Welle is Commingling Personal And Campaign Funds
The Welles, Josh and Angela, with their mentor, Bob Menendez
Questions of competence, compliance and character continue to dog Josh Welle, the Democrat of Rumson who voted in Virginia in 2016 and 2017, that is running against Congressman Chris Smith in the 4th Congressional District.
NewJerseyGlobe reported yesterday that Welle, blamed errors in his campaign finance disclosures to the Federal Election Commission on software issues and an email address that “the campaign no longer monitors.”
The NJGlobe report emphasized Welle’s proclivity for placing blame on others for his errors and implied that the mistakes addressed in the Welle campaign’s response to the FEC’s inquiry into the April 2018 Quarterly Report of Receipts and Disbursements were technicalities like a missing address or failing to allocate donations between the primary and general election campaigns.
But a closer look at Welle’s reports reveals potentially serious issues beyond missing addresses and the misapplication of donations between the primary and general election campaigns.
Despite spending tens of thousands of dollars with campaign compliance consultants, the FEC has issues with two of the three quarterly reports of the the Welle campaign has filed. The third report was filed only 10 days ago and yet may be questioned by federal officials. In addition to the quarterly reports, the FEC flagged Welle’s pre-primary report. That’s three flags out of four reports.
Most concerning, the FEC says Welle has not disclosed the purpose of campaign funds paid to him personally. Funds paid personally to the candidate that have been disclosed include rent, food, fuel, photography, communications consulting and digital consulting.
Also very concerning is the campaign’s payroll disclosures. The campaign appropriately lists the names and payment amounts to several staffers. What is troubling, is additional disbursements of ten of thousands of dollars to the payroll service, PayChex, which do not disclose the name of the employee paid.
The FEC has instructed the campaign to disclose who has been paid via PayChex.
Why the Welle campaign is paying some employees directly while paying secret employees through PayChex should also be explained.
On October 21, Welle’s campaign treasurer , Larry Fox, told the FEC that he needed until November 1 to explain the the personal disbursements to Welle and to disclose who is getting paid by the campaign via PayChex.
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past time for NJ to wake up and admit how disingenuous, elitist, and hypocritical Dems really are: rules apply to everyone but them, because only they know best how to spend out money and run all aspects of our lives.. we see it over and over, yet they keep voting for these money- grabbing phonies. It is very disheartening- maybe it has gotten bad enough, for voters on all levels, to give the other side a chance to improve things…
hopefully this new kid Chris Smith will provide a fresh face with reasonable ideas. Voters should give Smith a chance.
But hey, in a town of old dinosaurs who do nothing but worry about what committee they get to chair , while they do little but kick cans down the road, fail to act on issues like our immigration disasters, and often manage to grab more of our money, at least we know one “ kid” actually addresses important human problems in an honest, ethical manner! Hoping for another big Smith win, and that the Dems will learn they bet on the wrong little socialist, here in NJ CD 4.