2020 presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke paid a substantial amount of campaign money through the years to himself or his wife with a web development company either he or his wife owned. Although it’s not against the law, finance experts frown upon it as a form of “self-dealing.”
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke paid roughly $110,000 in campaign funds to a web development company while either he or his wife owned it, public records show.
Beto for Texas paid Stanton Street Technology Group $58,544 during the 2011-12 election cycle, $39,060 during the 2013-14 cycle, $9,290 in the 2015-16 cycle and $32,778 during the 2017-18 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Either O’Rourke or his wife owned Stanton Street — a small web development firm that O’Rourke founded in 1998 — during the vast majority of those payments. Such payments are legal, so long as the campaign is charged for the actual cost of the services, but ethics watchdogs have criticized the practice as a form of self-dealing.
O’Rourke’s wife, Amy Sanders O’Rourke, took over Stanton Street as the Texas Democrat entered Congress in January 2013. She controlled it until early 2017.
Amy O’Rourke sold her stake in the company on March 31, 2017, according to Beto O’Rourke’s 2017 year-end financial disclosure report. He listed the sale value in the $100,001 to $1 million range.
Beto O’Rourke reported between $100,000 and $1 million in income from the sale of his wife’s stock in Stanton Street Technology, a firm paid by Beto’s congressional campaigns. (Photo courtesy of: Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives)
Stanton Street publicly announced the sale more than two months after the fact in a June 2017 blog post that listed CEO Brian Wancho as Amy O’Rourke’s buyer.
“Amy will continue to be involved with the company during the transition,” read the blog post. “She plans to spend more time on local initiatives in addition to joining her husband, Senate Candidate and current U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke, on the campaign trail.”
Amy Sanders O’Rourke, wife of Beto O’Rourke, listens to her husband. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Beto O’Rourke doubled as both candidate and treasurer during his first congressional campaign in 2011 and 2012, according to FEC records.
Beto for Texas paid the candidate’s own business for services including “consulting” and “social media” during that time, FEC records show.
Photo credit: Federal Election Commission (FEC)
Photo credit: Screenshot/Federal Election Commission
Stanton Street declined to make Wancho available for an interview, but Wancho agreed to answer questions via email.
Source: Daily Caller
