Campaign Funds

Prince George's County Del. Tiffany Alston is facing new criminal charges after being accused Thursday of making the General Assembly pay the salary of an employee in her private law practice. Alston, a Democrat, was charged in September with misusing campaign funds to purchase, among other items, a wedding dress. The new charges were handed up Thursday by an Anne Arundel County grand jury after an investigation by Maryland's Office of the State Prosecutor. In the indictment, prosecutors allege that the delegate added the $100-a-day clerk position to her state office payroll in January.

Just what we need: another Baltimore mayor fixated on shoes. At least Otis Rolley, the former city planning director running for mayor, isn't waving a high heel in a threatening manner. Nor is he asking developers doing business with the city to buy him Jimmy Choos.  He'd like ordinary citizens to chip in for his footwear, in the form of campaign donations. "It's a very rare thing for me, but I need new shoes," the candidate writes in an email that includes a photo of some well-worn lace-ups.

The longtime treasurer to state Sen. Ulysses Currie sobbed in court Monday after an Anne Arundel County judge sentenced her to a year in jail for stealing more than $166,000 in campaign donations. Olivia Harris, 65, pleaded guilty to theft in February. Before she was sentenced, she asked the judge for leniency. "I'd like to apologize and say how sorry I am," she said. "I have, for all of my life, been an upstanding citizen. ... I'm remorseful for what I did. " State prosecutors opened a probe into Currie's campaign spending after a Baltimore Sun article raised questions about payments he made to a private law firm to defend him during a federal bribery investigation.

On a single day in January, a local developer used several corporations he controlled to contribute seven times the individual campaign donation limit to the eventual winner of the race for Baltimore County executive. As Election Day four years ago drew near, a prominent Washington attorney loaned half a million dollars to the candidate who would become governor. A decade ago, a candidate for mayor of Baltimore spent more than $4,000 in campaign funds on suits. Such moves might have raised eyebrows, but each was legal — revealing persistent loopholes in Maryland campaign finance law that have been exploited by candidates of both parties and all levels.

Julian Earl Jones Jr. is prepping for what he calls the "big blitz. " Jones is mobilizing volunteers from his primary bid for a Baltimore County Council seat that he lost by just 98 votes to Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver, the Democratic incumbent. He's using those workers and others to build support in his write-in campaign for the same seat — the type of campaign that almost never succeeds in Maryland. Most write-in candidates don't have enough money or name recognition to win. But Jones, a division chief in the Anne Arundel County Fire Department who placed a close second in a six-way primary race, has a good shot, said Donald F. Norris, who heads the department of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The ascendance of Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's tea party-backed candidate for the U.S. Senate, has women like me cringing like we haven't done since Sarah Palin arrived on the scene. Please, God. Not another ditz with baggage and a loopy belief system. Ms. O'Donnell — and the never-married 41-year-old might object to that courtesy title — was the surprise winner of the Republican nomination in our neighbor state, running with Ms. Palin's endorsement and on her platform of patriotic platitudes.

When the question came during the debate — and how could it not, given the Canton locale — Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy started her answer on the defensive. Without "blaming anyone else," an audience member asked, what happened in the Zach Sowers case? Sowers was a newlywed in 2007 when teenagers attacked and robbed him — one boy beating him into a coma steps from his Patterson Park home. He died 10 months later, the case saddening and then infuriating the neighborhood.

Incumbent officials might be in trouble with voters this year, but people who give money to Howard County candidates don't seem to have absorbed that message, judging by campaign finance reports filed last week. County Executive Ken Ulman, a Democrat running for a second term, collected seven times the amount Republican Trent Kittleman did since January, and Ulman has $713,424 on hand to Kittleman's $23,297, though she gamely insists the result in November will be "close. " "I know what wins, and it's votes," Kittleman said.

Baltimore state's attorney candidate Gregg Bernstein raised nearly five times as much money in campaign contributions as has incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy, giving him a strong financial edge over his opponent, according to election finance reports made available online Wednesday. Bernstein, a former federal prosecutor who has worked in private practice since 1991, has raised $217,870 since June and still has most of it in the bank. Jessamy has raised $46,004 and is down to about $38,000 after spending the campaign funds she had remaining from past years along with cash she brought in this summer.

The state prosecutor has been asked to investigate whether a powerful Maryland lawmaker improperly used his campaign account for personal purchases and other expenses unrelated to his candidacy. The Maryland Board of Elections requested an investigation of Sen. Ulysses Currie, a Prince George's County Democrat who chairs the Budget and Taxation Committee. The elections board is not satisfied with the campaign's explanation for $53,772 in expenditures, including $41,555.27 for legal fees first reported by The Baltimore Sun. Other expenditures that raised questions include: $118 for an eye examination, $133.94 to a company that sells toy guns and remote-control tanks, $31 for auto body repair, $29.99 for online games, $21.59 for a cell phone accessory and $12 for a golf course membership fee. The payments piqued the board's interest because, by law, campaign funds can be used only to promote the "success or defeat of a candidate," according to Jared DeMarinis, director of the elections board.