Opps! Coburn Campaign Flunks Basic Finance

An audit by the Federal Election Commission has faulted Sen. Tom Coburn's 2004 senate campaign for accepting contributions that exceeded the legal limit and failing to file proper paperwork to account for donations of nearly $350,000.

The Tulsa World, which reported the story in Sunday's edition, said the audit found more than $22,000 in contributions from political action committees (PACs) that were above the legal limit. The campaign refunded this money, the audit said, but not within the required time limit. Auditors also found that about 18 percent of the campaign's contributions over $200 were not properly itemized.

The auditors said that inadequate staffing was the cause of the problems, the World reported. An FEC spokesman declined to comment on a possible fine for the Coburn campaign and Coburn declined to comment to the World's Washington reporter, Jim Myers.

In defense of Dr. Coburn, we at AltTulsa understand the problem of financial record-keeping. We're terrible at it too. We can barely balance a checkbook.

On the other hand, we might be a lot better at money matters if we were an old-fashioned financial conservative running for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma. We might also try a lot harder if we were accepting donations from our political friends and allies, especially when the totals run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So we're left wondering—as many Oklahoma voters must be—how the good doctor's campaign came to such a poor financial state.