John Kavanagh AZ Senate Candidate LD23 May Have Committed A Felony

John Kavanagh "cops" to quid pro quo aka Something for Something

Cross posted from the Arizona Eagletarian 
During Tuesday night's Tea Party forum in Fountain Hills, the question came from the audience. Somebody wanted to know about each candidate's major campaign donors. It was a showdown between LD23 candidates for the Arizona Senate, Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Private Prison Industry), and his challenger Paula Pennypacker D-Scottsdale.

Kavanagh answered first and was apparently quite animated, proud of what he had done for a (NON LD23) citizen intervening with the Arizona Department of Revenue so that a "cigarette distributor" would no longer be required to pay for tax stamps up front.
Well the grateful "cigarette distributor" was really an online firearms dealer, Brad DeSaye, owner of J&G Sales in Prescott.

While writing last night's blog post, I discovered that Kavanagh told the forum audience on Tuesday night that he had intervened with the Arizona Department of Revenue on behalf of "the cigarette distributor" whose small business would have failed if Kavanagh had not intervened.

Kavanagh did not name names but did say he had only received ONE donation of $2,000 from an individual. That made it easy to determine that he must have been referring to DeSaye. But in his campaign finance report, Kavanagh failed to fully identify DeSaye.

16-924 A. Unless another penalty is specifically prescribed in this title, if the filing officer for campaign finance reports designated pursuant to section 16-916, subsection A has reasonable cause to believe that a person is violating any provision of this title, except for violations of chapter 6, article 2, the secretary of state shall notify the attorney general for a violation regarding a statewide office or the legislature, the county officer in charge of elections shall notify the county attorney for that county for a violation regarding a county office or the city or town clerk shall notify the city or town attorney for a violation regarding a city or town office. The attorney general, county attorney or city or town attorney, as appropriate, may serve on the person an order requiring compliance with that provision. The order shall state with reasonable particularity the nature of the violation and shall require compliance within twenty days from the date of issuance of the order. (emphasis mine)

16-915. Contents of campaign finance reportsA. Each campaign finance report required by section 16-913 shall set forth all of the following: ...
3. The identification of each:
(a) Individual who makes any contribution during the period covered by the report and whose total contribution or contributions for that election have an aggregate amount exceeding fifty dollars together with the date and amount of the contributions, except as provided in subsection E of this section. Contributions of fifty dollars or less may be aggregated. ...

"Identification" is defined in 16-901.

12. "Identification" means:
(a) For an individual, his name and mailing address, his occupation and the name of his employer.

So from June 30, 2014 until now (so far), despite him having claimed that he updated his report, John Kavanagh was in violation of disclosure requirements on his campaign finance reports. He will, of course, claim it was just a clerical error. But when he is in apparent violation of ARS 13-2602 A. (a Class 4 felony) also, it hardly seems insignificant that he would fail to disclose the identification of the source of his $2,000.00 donation. Read More