George Santos was far from the only one to not submit the filing. Dozens of candidates who should have filed financial disclosures over the past two election cycles avoided doing so.
Alex Brandon/AP Photo

‘They’re not going to deal with losers’

There are a host of reasons candidates may file forms late. The chief one cited by candidates is that they were unaware of the requirement. Campaign fundraising, which triggers the requirement to file a personal financial disclosure, is reported to the FEC, which is distinct from the congressional office where financial forms must be filed. Navigating the barrage of forms needed to run for Congress can be difficult for first-time candidates who may not have experienced staff, ethics experts acknowledged.

Many of the candidates who have failed to file financial disclosures are political longshots who do not make it near election. Of the more than three dozen candidates POLITICO identified who missed financial disclosure deadlines in either 2021 or 2022, the majority either lost primaries or were in general elections that would be decided by more than 20 points.

“The Ethics Committee tends to take the position that they’re not going to deal with losers because their jurisdiction is over members of Congress,” McGehee said.

But a few first-time candidates have been elected to Congress despite missing financial disclosures, including Santos and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), whose failure to file was first reported by Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 in January. Ogles ultimately filed the form a few days after the local news report, more than eight months after the deadline. Ogles also faces questions about the money he raised through a 2014 GoFundMe. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Ogles is not the only candidate to have filed the required forms after attracting scrutiny from their opponents or local media. For example, the Dallas Morning News reported last October that now-Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and her Republican opponent had both missed financial disclosure deadlines. Crockett, who would go on to win the election by more than 50 points in a heavily Democratic district, filed the forms in October after the newspaper inquired, and noted at the time that she had filed state financial disclosures that were more comprehensive than the congressional requirement. Texas’s early congressional primaries also complicate the deadlines for candidates in the state.

When candidates fail to file the disclosures, voters lose out on the ability to make the best informed decision, said Danielle Caputo, legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.

“It kind of defeats the purpose of being able to choose your representation if you don’t actually know who they truly are,” she said. “And financial disclosure reports are certainly part of the picture of who a person is.”