Campaign Spending Commission files civil complaint against Luke campaign
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The State Campaign Spending Commission has filed a civil complaint against Sylvia Luke and her 2022 campaign for lieutenant governor, alleging mishandling of campaign funds and failing to accurately report contributions and expenditures.
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The complaint comes as Luke is already wrapped up in the state Attorney General’s public corruption bribery probe. Luke dropped her re-election campaign and put herself on leave after receiving a letter saying she was suspected of criminal conduct.
The commission complaint alleges eight counts of false reports and four counts of mishandling campaign funds in 2021 and 2022 by “Friends of Sylvia Luke.”
“There was an expectation that there was going to be a finding that there was quite a bit of sloppy record-keeping, although this to me seems like it goes a bit farther than what we were anticipating,” said HNN political analyst Colin Moore.
“It doesn’t look good overall because of who Sylvia Luke was, which is that she was head of the House Finance Committee and she was a numbers cruncher, and she would jump on people if they got their numbers wrong,” said retired federal public defender Alexander Silvert.
Silvert said political candidates are allowed to amend campaign spending reports to fix errors, adding that this is a common practice. However, it appears to go beyond that in the complaint.
“This recalls where these reports were inaccurate over time, and even though they were amended, they continued to be inaccurate,” said Silvert.
The commission said people who were not designated as the campaign treasurer handled funds and signed more than 200 checks.
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“It’s just a sustained failure of campaign finance controls, authorized signers, payments approved by people who may not have had authorization, multiple errors, and a lot of amendments that didn’t reconcile with the bank records,” said Moore.
The complaint does not say whether Luke was the influential lawmaker who accepted $35,000 as a bribe, which is under investigation by the state Attorney General.
“The A.G.’s investigation, which is ongoing, is completely different, although related to this. And that has to do with whether there was any criminal activity involved,” said Silvert.
The commission staff is recommending that Luke’s campaign pay $28,300 in fines. But if the commission finds the campaign acted knowingly or intentionally, it could decide to refer the complaint to the Attorney General for possible criminal prosecution.
“There just doesn’t seem to have been a lot of careful management of the lieutenant governor’s campaign finance receipts, which is pretty shocking, given how many times the lieutenant governor had run for office,” said Moore.
The commission is scheduled to take up the matter at its meeting next week Wednesday, but attorneys for Luke and her campaign are asking for a postponement until the A.G.’s investigation is resolved.
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