Jim Jordan campaign explains large errors on its FEC reports
Local Congressman Jim Jordan’s reelection campaign filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday to answer questions about large accounting discrepancies between reports it filed several years ago and corrected reports the committee filed earlier this year.
In early March, the FEC sent 10 letters to Jordan’s campaign to question receipt differences between his original and updated filings that were as high as $558,726.12, and disbursement differences that were as high as $911,530.36. The letters gave Jordan’s campaign until early April to respond, and said failure to do so “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”
Jordan, R-Urbana, represents Ohio’s 4th Congressional District which includes Champaign, Shelby, Auglaize, Logan and several other western and central Ohio counties.
Replies that Jordan treasurer Thomas Datwyler filed on Easter said he made the changes at issue after he became campaign treasurer and reconciled all its reports to its bank statements and other records. He attributed many of the contribution differences to how the campaign initially handled the online contributions it received toward the end of the time periods covered in each campaign finance report.
Datwyler said Jordan’s campaign initially reported most of the contributions at issue during the reporting period when they were entered into the campaign’s reporting database, instead of the date when they were processed online, which occurred during a different reporting period. Starting with the campaign’s last reports from the election cycle that ended in 2018, Datwyler said he amended reports to “accurately reflect the amounts of receipts for the reporting period in which the credit card contributions
were processed by the credit card company.
“The dates of these contributions were corrected and changed to the processed date, rather than the deposit date, or the data entry date,” Datwyler‘s letters explained. He said his review also corrected several cases where duplicate contributions were reported.
Datwyler blamed many of the reports’ disbursement differences to instances where “digital consulting and/or credit card fees were either duplicated or were over reported.” He also said some expenses in the original reports were incorrectly listed on the date that they cleared the campaign’s bank account instead of the date they were processed.
“Those expenses were reconciled and amended to reflect the correct amounts of the disbursements, rather than the errors that had been included in the original reports,” Datwyler wrote.
Datwyler also mentioned that shifts in last year’s Ohio primary election date due to COVID 19 created “some confusion surrounding the primary election reporting requirements, which also caused confusion regarding the reporting periods for the pre-primary report.”
“Ultimately, in an abundance of caution, the Committee filed two pre-primary reports, one for the original reporting period and another for the new primary date and reporting period,” Datwyler continued,” urging
the FEC to contact him if it has further questions. “The amendments merely made sure that all the receipts and disbursements were reported within the reporting period for each of the pre-primary reports.”
A statement that Jordan’s campaign manager issued after the initial FEC queries stressed that no money was ever missing from Jordan’s campaign accounts, and the revised reports showed the campaign with more cash than it initially reported. Campaign manager Kevin Eichinger said some of the difficulties were caused by its troubles adjusting to skyrocketing donations as Jordan’s national profile grew. Jordan’s campaign hired Datwyler as its treasurer in July.
During the two-year period before President Donald Trump took office, Jordan raised $733,416 for his reelection, spent $422,967 and ended up with $1.3 million in his treasury, according to statistics compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine. Over the next two years, his campaign took in $1,241,417 and spent $1,809,464. The bulk of his donations came from Ohio during both of those election cycles.
From 2019 through 2020, Jordan raised $18,637,140, spent $13,268,968 and finished with more than $6 million in the bank. At that point, California had eclipsed Ohio as his top state for donors, and people from Florida gave almost as much to Jordan as those from his home state. Eichinger said Jordan received over 500,000 donations from roughly 300,000 individuals in 2020, with an average donation of $35.
“The outpouring of nationwide support for our message is why we are raising a ton more money,” Eichinger said after the initial FEC queries. “It wasn’t like we were actively looking to raise more money. There was an organic outpouring of support. We needed to put in place the operation to handle that kind of influx.”