A Delaware Department of Elections report asserts Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long has broken several state campaign finance laws since 2016.
The report - produced by former Philadelphia FBI chief Jeffrey Lampinski - found multiple discrepancies in an independent audit reported by the campaign last year.
As first reported by AP and WHYY, the report concludes that even after being amended in December, campaign reports for 2016 through 2023 still have not disclosed $91,000 in payments to Dana Long, who had been his wife’s campaign treasurer and wrote 112 checks to himself, and one to his wife, all of which should have been reported as campaign expenditures. But 109 of those checks were never reported in initial finance reports, and the other four, payable to Dana Long, were reported as being made to someone else.
In a statement Hall-Long says her family loaned the campaign more money than they have been reimbursed, and have forgiven that balance, “contrary to” Lampinski’s report.
Hall-Long says she has been working with the Department of Elections on a confidential process to amend previous reports, claiming they have addressed bookkeeping discrepancies “head on.”
But New Castle County Executive and one of Hall-Long’s Democratic opponents for governor Matt Meyer says the Lt. Gov. must take responsibility.
“Her corruption is astounding,” Meyer said. “Using campaign dollars to pay off personal credit cards, falsifying campaign documents, illegally taking money from the campaign, and lying about conducting an audit.”
Hall-Long’s other Democratic opponent Collin O’Mara expressed concerns over what this means for building trust in government, calling for more transparency everywhere.
“The culture of secrecy, the lack of transparency, is destroying confidence in government in Delaware and in other parts of the country,” O’Mara said. “I think the disappointing thing is that they hired one of the best forensic analysts in the country, one of the great leaders of the FBI, and then he comes back with findings and they basically disregard the findings, kind of on technicalities with the law.”
O’Mara says an independent council should be appointed to review evidence, and determine if charges can be brought.
But State Attorney General Kathy Jennings' office confirms she agrees with State Elections Commissioner Anthony Albence’s decision not to refer the matter for charges.
In a statement, Jennings says the code’s definition of a crime is “too narrow to prosecute,” but adding the report “an indictment of the campaign finance code itself.”
Jennings explains that Delaware’s code does not contain a criminal statute that adequately describes the campaign’s actions in light of the State’s extremely high burden of proof. The AG says a defense attorney could easily attribute the committee’s errors to carelessness, rather than intentional malice.
Jennings says the code begs for reform, noting Delaware’s campaign finance laws are too unclear.
“Mr. Lampinski’s analysis reveals critical failures in a campaign committee’s financial structures and official explanations from that campaign that do not survive scrutiny,” Jennings says. “My office will be working to recommend reforms to the General Assembly that would seal these gaps and enable the kind of accountability that warrants the public’s trust in our campaign finance rules."
O’Mara joined Jennings in suggesting there’s a larger issue to address.
“We need to massively rewrite our campaign finance laws,” O’Mara said. “Because if Delaware officials believe after reading that report that there is nothing they can do about it under Delaware law, which I disagree with, if that is their believe, then the laws, the words in those sections of code aren’t worth the paper that they’re written on.”
Meyer argues that Delaware's existing campaign finance laws only work when Delawareans running for office are "ethical."
"If an elected official can so brazenly break the law for a decade and so openly work to cover up her crimes, and we do not prosecute, what's the point of having these laws in the first place?" Meyer said. "Based on the facts that I know, choosing not to access any punishment or prosecution is a clear message to individuals running for office and elected officials that they can brazenly ignore the law and get away with it."
Republican candidate for governor, House Minority Leader Mike Ramone, issued a statement Friday.
"Like most Delawareans, I'm disappointed by constant political infighting," Ramone says. "That's why our campaign is staying focused on the issues that matter most in our state."
State Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton not only called on Hall-Long to withdraw from the race, but to resign office immediately.
“This is not the behavior of someone who is fit to run for office, let alone fit to lead our state as governor,” she said on X, formerly Twitter, Friday morning.
Former Democratic Party Chair Erik Raser-Schramm called on the party to rescind their endorsement of Hall-Long. Raser-Schramm stepped down as chair in 2020 to join Meyer’s administration in New Castle County government as Deputy Chief Administrative Officer.
“Our party has an obligation to our members and to the citizens of Delaware to ensure that our candidates reflect values of integrity and transparency,” Raser-Schramm says. “As a party, we should not support candidates who break the rules and the law. Lt. Gov. Hall-Long’s actions have undermined these principles and have cast a shadow over our party’s commitment to those values.”
The Delaware Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Delaware State Education Association, which also endorsed Hall-Long for governor, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
