Challenger questions assemblyman’s loan

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 | 9:43 a.m.

The Democrat challenging Assemblyman Chad Christensen, R-Las Vegas, in November, has filed a complaint with the secretary of state's office saying that Christensen's campaign gave Christensen a $3,500 interest-free loan in January that he didn't pay off until Aug. 26.

Democrat Justin Jones in the filing Wednesday said Christensen has a pattern of failing to detail his campaign expenses, including the $3,500 loan.

Christensen was fined $4,500 earlier this year for failing to detail his campaign expenses in a January report. Christensen hired an accountant and promised the errors were due to a staff member's mistakes.

"What the law says is you have to specify any expenses that are made, and it also prohibits the use of contributions for personal use," Jones said. "Giving yourself an eight-month interest-free loan, in my opinion, is personal use."

Christensen also listed $3,027 in travel expenses. Christensen said he took a trip to Carson City for caucus business. But even if that trip cost $1,000, Christensen would have had to drive about 5,400 miles to account for the rest of the travel money, Jones said.

Assembly District 13 is larger than usual, but that's a huge amount of miles, he said.

Christensen said he originally gave himself the $3,500 loan because he was setting up a campaign office and thought it would be easy to keep the money as petty cash so he didn't have to reimburse himself as he purchased supplies.

"In the past, I had been the one coughing up the money for everything," he said. "I put it in there so we could take care of our expenses on everything we had going."

Sometime after he hired the accountant in February, Christensen said, he was advised to reimburse the campaign for the $3,500 and begin buying each office purchase separately.

The money, he said, remained in his personal account until he returned it in August.

Christensen said he did not use it for personal reasons and was not sure exactly when the accountant advised him to return the money, saying the accountant has been working with him on how to finance the campaign "from March all the way through August, just kind of defining how this would get done."

Christensen said he has amassed travel expenses because he lives in a large district and is putting in time shaking hands all over, from Indian Springs to Sandy Valley. He also made the trip to Carson City.

"The bulk of that was for my pretty much nine months of driving the district," Christensen said. "I know he's not out there working the district like I am, so maybe that's kind of hard for him to understand."

The secretary of state's office has not yet responded to the complaint.

In all, according to their reports, Christensen raised $47,000 and spent $105,662; Jones raised $100,000 and spent $28,240.