ATLANTA — On Thursday, Dec. 4, at the Carrollton Public Safety Complex, the Georgia State Ethics Commission will announce whether campaign finance laws were violated in three 2024 Cobb County School Board elections. The New Southern Majority (NSM), an independent expenditure committee that supported candidates in the elections, filed a complaint and requested that the Ethics Commission investigate after identifying several unusual donations listed in the campaign finance records for three candidates who ultimately won their races: Bradford Wheeler, John Cristadoro and Randall Scamihorn.
An examination of publicly available information revealed significant issues with the campaign contributions made by Cobb Children First Inc., Business Supporting Schools Inc. and Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP (FMG), through its political action committee.
The complaint alleges that all three entities are one and the same. Therefore, they exceeded the $3,300 campaign finance contribution limit when they cumulatively donated $9,900 to each candidate in their primaries in May 2024 and to both Wheeler and Scamihorn for their general elections in October 2024. The complaint notes that Cobb Children First and Business Supporting Schools were created on the same day and have the same mailing address listed on campaign finance reports. That address matches the address for a consulting company run by Jonathan Crumly, an attorney who was then at FMG and is the registered agent for Cobb Children First and Business Supporting Schools. All three entities also donated on the same day, according to the campaign finance reports.
“The evidence speaks for itself — there are multiple points of overlap between the three corporate donors, and all the money donated by these entities should be forfeited to the state,” said Seth Levi, a representative with NSM. “School board members Wheeler, Cristadoro and Scamihorn owe the families and voters in Cobb County an explanation on how all three of them happened to miss multiple donors sending nearly identical checks from the exact same address down to the suite number for the maximum contribution amount. There are too many red flags here to ignore or dismiss this as an unfortunate coincidence.”
A second allegation made in the complaint points out that the date of the May donations to Wheeler and Scamihorn changed from one campaign finance report to the next. If the first donations were made after May 21, then the second round of donations to Wheeler and Scamihorn in the general election would have further exceeded campaign finance contribution limits. Candidate committees may only receive up to $3,300 from a donor in primaries and then again in general elections.
“Georgians should be able to trust that elections are run fairly,” Levi said. “This situation makes clear that lawmakers need to improve state campaign finance laws to ensure transparency from candidates and donors and prevent elaborate schemes that tip the scales in favor of whomever they prefer.”
The commission meeting will begin at 10 a.m. on Dec. 4. The Public Safety Complex is located at 115 West Center St. in Carrollton, Georgia. Information that NSM gathered over the last year can be viewed here. All material is either publicly available or was provided by the parties named in the ethics complaint.
New Southern Majority IE PAC is an independent expenditure committee that promotes candidates running for office in the South who stand for racial justice and work to advance human rights for all people. NSM makes independent expenditures primarily to support candidates running for local office.