DES MOINES, Iowa — Both Melissa Vine's campaign and her former campaign manager will pay $500 for an ethics violation, the Iowa Ethics Campaign and Disclosure Board has determined.
Vine, a Democratic candidate for Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, fired campaign manager Lou McDonald earlier this month after the Iowa Unity Coalition filed an ethics complaint claiming her campaign submitted fraudulent votes to win its endorsement. The total $1,000 fine is the maximum the board could impose.
The Vine campaign submitted over 100 attempted contributions towards an endorsement from the Iowa Unity Coalition. Over 40 of those actually went through.
Investigators also have proof that each of the contributions had different names, but the same payment information and same address. A Thursday hearing revealed the credit card attached to those transactions was McDonald's.
The board's executive director, Zach Goodrich, spoke with Local 5 about the need for answers on May 16.
"If you're the one giving money to a campaign, you have to say who it is in the interest of public transparency and just being honest at the end of the day," Goodrich said. "So, it appeared based on the evidence provided, that it maybe wasn't these people actually giving the money, but again we haven't gotten to the bottom of that."
Generally, the Campaign and Disclosure Board does not have jurisdiction to investigate candidates running at a federal level. But since this case involves a federal candidate allegedly making donations to an Iowa organization, that gives the state board jurisdiction to investigate.
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