MS-01 The Hill: Davis Campaign changes tune

The Hill, a website that covers Washington politics, reported that the Greg Davis campaign has been slow to file its 48 hour reports with the FEC.

Southaven Mayor Greg Davis’s (R) special-election campaign on Wednesday struggled to explain abnormally long delays in its Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings days before a special election for a Mississippi House seat that Republicans are desperate to win.

Davis’s campaign on Wednesday filed its first 48-hour report since Friday. That followed another span of eight days between 48-hour reports, which are due within two days of receiving any contribution of $1,000 or more in the weeks immediately preceding an election...

When The Hill went to get answer from the Davis Campaign, they got two different stories.

Davis campaign spokesman Ted Prill initially told The Hill that the campaign was under the impression that weekends didn’t count toward the 48-hour window, which along with a lack of large contributions explained the long spans between reports. FEC rules, however, state that weekends count just like regular days.

Davis’s campaign treasurer, Chuck Roberts, then said the campaign merely didn’t check its mail for contributions over the weekend because nobody was at the office, meaning that anything sent over this past weekend wasn’t actually received until Monday.

The FEC generally tells candidates that they should count delivery time as time of receipt, instead of when they pick something up.