Mississippi Today

Chris McDaniel’s reports deny accurate public accounting of campaign money

Published

2 years ago

May 16, 2023

After six campaign finance filings — including amended, amended-amended, termination-amended, and even one the-computer-temporarily-ate-it reports — it’s still unclear exactly how much money longtime state Sen. Chris McDaniel has raised or now has for his lieutenant governor campaign.

McDaniel’s reports for his campaign and a PAC he created last year have been confusing and confounding, at times leaving voters in the dark on the sources of hundreds of thousands of dollars and continuing to contain double-reported donations and amounts and dates that don’t add up.

His opponent, incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, claims McDaniel has violated state campaign finance reporting laws and has a complaint pending with the attorney general’s office. But Mississippi’s campaign finance laws are seldom enforced.

Hosemann’s camp claims McDaniel since his first report in January has been trying to pad his numbers and make it appear he has raised far more than he has. McDaniel, who has served 16 years in the state Legislature, has provided little explanation, but last week claimed vindication after Secretary of State Michael Watson said a computer glitch appeared to cause part of McDaniel’s latest filing not to post last week.

But his latest filing continues to double-report donations, count legally questionable money McDaniel says he has returned in its bottom line, is filed for a campaign committee Watson says hasn’t been legally registered with the state, and generally defies an accurate public accounting of his finances.

Here are some highlights of McDaniel’s filings to date for his campaign, and his Hold the Line PAC:

Amended-amended report

In McDaniel’s first finance report for Hold the Line, it showed a cash balance for the end of 2021 of $473,962, with no accounting of where the money came from as required by law. But McDaniel didn’t register the PAC as required by law with the state until summer of 2022.

After questions from Mississippi Today on how a PAC raised hundreds of thousands before it was created, McDaniel said the PAC made a “clerical error” and filed an amended report. But the amended report still showed an unexplained cash balance for 2021 of $236,981, as did a third “amended-amended” report the PAC filed later the same day.

Over the limit?

After initially failing to disclose the full amount, McDaniel’s Hold the Line PAC eventually reported it had received $475,000 from a Virginia dark-money nonprofit corporation, then funneled $465,000 of the money to McDaniel’s campaign. But Mississippi law prohibits corporations from donating more than $1,000 a year to a candidate or PAC.

Returning questionable donations

McDaniel in April said his campaign returned $465,000 to his PAC, and that his PAC returned $460,000 to the dark-money nonprofit corporation and the PAC was being terminated. McDaniel hasn’t accounted for the remaining $15,000 he reported his PAC accepted from the American Exceptionalism Institute, Inc.

The American Exceptionalism Institute, Inc. is a dark money nonprofit that has contributed secretly sourced money to candidates in Nevada and Georgia, including former Sen. Kelly Loeffler and provided grants to various other groups across the country.

Double reporting

In his latest report last week for his campaign, McDaniel again listed the $465,000 donation from his PAC, despite having listed it as a donation in his report for calendar year 2022 — and despite having reported he returned the money.

In all, his campaign’s May report covering the period from January through April of 2023 included nearly $596,000 he had already listed in his report for calendar 2022. But oddly, he left more than a dozen donations totaling $9,800 out of this double reporting.

‘Termination-amended’ report

McDaniel shut down his Hold the Line PAC and filed a termination report on March 29. But on April 17, he filed a “termination-amended” report that showed it had given his campaign another $4,900.

Odd timing

Oddly, in some of his filings, McDaniel’s PAC reported it returned $460,000 to the American Exceptionalism Institute on the same day it received the second of two donations of $237,500 from AEI, in February. But McDaniel’s campaign had reported it received a total of $465,000 from his PAC in January, before the PAC would have had that much money — primarily coming from AEI — per his own reports.

