Clerk candidate fined for campaign finance report; calls it an effort to ‘defraud’ her campaign
Abby Myers, one of two Republicans running for county clerk, says she was trying to follow campaign finance laws. Election Board chastises her for not listening to local election office and moving on.
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CLERK CANDIDATE FINED FOR CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORT; CALLS IT AN EFFORT TO ‘DEFRAUD’ HER CAMPAIGN
A candidate running for Tippecanoe County clerk was ordered to pay a fine for a discrepancy flagged in a required campaign finance report – something Election Board members chastised her for fighting rather than simply making a correction and moving on when the problem was pointed out.
Abby Myers – one of three candidates running for a position that oversees elections in Tippecanoe County – told Election Board members Thursday that state campaign finance law, backed by interpretations from the Indiana Election Division, showed she’d done nothing wrong.
Myers argued during a hearing Thursday morning that she believed the scrutiny of her 2025 annual campaign finance report was politically motivated and meant to undercut her campaign by supporters of her GOP primary opponent, Carrie Sanders.
“This is one of the main reasons that I chose to speak up, because I feel like this was done on purpose to defraud my campaign,” Myers said.
Election Board members, acknowledging what they called a technical argument from Myers, found that she was in violation. They knocked down an accumulation of daily fines that had added up to $100 – the maximum allowed under local rules – to $50. But they indicated they remained frustrated by a situation they thought could have been handled before escalating to a formal hearing.
“As a potential, future clerk, you’re going to deal with these issues all the time,” Bob Reiling, a former Republican member of the Election Board called in to oversee the hearing, told Myers. “And I’m a little concerned that you’re going to become someone who over-analyzes things and becomes more of a technician and doesn’t deal with reality.”
The dispute came to a head less than a week before early voting is scheduled to start, on Tuesday, April 7. Myers and Sanders, both members of the county clerk’s staff, are vying in the May 5 primary for the Republican nomination. The winner will face Karan Benner, who is running as a Democrat.
