Arizona’s Attorney General, Tom Horne, issued a statement on Wednesday regarding his plea of no contest in the matter of a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge resulting from an accident in a parking garage while driving a car his mistress had borrowed. Horne says he agreed to pay a $300 fine.
FBI agents, who had been following the scandal plagued Horne witnessed the accident. They had been investigating him for campaign finance violations.
Horne still insists that he would have left a note if he had known he had hit another vehicle. However, the damage to the vehicle left many wondering how he could not have known that he hit it.
According to the results of the FBI’s investigation, Horne actively directed fundraising and communications strategy with Winn in the final weeks of his 2010 campaign for Attorney General. During this time period, they raised more than $500,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee and individual donors which paid for television advertisements advocating against Felicia Rotellini, Horne’s Democrat opponent.
State campaign-finance records show her committee raised large contributions in late October 2010 as Horne and Rotellini were running neck and neck, according to the Arizona Republic. The committee, headquartered at Winn’s Mesa address, raised $512,500 in nine days to fund anti-Rotellini TV ads through Nathan Sproul’s company, Lincoln Strategy Group. Sproul was fired by the NRCC in the last election cycle due to accusations of voter fraud.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery sent the hit and run case to the Phoenix Police Department for investigation, which raised questions about preferential treatment for Horne. Montgomery had decided not to pursue felony charges against Horne for the campaign finance violations.