Nine Phila. candidates late with finance filings

Nine Philadelphia candidates on Tuesday's primary election ballot are a week late filing reports on their campaign fund-raising and expenses - and one says it's part of his campaign strategy.

"It's going to be filed, but it's going to be filed at the last minute," said Lamont Thomas, a 39-year-old social worker challenging longtime City Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco. "I don't want to tip my hand, to give my opponent a clear idea of what I'm doing and what I'm not doing."

The campaign-finance reports were due last Friday with both the City Commissioners Office, which keeps paper records, and the city Board of Ethics, which requires computerized filings and puts the information onto a Records Department website, https://phila-records.com/campaign-finance/web/

Until the reports are filed, there's no way for the general public, opposing candidates, or the media to know who's bankrolling the candidates or how they're spending the money they collect.

Besides Thomas, the late filers are four Democratic candidates for Traffic Court, Robert Tuerk, Frederic Mari, Michael Horsey, and John Adams; two at-large Council candidates, Humberto Perez and Michael Jones, both Democrats; an unopposed Republican candidate in the Northeast's Sixth District, Sandra Stewart; and one of the three Democratic candidates for sheriff, Jacque Whaumbush.

The candidates for Traffic Court were required to file only with the commissioners, not the Ethics Board.

Whaumbush, a former deputy sheriff making his third run for the elective job, said Thursday that his campaign accountant had been out of town. He said his report would be filed Friday.

Tuerk, a 48-year-old lawyer, said he had been campaigning flat-out for three months, "a grassroots, almost one-man show," and had overlooked the campaign-finance reporting requirement.

"We're neophytes," Tuerk said. "I've raised about $800 and spent about $1,000, some of my own money. . . . There's nothing to hide, and I intend to file as quickly as possible."

Horsey, 62, a former state House member who was chronically overdue on campaign-finance reports in his 10-year legislative career, said Thursday that he didn't think he had to file reports on his Traffic Court race, because he was financing it himself.

"I intend to file one, but I wasn't sure of the law in terms of the need for me to do that, since I was spending my own money," Horsey said. "That was never made clear to me."

The other nonfilers - Mari, Adams, Perez, Jones, and Stewart - could not be reached for comment Thursday.

At the Ethics Board's monthly meeting Wednesday, Executive Director Shane Creamer said that in addition to candidates' failing to file reports, roughly 200 political action committees, many from outside the city and state, had made donations to Philadelphia candidates without filing reports on how the PACs raised the money. They will be contacted by mail and asked to file, Creamer said.

Thomas said he was prepared to pay the city's fines - $20 a day to the commissioners and $250 a day to the Board of Ethics.

"I'm more than willing to pay the fine, but I don't want to give my adversary any opportunity to do more damage than they've already done," Thomas said. "I do respect the law, but I'm really trying to win."

He alleged that his campaign had been the victim of "different moles in the organization" who had attended Thomas' strategy sessions and reported back to Tasco, or had promised to distribute his campaign literature and then dumped it.

"Right now, they're trying to figure out how much money I'm going to have on election day," Thomas said. "I don't like people to think that I'm not following the law, but this is what I think I have to do."