Nikki Haley's campaign makes $2.7 million accounting mistake

Nikki Haley announced her candidacy for president on Feb. 15 and sparked enthusiasm among Republicans who will not support Donald Trump in 2024. Recently, however, a problem with her campaign funds accounting was in the news. Although the first three months of fundraising were exceptional for the campaign, electoral authorities disagreed with her numbers.

The Haley campaign reported its fundraising total to be about $11 million in its first six weeks, through the end of the first-quarter filing period on March 31. The problem came when three of its four affiliated committees got together to review those numbers, and they did not add up.

When they finished double-checking the math, the final result was just $8.3 million. The problem was that $2.7 million was double-counted, which caused the initial error in the numbers.

The Haley campaign's math problem

In all, Haley has four funding entities, all of which are registered with the Federal Election Commission, three of which filed on Saturday. The largest is Team Stand for America, its joint fundraising committee, which then splits into three other entities: a presidential campaign committee, a multi-candidate political action committee and a hybrid PAC. The latter was the one with the counting error, which was discovered in a meeting that took place last Saturday.

According to the presentations, Team Stand for America raised some $4.3 million in contributions during the aforementioned six weeks. In addition, it transferred $2.7 million to affiliated committees, which subsequently caused the problem in counting. Without that extra, the total collected would have been $8.3 million, not $11 million.

As for the other entities' fundraising, the main campaign committee had reported $5.1 million, of which $3.3 million came from contributions. As the documents show, the remaining $1.8 million came from Team Stand for America, in two transfers recorded on March 31.

Stand for America PAC, which can also raise money for other candidates, reported revenues of $1.5 million, although only $600,000 came from contributions. The PAC also received $886,000 in money transferred that same day.

To put this math in simple terms, the original figure of $11 million is broken down as follows: the campaign added up the total income of the three groups mentioned, without taking into account the transfer of $2.7 million between two of them.

This error has no legal implications, since there was no inaccuracy in the reports. Despite the error, $8.3 million is more than significant in the initial weeks of the campaign.