By Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s reelection campaign has come under fire after it was revealed that the Ohio Senator accepted donations from a dead person. An investigation by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office uncovered that Brown’s campaign, Friends of Sherrod Brown, received at least two contributions in May 2024 from Carol Ann Baker, a woman who had passed away months earlier in December 2023, reports The New York Post.
The senator, who’s in a tough fight for reelection, is now being investigated for violating campaign finance laws.
The case was initiated after a complaint prompted Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose to conduct a preliminary investigation. As part of this inquiry, LaRose’s office obtained a signed affidavit from Baker’s widower, confirming her death. Given that Brown’s campaign committee is a federal entity, LaRose’s office referred the case to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in August 2024 for further investigation.
Huan Yi, the head of investigations at the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, emphasized the importance of electoral integrity in his referral to the FEC. In his statement, Yi asserted, “Ohioans deserve absolute confidence in their elections,” and noted that the purpose of the referral was to investigate potential violations of federal law.
The discovery has already sparked a political firestorm. Brown’s Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno, seized on the controversy, with his press director, Reagan McCarthy, sharply criticizing Brown. “Brown’s scheme to fund his campaign with contributions from dead people isn’t just creepy, it’s illegal,” McCarthy told The Post. She further suggested that the situation warrants deeper scrutiny, questioning the extent of the alleged misconduct.
This incident comes as Brown, a Democrat, faces a closely watched reelection battle. While recent polls show him leading by five points, his seat is a prime target for Republicans looking to flip it in the upcoming November 2024 election.
Brown isn’t the only Democrat accused of taking shady donations to fund his campaign. In August, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares opened an investigation into the Democratic online fundraising platform, Act Blue.
ActBlue, he wrote, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations that “appear suspicious,” according to NBC 15. Some ActBlue donors, Miyares noted, are senior citizens who are retired or do not otherwise have employment.
“Taken together, these circumstances appear to indicate that contributions via Act Blue are being made from fictional donors or dummy accounts, or that information reported by or through ActBlue may be fraudulent,” Miyares warned. “Alternatively, these circumstances may indicate that contributions through ActBlue are being made without the reported donors’ consent or awareness.”
The “serious” accusations, he said, warrant a response from ActBlue within ten days. The attorney general requested the group provide “a detailed description of ActBlue’s processes and procedures for verifying the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information.”
Miyares’s letter came on the heels of growing momentum for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Politico recently reported that “Kamala Harris raked in $361 million last month, widening her cash advantage over Donald Trump with what the vice president’s campaign described as the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.
Harris’ haul nearly tripled the $130 million brought in by the former president during the same period, as the campaigns have turned toward the final fall finish. Harris’ campaign and other affiliated committees have $404 million in cash on hand and a $100 million advantage over Trump’s nearly $300 million war chest, according to figures released by both campaigns this week.”
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