The ‘Committee to Elect’

McDaniel has for his 16 years in office, including his first report as a lieutenant governor candidate, filed his state reports as a candidate, under his name. But last week, he filed a report for “The Committee to Elect Chris McDaniel.” But Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office as of Monday said, “At this time, we have not received a statement of organization from the Committee to Elect Chris McDaniel nor do our records indicate one was filed electronically …”

In a press release the True Conservatives Mississippi PAC, an anti-McDaniel PAC run by Republican operatives Josh Gregory and Quinton Dickerson, claims McDaniel violated state law by not registering the committee before taking donations. The release claims McDaniel could face hundreds of thousands in fines under state law “if the maximum of $5,000 per violation was enforced.”

Hosemann’s campaign has also questioned in its complaint to the AG the raffle of a gun by “Friends of Chris McDaniel,” which does not appear to be registered with the state as required.

The computer ate all but one page of report

Campaign finance reports for January-April were due Wednesday, May 10, and the secretary of state’s website posted them online. McDaniel’s posted report filed Tuesday, May 9, contained only a cover sheet, and no itemization of donations or spending as required. McDaniel and his campaign did not respond to questions sent Wednesday about this. On Thursday, Watson’s office said: “This is the full filing of what was received from the Committee to Elect Chris McDaniel.”

The SOS campaign finance website crashed at some point on Thursday. On Friday, Secretary of State Watson, a former lawyer for McDaniel’s failed 2014 U.S. Senate campaign when he unsuccessfully sued over results, on Friday said after investigation a “system error” appeared to be the cause of McDaniel’s itemization not showing up.

On Monday, Watson’s office said, “At this time we are only aware of it affecting one report (McDaniel’s) in this manner,” but said there have been reports from others about difficulty filing online finance reports.

McDaniel on social media claimed vindication over news reports about his campaign finances and in a statement to the Clarion Ledger his campaign spokeswoman said Hosemann is “trying his hardest to lie, cheat and steal his way to re-election … Now, can we get back to talking about the real issues?”

But McDaniel, who has long been a vocal champion of campaign finance transparency and reform, and his campaign have not addressed numerous questions remaining about his campaign money and claims he broke state laws.

Hosemann responded: “This newest filing is still a disaster and it is incomplete … This is either intentional misinformation to Mississippi voters or gross incompetence — and either one is problematic.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

Published

5 hours ago

April 3, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-03 13:02:00

by Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
April 3, 2025

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.

Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi, and would likely have vetoed the measure.

The House and Senate this week overwhelmingly voted for legislation that established a watered-down version of early voting. The proposal would have required voters to go to a circuit clerk’s office and verify their identity with a photo ID.

The proposal also listed broad excuses that would have allowed many voters an opportunity to cast early ballots.

The measure passed the House unanimously and the Senate approved it 42-7. However, Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian who strongly opposes early voting, held the bill on a procedural motion.

Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England chose not to dispose of Tate’s motion on Thursday morning, the last day the Senate was in session. This killed the bill and prevented it from going to the governor.

England, a Republican from Vancleave, told reporters he decided to kill the legislation because he believed some of its language needed tweaking.

The other reality is that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves strongly opposes early voting proposals and even attacked England on social media for advancing the proposal out of the Senate chamber.

England said he received word “through some sources” that Reeves would veto the measure.

“I’m not done working on it, though,” England said.

Although Mississippi does not have no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, it does have absentee voting.

To vote by absentee, a voter must meet one of around a dozen legal excuses, such as temporarily living outside of their county or being over 65. Mississippi law doesn’t allow people to vote by absentee purely out of convenience or choice.

Several conservative states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, have an in-person early voting system. The Republican National Committee in 2023 urged Republican voters to cast an early ballot in states that have early voting procedures.

Yet some Republican leaders in Mississippi have ardently opposed early voting legislation over concerns that it undermines election security.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

Published

1 day ago

April 2, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:34:00

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
April 2, 2025

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.

House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.

Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”

Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.

“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”

The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.

People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.

The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.

“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.”

If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.

Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.

The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature.

During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube.

As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.

“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget

Published

1 day ago

April 2, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:13:00

by Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
April 2, 2025

The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.

Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend.

House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session.

“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.”

But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.

The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.

The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass.

Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget.

“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said.

The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.

But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.

The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.

The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session.

But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget.

On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.

If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later.

“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said.

If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.