Wilson’s campaign left $134K off previous filings

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s attorney general amended his campaign filings Friday to account for $134,000 in donations and expenses previously unreported on disclosures surrounding his 2010 election win.

Alan Wilson’s campaign chairman attributed the 68 donations and 16 payments to human error.

“They were all simple clerical or scrivener’s errors, and they have all been corrected,” said Thad Westbrook. “The individuals who made those errors are no longer involved with the campaign’s disclosures. Today, new systems are in place safeguarding against such mistakes.”

The 59 checks and nine online donations that came in after Wilson won the office totaled $66,890, ranging from $5 to the $3,500-per-campaign-cycle limit for statewide candidates. The payments totaled $66,797, more than 80 percent of them to two vendors for television production and consulting, according to the information provided by the campaign.

The corrected reports were filed online four weeks after the unreported donations were discovered.

The first-term Republican attorney general, responding to a report in the Free Times, said he would return money that House Speaker Bobby Harrell gave for Wilson’s Jan. 11 gala. However, while Harrell’s online filings listed his $3,500 sponsorship, Wilson’s did not.

Westbrook initially estimated that 10 to 15 donations were mistakenly unreported. That number represented other sponsors for Wilson’s inaugural gala that were unaccounted for in his online filings.

An independent accountant Wilson’s campaign hired to review his account found many more mistakes. Eighty percent of the unreported donations were deposited in the bank on two days, Jan. 6 and Jan. 14. Five donations totaling $7,600 were deposited in late 2010.