John Foust is utilizing loans to his campaign as a means to claim a fundraising(fundborrowing) advantage over his 10th District Rival Barbara Comstock. As explained three weeks ago, for the second quarter of funds actually raised, Comstock outraised Foust. Much of Foust’s cash on hand advantage, and fundborrowing advantage comes from these borrowed funds.
But the Federal Election Commission does not let candidates simply state a number of dollars borrowed without an explanation.
According to the RFAI sent to the Foust campaign August 14th:
“Schedule C of your report fails to include information required by Commission Regulations. With every report submitted, you must provide the date incurred, the original source and amount of the loan, the due date, the interest rate, the cumulative payment, and the outstanding balance. In addition, if there are any endorsers or guarantors, their mailing address, along with the name of their employer and occupation, must be disclosed.”
Most of these items have been reported, and this could be considered a technicality as only the due date appears to be missing.
In reality, Foust has loaned his campaign $400,000.00 from his own personal funds with a 0% interest rate, and the most recent loan, without a due date.
Why loan himself personal funds?
If these funds are not intended to be repaid he should have reported them as contributions and could arguably claim he “raised” the funds.
Foust claims he has more than $1,000,000.00 cash on hand as of the end of the second quarter. The only logical reason to borrow this much money from yourself without a realistic due date is to artificially increase your cash on hand and misstate your fundraising totals in a press release.
Does anyone realistically expect Foust to be more transparent with federal budgeting than he is with his own campaign?
