Chabot's campaign payments to son-in-law prompt federal elections complaint
Hamilton County Democrats are accusing Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot of improper campaign spending related to work Chabot's son-in-law did for Chabot's Congressional campaign – a move that comes one week after his Democratic opponent came under fire for campaign spending of his own.
Hamilton County Democratic Party Co-Chairwoman Connie Pillich Monday filed a federal elections complaint against Chabot. In it, she says Chabot paid his son-in-law's firm, Right Turn Design, more than $177,000 over the past six years for building and maintaining SteveChabot.com and work on a WinNovember PAC website. The latter says "coming soon."
Chabot's Congressional Campaign paid Right Turn Design $138,756 between January 2011 and May 2018. Chabot's leadershipPAC,WinNovember, paid Right Turn Design $35,866 between April 2012 and January 2015. WinNovember is not currently a working website.
Pillich says that work should have cost no more than $33,000, citing an assessment by Duffy P. Weber of Cincinnati-based Weber Consulting that is attached to the complaint.
Federal Election Commission regulations state that candidates may not pay family members for services at a rate above fair market value.
The Enquirer, part of the USA Today Network, reported last November that Chabot's campaign paid Right Turn Design paid more than $150,000 for website design and other Internet services since 2011. The story also ran in USA Today.
"The point is, even after USA Today exposed this, Chabot continued to make payments to his son-in-law's company," Pillich said, "You shouldn't be using campaign funds to unjustly enrich your family. That is what happened here. This shows a brazen and callous disregard of the law."
Chabot campaign: 'Nice try, Aftab.'
Chabot's campaign spokesman Cody Rizzuto dismissed the complaint as a distraction.
"This is nothing more than a desperate, and quite frankly pathetic, attempt to distract from what Aftab knows is coming very soon," Rizzuto said in the statement. "Aftab is keenly aware he is going to be the subject of very real and very serious charges for potential criminal activity that could result in actual jail time. This so-called complaint cites no evidence of wrongdoing. It's nothing more than a press release disguised as an FEC complaint. Nice try, Aftab."
Violations of campaign finance law can lead to serious penalties such as fines and even jail time.
More:Pureval has gained on Chabot in the minds of some experts. One sees race as a toss-up
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Chabot, R-Westwood, is facing a tough congressional race against Pureval, Hamilton County Clerk of Courts. Pureval last week filed a clerk of courts campaign finance report showing $30,000 in spending on what he says were clerk race expenses, despite the fact that the race is two years away and Pureval has not said he would seek re-election if he did not win the congressional seat.
Publicly available campaign finance reports appear to show Pureval used his clerk of courts campaign account for expenses in his federal congressional race, including for polling and photography Using a county account in a federal race could be a violation of election laws, because the rules for each are different.
Money comes from donors, not taxpayer
Kevin Bischof, who married Chabot’s daughter Erica in 2006, runs the consulting firm. On his LinkedIn page, Bischof says he started the company in 2010 as “a premier new media partner for conservative campaigns and organizations.”
Chabot, a Westwood Republican, began using Right Turn Design soon after Bischof launched the firm.
Last year good government advocates told The Enquirer that the payments smack of nepotism and self-dealing, it’s also perfectly legal and quite common. The money comes from donors, not taxpayers.
“The rules allow candidates to engage in these kinds of self-dealing transactions,” Meredith McGehee, chief of policy at Issue One, a nonprofit group that advocates for stronger ethics and campaign finance rules, told The Enquirer last year. She said lawmakers’ campaigns are often “a family and friends affair.”
A USA TODAY investigation in 2013 found that 32 lawmakers had hired relatives to work for their campaigns — paying out more than $2 million in campaign money, during the 2012 election cycle, to children, spouses, parents, and in-laws for a gamut of different jobs. The rules say family members can be paid for campaign work as long as they're qualified and are paid market rate.
The complaint asks the FEC to make that determination.
Bischof did not return a call for comment Monday night.
In addition to the FEC complaint, there are two other ethics complaints against Chabot -- a complaint filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics for Chabot's use of taxpayer-funded congressional images on his campaign website, and a complaint filed for a fundraising invitation that used official titles on the invite.
"This is a pattern of practice that Chabot has not been held accountable for," Pillich said.
Reporter Dierdre Shesgreen contributed.