Republican Victor Marx fined $58K for campaign finance violations

Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for Colorado governor, was assessed a fine of $57,647 on Friday by the Colorado secretary of state’s office for accepting campaign contributions in excess of the legal limit.

The fine is believed to be the largest penalty ever assessed by the secretary of state’s Elections Division, which investigated complaints filed against Marx in May and June by Darcy Schoening, a former state GOP official and a persistent Marx critic.

“The scale of the violations are without precedent,” hearing officer Macon Cowles wrote in a 27-page decision in the case issued Friday.

Colorado’s campaign finance laws limit individual donors to a maximum of $1,450 in contributions to a candidate for governor. But Marx’s own campaign filings showed his campaign had accepted more than 200 prohibited contributions totaling over $83,000, with overages from some individual donors ranging into the multiple thousands of dollars.

Marx’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives of the campaign did not dispute the facts of the excess contributions in a multi-day hearing last month, instead asking Cowles for leniency and describing the campaign and its staff as “learn(ing) on the job.”

But Cowles found that the campaign had exhibited “a pattern of knowing indifference to constitutional prohibitions,” which included ignoring automatic warnings of overages generated by TRACER, the state’s campaign finance system, and failing to properly handle instances in which the campaign sought to “reattribute” excess contributions to spouses or other family members who are joint account holders with the excess contributors.

His decision also notes that the campaign kept the excess money throughout an “extremely close” Republican primary for governor. Marx won the GOP nomination in June after defeating his top rival, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, by fewer than 2,500 votes.

“The volume and duration of the violations, their continuation after notice, the knowing deposit of facially excessive checks, the disregard of TRACER’s warnings, the months-long retention of prohibited funds, the failure to document a single reattribution as the rule requires, and the mass of mistaken and amended reports are each aggravating factors,” wrote Cowles, adding that they “far outweighed” any mitigating factors in the campaign’s favor.

The fine levied against Marx was calculated based on a $100 penalty for each violation, an additional penalty amount equal to 10% of the prohibited activity, and a doubling of the combined total because of the aggravating factors.

Marx, a first-time candidate and ministry leader from Colorado Springs, is considered a heavy underdog in the race against the Democratic nominee for governor, Attorney General Phil Weiser. Colorado has elected only one Republican governor in the last 56 years, and Democrats are widely expected to gain ground in a favorable midterm election year.

He faces additional campaign finance complaints, also filed by Schoening, in relation to his solicitation of unlimited donations through an online merchandise store, a scheme that one campaign finance attorney described as “patently illegal.” Those complaints underwent an initial review by the Elections Division and are still pending.