‘Baseless’: GOP Secretary of State candidate responds to illegal campaign contribution accusation

The Republican candidate for secretary of state is responding to accusations of illegal campaign contributions.

Former Republican secretary of state candidate David Shelton filed a complaint against Max Engling, alleging Engling took a $60,000 campaign contribution from Hoosier Leadership for America.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle reports Hoosier Leadership for America is a dark money group associated with U.S. Sen. Jim Banks. And the large contribution was well over the $5,000 limit for donations from corporations.

That complaint was quickly picked up by Democratic secretary of state candidate Beau Bayh, who noted that Engling would be responsible for overseeing campaign finance reporting for Indiana in that position.

In a statement, Bayh said “How can we trust him to enforce the law if he can’t follow it himself?”

‘Baseless’

In a statement to WFYI, Engling’s campaign called the accusation “baseless on the merits” and noted the donation had already been returned.

And as the Capital Chronicle reports, the Engling campaign said it had already returned all of that money before the complaint was filed Friday by Shelton, the Knox County Clerk, who finished second to Engling in seeking the Republican nomination during last month’s state party convention.

The $60,000 contribution was received on June 30. The Engling campaign said it was refunded on July 14 after being flagged during an internal review. The return will appear on the next report due in October.

“We determined its entity type was unclear and thus refunded out of an abundance of caution. The donation was made via wire. Once a wire is made, we can’t stop it,” campaign spokeswoman Chloe Anagnos told the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Hoosier Leadership for America is registered with the state as a nonprofit corporation with a post office box address in the Allen County community of Huntertown.

Shelton said in the complaint that Engling wrongly recorded the Hoosier Leadership for America contribution as coming from a non-corporate source.

“Hoosier Leadership for America, Inc. has never registered as a political committee with the Election Division or the Federal Election Commission,” Shelton’s complaint said. “Any contention by (Hoosier Leadership) that it is not subject to the corporate contribution limit is therefore an admission that it operated as an unregistered political action committee — a status that would require it to register with the Election Division and publicly disclose all of its donors, past and present.”

The ad-tracking firm AdImpact reported Hoosier Leadership for America spent $5.2 million on broadcast advertising during this year’s primary campaign against Republican state senators who opposed President Donald Trump’s demands for Indiana congressional redistricting.

Hoosier Leadership’s status as a nonprofit organization allows it to keep the sources of its money secret, which is why such groups are commonly referred to as dark-money groups.