Campaign Funds Financed Wedding
Campaign Funds Financed Wedding
May 11, 2005Posted By weddings
More articles on the Weddings topic: Wedding News
State Senator John Ford of Memphis Tennessee defended his spending of campaign funds on his daughter's wedding. His reasoning? About one third of the people who attended live in his district.
He filed an affidavit with the Registry of Election finance stating he used the funds because he was aware other public officials had used campaign money to pay for a wedding anniversary celebration and also to buy cars for family members. So really what he is saying is "other people violate the rules, so I should be able to as well".
The Registry Board had decided in March 2005 to conduct a show cause hearing to look into Senator Ford's campaign spending. Ford faces a possible penalty of ten-thousand dollars for each instance of campaign spending deemed inappropriate. Ford did not even attend the hearing in person. The ammount of funding spent on the wedding is currently unknown, but is thought to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Ford is also under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, TennCare, a few other state agencies, and a Memphis grand jury on unrelated matters, such as his dealings with the state's health insurance program.
