Senate Candidate Dudley Fined $100 for Campaign Violation

A three-judge panel on Monday fined Senate District 20 Republican candidate Mike Dudley $100 for violating state law during his campaign.

Thomas A. Rees, a former Minnesota Republican legislator, of New Market Township filed the complaint in August. Rees said Dudley violated state law when he didn’t include a disclaimer on campaign material stating who paid for the material, according to the complaint filed with the Minnesota Office of Administrative hearings.

According to the panel's conclusion:

The panel concludes that the Complainant has established by a preponderance of the evidence that Respondents failed to put a disclaimer on campaign material identifying who prepared and paid for the material in violation of Minn. Stat. § 211B.04. The Panel concludes further that a civil penalty of $100 is appropriate.   

Dudley, who faces DFLer Kevin Dahle on the Nov. 6 ballot, sent Patch this statement after the ruling:

Today a three-judge panel from the Office of Administrative Hearings found that a piece of campaign literature produced by my campaign for the August Republican primary did not meet the letter of the disclosure law requiring a disclaimer on campaign literature. Based on the small penalty handed down ($100) by the three-judge panel, they appear to agree with my assessment that this was a minor technical mistake.

The administrative judge's order noted: “the violation was at most negligent on Respondents’ part and had little, if any, adverse effect on the primary election.” They also noted that “Mr. Dudley made appropriate efforts to promptly correct the mistake.”

As the candidate I am ultimately responsible for everything involved in my campaign. I have indicated in a previous press release, this error was an inadvertent mistake by our small volunteer team, was self-reported by me as soon as I became aware that it was a mistake and that I promptly attempted to correct the mistake. I'm proud of our team of volunteers, but we are all very new to this process and we feel truly bad about this mistake. We will be vigilant on these requirements going forward, and have been carefully checking all of our campaign’s advertisements to make sure that the appropriate disclaimers appear.

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