'It's Odd': Colyer Ran for Congress Years Ago. His Campaign Still Owes Him $240,000
Long before Jeff Colyer became governor of Kansas, he tried to make it to Congress.
And even though he's abandoned those efforts, the most recent federal campaign finance filings show Colyer still has nearly $240,000 of debt in his congressional campaign committee fund — outstanding loans that he made to his own campaign more than a decade ago that the campaign has never paid back.
“I think it looks terrible,” said Richard W. Painter, who served as chief ethics counsel for former President George W. Bush and is now running as a Democrat for a U.S. Senate seat. "Why not just close the books and write off the debt?"
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Campaign finance experts said the outstanding debt raises questions.
“It’s odd,” said Brendan Fischer, who is director of the federal reform program at the Campaign Legal Center and who focuses on campaign finance. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t have just forgiven his loans as opposed to continuing to file reports for years showing the same outstanding loans.”