Gov. Deal Paid Daughter-In-Law $1.5 Million For Campaign Work
Campaign finance reports are in. They show Gov. Nathan Deal paid his daughter-in-law’s fundraising firms roughly $1.5 million as part of his re-election campaign.
Overall, Deal’s campaign raised nearly $16 million. Of that, $1.5 million went to Denise Deal, the governor’s daughter-in-law. One of her fundraising firms netted more than $600,000 just in the days before and after the November election.
Georgia, like most other states, allows candidates to hire family members to do campaign work. But Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity says the amount paid here got his attention.
“What is fairly uncommon is when it gets into the seven-figure range. You just don’t see that day in and day out, campaign in and campaign out. It’s a very high number and one that definitely should raise a lot of eyebrows,” said Levinthal.
Denise Deal started her companies during Nathan Deal’s first run for governor. The campaign paid her tens of thousands of dollars during that run. After Deal won, several Republican lawmakers hired her companies to fundraise for them.
In 2010, the state ethics commission began investigating Deal’s campaign for improper spending. Among the expenses scrutinized were those paid to Denise Deal’s companies. In 2012, the commission dropped all major charges but fined the governor $3,350 for “technical defects” in his campaign filings. The decision came after a shake-up at the commission in which several ethics staffers claimed they were forced from their jobs due to political pressure. The staffers said it was due to their investigation into Deal’s campaign.
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