Republican nominee for Colorado governor Victor Marx hit with record fine for illegal campaign donations

Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx has been ordered to pay nearly $58,000 for accepting illegal campaign contributions.

The hearing officer who issued the fine, Macon Cowles, says Marx took in 210 illegal donations between May and July totaling more than $83,000. He says the scale of the violations is without precedent and the fine could have been much higher.

The state constitution allows for fines of two to five times the amount of the illegal donations. Cowles was surprised the Elections Division sought lesser penalties under state law. Still, $58,000 appears to be the biggest fine in state history for campaign finance violations.

Cowles says the illegal donations spanned the entire run-up to the primary election, and he says Marx continued to accept them even after the Elections Division put him on notice.

State law caps individual campaign donations at $1,450.  Marx said he didn't know the limit, had refunded everyone and that the complaints were a "nothing burger."

Cowles says that's not true.

He wrote in his decision, "The record shows a pattern of knowing indifference to constitutional prohibitions," and said the campaign "produced a mass of reporting that neither the public nor the division could rely on as compliant, accurate and complete." He described "amendments on amendments across thousands of pages" of campaign finance reports.

Darcy Schoening, a Republican activist and Marx critic, alerted the Elections Division to violations in May and has filed more than a hundred complaints.

She says Marx won the primary election by cheating: "It's heartbreaking that he had this money in his account that he shouldn't have had in his account, spent it for his campaign, and then we see that he won by just over 2,000 votes. Money makes a difference in these elections, and if you can keep that illegal money and spend it through your election and then worry about it at a later time, then what's to stop these candidates from doing that." 

Cowles gave the campaign credit for disclosing the illegal donations and attempting to refund them. He ordered it to donate the money it was unable to return to a charity not associated with Marx.

Schoening says the campaign's filings for August and September show it's still accepting illegal contributions despite telling Cowles that it had policies in place to prevent them.

Attorneys for the Marx campaign and Elections Division have 20 days to challenge Cowles' decision. The Deputy Secretary of State has the final say regarding penalties.

Schoening has filed more complaints against the Marx campaign identifying dozens of additional violations. She predicts the campaign will face even bigger fines.