By Jason Smith
Oswego, NY – The New York State Democratic Committee is accusing Republican 25th Congressional District candidate Dale Sweetland of violating federal election law by failing to file financial disclosure forms by the August 28th deadline.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Sweetland's campaign was sent a notice on August 29th, saying they had missed the filing deadline. The notice says if the campaign fails to file the forms in four business days, civil penalties could follow. The disclosure forms were filed on September 2nd.
A statement released Wednesday morning by the Sweetland campaign fired back at Maffei, saying the error has been fixed and that this campaign needs to return to talk about issues.
"Our treasurer is a volunteer and he made an error regarding the filing date the disclosure was due. He took time this weekend to fix the error and the disclosure was submitted, albeit late," the statement reads.
"Unlike our opponent, who has a Washington D.C. firm filing his disclosures, we rely on volunteers. Sometimes mistakes are made, but in the end, we're proud of the work they do and the time they commit to this campaign," stated William Rapp, campaign manager for the Sweetland campaign.
Meanwhile, Democrats are challenging thousands of petition signatures filed by Green Populist Party candidate Howie Hawkins.
As a third party candidate, Hawkins needed 3,500 signatures to get on the ballot. Hawkins collected and filed more than 6,000 signatures.
A spokesman for Democrat Dan Maffei said many of the signatures collected were from people who aren't registered to vote. That would make the signatures invalid.
The state board of elections is expected to address the matter on Friday. Hawkins said he expected the challenge, which is why he collected nearly double the number of required signatures.