Over the past few weeks, the Virginia House Democratic Caucus has launched a new fundraising pitch to recoup resources after spending over one million dollars on legal bills since the 2017 legislative elections. House Democrats were involved in four recount battles, including one in the Newport News-based 94th House District in which Republican Delegate David Yancey and Democratic challenger Shelley Simonds both gardened exactly 11,608 votes each.
The Daily Press reports that other than the $80,000 in checks the caucus wrote to two law firms on March 8, which were reported in financial recordings, the loan schedule reveals a much higher amount of money that is owed from fighting the results from four legislative elections. The unpaid bills from Virginia House Democratic Caucus to law firms now exceed $791,000.
Trevor Southerland, executive director of the caucus, says that adding in the additional bills that have been forwarded to the Democrats since the March 31 closing date for the most recent campaign finance filings, show that the total amount is now around $1,009,000.
According to a campaign finance report from the Virginia Department of Elections, the caucus owes Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie $760,259.18. Interestingly enough, Perkins Coie, on January 9, 2018, donated $137,281 to the Virginia House Democratic Caucus, per a report from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP).
When the Republican side of the aisle was asked for its total, Parker Slaybaugh, communications director for Speaker of the House Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights), said that the expected amount from the GOP is around 20 percent of what the Democratic caucus spent. Furthermore, he hinted at which caucus spends money more carefully, noting that the legal representation for the Republican was victorious.
“While we have not finalized our billing for legal costs associated with the recounts, we do expect our total bill to be around two-tenths of what the Democrats are claiming to have spent,” Slaybaugh said in a press release. He added, taking a shot at Democratic caucus, “If they spent more than a million bucks to be that wrong on every legal argument, the last thing we want to do is put them in charge of state government.”
