State Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa. Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
BY: DILLON ROSENBLATT | Arizona Mirror
It’s been 35 days since candidates for elected office were required to file their campaign finance reports to disclose campaign activity for the first three months of 2022, but state Rep. Michelle Udall still has not submitted her report.
Udall, who is seeking the Republican nomination for state schools superintendent, is the only candidate for statewide office this year that has failed to file a campaign report for the first quarter.
Each day the report is late, a $10 penalty is accrued for the candidate. After 15 days, the penalty increases to $25 per day. The fines cannot be paid by the campaign, either — payment must come out of the candidate’s own pocket.
Udall currently owes $650 for failing to file this report.
And she has a pattern of filing her reports late and accruing late fees. The Secretary of State’s Office told Arizona Mirror that Udall owes a total of $810 in penalties; that includes a fine for her 2021 report, which was filed 15 days late, and being one day late on a report due in January 2020.
Udall’s current report being 35 days past the deadline is not the longest she has gone without filing a report: She went 123 days without filing her 2018 pre-general election report and then was 45 days late for her fourth quarter report in the same election cycle. Those delayed reports accumulated fines of $2,850 and $900, respectively.
A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said it’s unclear if those fines were paid in full or waived.
