Here's a riddle for you: How does a guy who's been making a little under $75,000 per year and is not known to have significant family money lend his congressional campaign $355,000 out of a bank account he had never previously disclosed?
Are you stumped? You wouldn't be the only one, and yet no explanations are forthcoming from New Hampshire Republican candidate Frank Guinta -- or, no explanations other than that he previously forgot about that other personal bank account, the one with up to $500,000 in it.
Guinta, the Republican nominee in the 1st Congressional District, has drawn heat throughout the campaign after he initially failed to include a bank account between $300,000 and $500,000 in his federal campaign filings.
Calling the omission an oversight, Guinta quickly updated the filings to show that he loaned himself $245,000 for the campaign. “I made a very simple error,” he said last month in a debate leading up to the Sept. 10 primary election.
Seriously. Just an oversight, a simple error, led to him failing to report a massive (by the standards of most people making his salary) bank account which he then turned over to his campaign. And, he won't release a bank statement to show the money was there all along.
This is a guy with student loans. Which he apparently chose not to pay off with the several hundred thousand dollars he now expects us to believe he had all along. This is a guy who as a city official in Manchester has repeatedly filed financial disclosure forms.
The 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 reports filed by then Alderman Guinta list no investments of any kind - no stock, no real estate, and no bank accounts.
So how would someone with this financial background suddenly come up with a bank account containing up to half a million dollars? Maybe there's a perfectly innocent answer, but until Guinta offers the proof of that (again, all it should take is a bank statement showing the money was there all along in his name), it's sure hard not to suspect that there's something illegal going on -- maybe a wealthy supporter giving Guinta the money to get around contribution limits?
The New Hampshire Democratic Party has filed an FEC complaint and Carol Shea-Porter is running an ad asking the obvious question. Guinta can put a stop to the speculation easily. But until he does, he should face this question every time he goes out in public and every time his campaign speaks to the media.