Multimillionaire Former Chief Financial Officer Can’t Manage Her Campaign’s Basic Finances

May

2024

PRESS RELEASE

Multimillionaire Former Chief Financial Officer Can’t Manage Her Campaign’s Basic Finances

No-Answer Nella is banking on her last name, deep pockets and business resumé to buy her way into office this November. But a cursory look at her latest campaign finance report has us baffled. It appears the multimillionaire former hedge fund executive—the former Chief Financial Officer of the world’s largest hedge fund—can’t manage her own campaign’s basic financial reporting.

“Nella is literally a multimillionaire former hedge fund chief financial officer. The fact that she can’t manage her own campaign’s basic financial reporting is not just embarrassing, it’s a giant red flag,” said Democratic Party of New Mexico Spokesperson Daniel Garcia. “How can New Mexicans trust her to manage any of the very real issues facing our state and country, when she can barely file paperwork correctly?”

In her latest pre-primary FEC filing, Nella’s report has a number of troubling issues, including:

Contributions from non-federal committees do not note whether funds are permissible under federal law or indicate that the campaign is following up to request this information (example: on page 91, “SFFRW PAC” is not a federally registered PAC and there is no note about whether or not this money is permissible for her to receive).
Nella for Senate received 36%, a substantial transfer of funds, from her joint fundraising committee, the Nella Victory Fund, which is outlined on page 96 of her report. These transfers do not include the required memo items that connect the individual donors whose contributions made up these transfer amounts. From the FEC guidelines:
- “The committee will also report information about the original contributors as memo entries that are tied to the main transfer entry. This will include the individual’s information, the contribution amount, the date that the contributor originally gave the money, election designation, and the aggregate election cycle-to-date total. The committee will also use the description field to clearly link the memo entries to the original transfer.”
34 donors don't have their employer or occupation listed. The FEC requires campaigns to make a concerted effort to collect this information. While it’s not unusual for campaigns to not have a handful of missing entries, the sheer number of donors listed as “information requested” is unusual and troubling.

This isn’t the first time Nella has had problems with simple reporting. Her FEC report for the first quarter of 2024 was $129,000 short of what her campaign initially shared with the press before the report was available to the public.