Galindo amends four finance reports prior to runoff

Place 4 Council candidate Cid Galindo filed four amended campaign finance reports Thursday, changing the amount of money he has collected and spent as well as the amount left over in the final days of the race. His battle with Laura Morrison over the Place 4 seat will be over with Saturday’s election.

 

Galindo’s amended reports include one filed in January, which covered the beginning of the campaign late last year, reports from April and May, and the report filed last Friday. That report shows him raising $89,460 between May 1 and June 4, while spending nearly $119,000. Laura Morrison reported raising about $70,000 and spending about $80,000 during that period.

 

It appears from the available reports that Galindo has spent a total of $242,258 in both the general and runoff election, while Morrison has spent $142,126.

 

The corrected June 4 report, along with the correction to the report filed eight days before the May 10 election, both show significant discrepancies between the original amount reported spent and the actual amount spent. “I think the bottom line is, we had a major oversight in one of our previous reports. I take full responsibility for that and have taken steps to correct it,” Galindo told In Fact Daily. “We had a young team with a lot of things going on and some things just slipped through. We brought in a professional CPA to review it and get it all done right.”

 

That certified public accountant was apparently able to discover a $35,000 expense to Arkansas-based Thomson Consulting for a media buy in the final days before the May election date that had not originally been reported. The campaign did report a separate $25,000 purchase with that firm on both reports.

 

A similar discrepancy popped up in the report due eight days before the runoff election. Originally, the Galindo campaign reported spending nearly $55,000 with that firm on a combination of direct mail and polling. The amended report filed yesterday shows an additional $30,544 for a media buy. The corrected report also shows an $8,000 payment to Acxiom for data.

 

The corrected reports also show minor changes to the amount of funds raised during each reporting cycle and relatively small changes to other expenses. But it was the failure to include the two major media buys which lead to the perception late last week that Galindo still had more than $60,000 heading into the final week of the campaign. As he explained to In Fact Daily earlier this week, the amount of cash on had was closer to $4,600.

 

Galindo’s campaign finance documents do consistently show loans from the candidate to the campaign in amounts ranging from $7,000 to $30,000, totaling more than $100,000. Galindo told In Fact Daily he had loaned his campaign additional funds since last Friday.