May 11, 2016 01:20 PM UTC

Wayne Williams Jumps on Jack Tate's Grenade

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Aurora Sentinel reports, following up the story of fundraising in the SD-27 race between Democratic challenger Tom Sullivan and appointed Republican Jack Tate–we had last reported on a big fundraising quarter for “Sully,” contrasted against a campaign finance complaint against Tate for transferring too much money to his Senate campaign:

The Democratic Senate Campaign Fund and Tate’s opponent, Tom Sullivan, said this week that the Republican violated state campaign finance rules when he rolled over more than $27,000 from his former state House campaign to his Senate campaign. State rules put the limit on those transactions at about $22,000.

In a letter to Tate on May 5, Williams said his office gave bad advice when they explained to him how to move money from his House campaign committee to a Senate campaign committee.

“My office mistakenly gave you erroneous information regarding the effect of the committee change on the contribution limits,” the letter said…

The Republican Secretary of State said in his letter that Balmer approached his office asking how Tate could roll the money over and the Secretary’s office didn’t explain the process correctly.

Obviously, it would be better if the Secretary of State could give, you know, accurate information about the campaign finance limits it is charged with administering. Do you suppose Williams would have been as forthcoming about giving “erroneous information” to a Democrat? Either way, in a release from the Democratic Senate Campaign Fund, you can see the fun with Tate regarding his campaign funds isn’t quite over yet:

Tate has yet to make an official public statement on the matter. Tate did respond to the DSCF’s May 3rd tweet that he needs to give the illegal overage back and “play by the rules” with, “nope. contact secretary of states office. know your rules regarding same campaign year transfers. [sic].”

In his last May 2nd filing, Tate raised $4,150.00 – well under the $5,611 he needs to either give back to donors or donate to charity, according to campaign finance laws.

In addition to having to make several thousand dollars go away unproductively, Tate isn’t raising any money. Certainly not compared to Sullivan’s big start to the race. We’ve already seen evidence that Tate is nervous about his election prospects, to include backing away from sponsorship of a predatory lending bill after he sponsored one last year.

If he can’t raise money, he’s got a lot more to be nervous about.