 2018, Pureval argued that the poll was used for both campaigns.
“The poll would tell us whether a path forward for a congressional campaign would make sense or whether we should stay put at the clerk of courts,” Pureval told the Ohio Elections Commission. “Based on the results of the poll, it looked like a congressional campaign, that there was viability for it. If the results would have been different, I would have stayed.”
Topy also defended her request to the Hamilton County Board of Elections to black out the memo lines of several checks, including the one that was titled “poll balance,” according to The Enquirer.
“It’s not hiding if you’re told by the board of elections it’s not required,” she said.
There were no questions about Pureval’s clerk-of-courts position asked in the poll, but the Ohio Elections Commission did not address this during Thursday’s hearing.
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Anthony Accardi is a writer and reporter for The Ohio Star.
