After all, Sarah Beattie, the former employee who filed the complaint in May, was being represented by a Democrat Party operative. She alleged that she was hired to work on Horne’s campaign, and claimed that other Horne staffers did campaign work at work. While Horne’s campaign finance reports read like a who’s who in the AG’s office, he is trying to smear Beattie, because he has no real defense.
The Clean Election Commission is being asked to accept the recommendation of Clean Election Commission Executive Director, Tom Collins, and force Horne to repay more than $312,000 for salaries and use of office space.
In his Statement of Reason filing, Collins alleges that Horne “accepted contributions from the employees of the AGO Executive Office in terms of their compensated time and in-kind contributions of state resources including the use of the Executive Offices of the AGO for the purpose of securing his election to a second term as Arizona Attorney General.” The Complaint alleges that in-kind contributions in the form of goods, services and other resources were provided to Horne’s campaign through the activities of AGO Executive Office employees but were not reported in campaign finance reports.”
According to the filing, “By August 2013, the Horne Campaign was setting up a parallel organizational structure where the responsibilities of campaign staff reflected the Executive Office of the Attorney General’s Office, according to campaign documents provided by Sarah Beattie under subpoena.”
“For example, the campaign manager Margaret Dugan was the chief of staff for the Attorney General, the chief strategist Brett Mecum was the legislative liaison for the Attorney General, the spokeswoman for the campaign was the spokeswoman for the office. Kathleen Winn, director of community outreach, was the field organizer, while Debra Scordato, Home’s secretary in the AGO was in charge of scheduling and financial paper work. Sarah Beattie was responsible for fundraising. Garrett Archer was the “master of dark arts” and responsible for technology. Horne actively managed his own campaign,” according to the report.
Horne, according to Beattie, was directly told her employment was necessary through the election cycle and that he would take care of moving her position and getting her a raise. Both of those commitments were met and Beattie received both a raise and a reassignment for the purpose of keeping her working on the campaign. In her new position, Beattie testifies, she worked two hours a day on state work and the remainder on campaign related work.”
Collins found that, “Indeed, it is not clear that there were any actual volunteers in the Horne campaign. In an e-mail to campaign staff and Home, provided by Beattie under subpoena, spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham described the effort “[a]s a campaign of just ‘volunteers,'” indicating she was using the term sarcastically and asked “Who ARE our volunteers? I keep hearing about them but no idea who they are (except who attends meetings) or what they are wanting to do. Is there a list somewhere in case we needed to reach out to them on the fly?”
It appears that they were trying to hide the activity, they now claim is not problematic. “Grisham’s email complaint reflects concern about the nature of the campaign’s personnel’s employment,” wrote Collins. Horne, for example, recognizes that her (Grisham’s) complaints raised concerns. In response to the e-mail, Horne urged campaign personnel not to make their complaints in writing because “[w]ritten comments sometimes end up in bad places.”
Grisham is denying the claims against her and issued a statement Tuesday afternoon:
“It is crazy to me that Mr. Collins and the CCEC can make these findings without interviewing one person mentioned in the complaint. I and the others who have first-hand knowledge of the ‘alleged facts’ would relish the opportunity to show in detail how baseless the charges in this proposed finding are.
“Eleven witnesses gave statements showing that the charges were false. Collins chose to believe one and disbelieve eleven. This is utterly irrational. He is clearly seeking relevancy for his office.”
“The people named have stated numerous times that they worked more than 40 hours per week for the state, and volunteered for Horne on their own time.”
As the finding noted, “No campaign finance report for the periods covered by the Complaint identifies any campaign headquarters…”
Also named in Beattie’s complaint are Margaret Dugan, Horne’s chief of staff/campaign manager; Vanessa Deatherage, who works in community outreach; Brett Mecum, the AG’s legislative liaison; former policy advisor Garrett Archer; Kathleen Winn, director of community outreach who along with Horne is also the focus of a 2010 campaign-finance civil prosecution, and Debra Scordato, Horne’s executive assistant, according to the Arizona Republic.
Horne said there’s no basis for her charges, according to the East Valley Tribune. In an article in The Tribune, he claimed his agency “takes seriously the obligation to make sure that all employees work 40 hours per week on state work, or that if they don’t, their pay is reduced accordingly.” And Horne said that was enforced “with appropriate strictness” by supervisors “about which Beattie complained frequently and emotionally.”
The Capitol Times reported that “Horne’s most recent campaign finance report, filed on Jan. 31, shows expenses for consultants, vendors and pollsters, and also showed about $3,200 in reimbursement to seven Attorney General’s Office employees for campaign-related expenses, including Archer, Beattie, Dugan, Mecum and Scordato. But it listed no payroll expenses for campaign staff.”
For staffers like Grisham, and Mecum it is going to be tough to prove that they weren’t working on state time because they were essentially caught in the act. Grisham got into a texting war with Brnovich supporter ,Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, presumably during work hours, and Mecum, according to the filing by Collins, was creating his campaign “dream team” with AG staffers. Mecum was the staffer who recommended hiring Beattie.