Who’s to blame for the precarious financial position of the Massachusetts Republican Party will be hashed out at an upcoming committee meeting.
Two factions of a divided state committee have put forth competing agenda items, which would seek votes for the removal of the party’s top two financial officers, and bring last year’s gubernatorial candidate in for questioning about “campaign finance irregularities” that led to roughly half of the party’s $600,000 debt.
“Basically, of all the debt that I inherited as party chair, nearly half we’ve attributed to the Diehl campaign,” said MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale, referring to losing Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl. “Then about a quarter we believe the party is responsible for, and about a quarter is still under review.”
The party’s debt now stands at roughly $628,000, up from the $602,000 figure that was estimated in the weeks that followed Carnevale’s narrow win over former chair Jim Lyons this past January, Carnevale told the Herald.
Carnevale said that while she had planned to address the party’s whopping debt at the June 8 committee meeting, she was not involved in drafting the agenda item that will bring Diehl, along with his campaign manager, Amanda Orlando, and campaign treasurer Desiree Awiszio, in for a “question-and-answer” session.
“This is not something I called for,” Carnevale said. “I do plan to reach out to either Geoff or Amanda Orlando, who is of course his campaign manager, just to have a conversation with them because I don’t think it helps anybody in the committee or the party to be confrontational about this issue.”
The request, signed by 10 committee members, will also bring in MassGOP Assistant Treasurer Anthony Ventresca, “who effectively acted as treasurer between February and December 2022.” An included resolution is calling for a vote to remove Ventresca as assistant treasurer, which requires a two-thirds majority.
“Basically my understanding is that when Jim Lyons was chair, he allowed the Geoff Diehl/Leah Allen campaign to transfer that (expense) to the MassGOP illegally,” said a committee member who signed onto the agenda item and asked to remain anonymous.
“I didn’t support Geoff. I think what he did was wrong. I think that, at no point in time, it wasn’t ever appropriate to transfer the Diehl campaign debt onto the party, or legal, and I do think it is appropriate to remove the assistant treasurer as a result.”
In late March, a MassGOP audit found that the bulk, or $404,000 of the $602,000 in unpaid invoices Carnevale inherited from Lyons were from advertising and media-related expenses authorized and signed by the Diehl campaign. So far, Carnevale has directed the vendor to bill Diehl for $262,620 of those expenses.
According to a May 22 email Carnevale sent to committee members, Orlando told MassGOP that a $17,825 invoice for TV ads listed as part of that $262,620 expense was already paid for by the Diehl campaign.
“Additionally, Amanda has conveyed to us that no additional spending on TV ads was authorized by her or anyone else with the Diehl campaign,” Carnevale wrote. “It therefore seems unclear on whose authority MITTCOM purchased $262,620 worth of TV advertising for the Diehl campaign in the closing days of the election.
“However, it remains clear that MassGOP is not responsible for this invoice.”
Ventresca began acting as treasurer after former Chair Lyons filed a lawsuit against Treasurer Patrick Crowley for control of the party’s bank account, in February 2022. Crowley had locked Lyons out of the account after the committee’s failure to pass a budget the prior month, due to a lack of quorum.
The resolution calling for the assistant treasurer’s removal states that “Ventresca personally believed that a budget had been passed,” and “apparently authorized at least $1,639,309 in spending” while acting as treasurer.
It also seeks to pin the blame for the party’s “several hundred thousand dollars in debt,” on Ventresca, since he was acting treasurer at the time.
“He didn’t follow the approved budget,” the committee member stated. “If it wasn’t in the budget, you can’t approve the expenditure.”
Roughly $120,000 of party debt, the resolution states, is due to issues with “coordinated mail and advertising campaigns for down-ballot Republican candidates who had paid the MassGOP in full during the 2022 election cycle.”
Rather than pay the vendors used to print ads, as was intended by the candidates, the party spent those funds in other ways, MassGOP officials have said.
Diehl, Lyons, Orlando and Ventresca did not respond to requests for comment.
The calls for Ventresca’s removal may be retaliatory, according to MassGOP Vice Chair Jay Fleitman, who submitted an agenda item request in April that calls for Crowley’s removal as treasurer, which will also be considered at the June meeting. The request was signed by 17 committee members, including Diehl, Orlando and Ventresca.
“I’m not sure what the motivation was behind removing Anthony Ventresca,” Fleitman said. “Some of the discussion fundamentally was if you take one of ours, we’ll take one of yours.”
Fleitman said Ventresca was acting as treasurer “during the time that Pat Crowley was basically sabotaging the access to state funds.”
“He actually acted as treasurer all along after that because then-Chairman Lyons did distrust Pat Crowley after he did that,” Fleitman said. “He is the assistant treasurer so he does have a right to have access in the absence of the treasurer’s function.”
According to Fleitman, the lack of quorum that prevented the budget’s passage in January 2022 was intentional. Members who opposed Lyons, as a “strategy to undercut” the former chairman, walked out to prevent a quorum, and thus prevent a vote on the budget.
Crowley then decided that without a budget, the state committee “could not make any expenditures because that’s in the bylaws and therefore, he will not sign off on any expenditures,” Fleitman said.
The treasurer also contacted the banks to tell them not to disburse funds to the MassGOP, and changed the Office of Campaign and Political Finance password, to prevent the party from making its necessary filings, Fleitman said.
Lyons and his attorney were able to regain this access “within a week,” Fleitman said, but he is leading a request for Crowley’s removal because, as an “accountant and elected treasurer of the MassGOP, this behavior was just unacceptable and intolerable.”
“Even though it was directed at the chairman, the funds that were withheld were not Jim Lyons’ personal money; the funds that were withheld were the funds for the state party,” Fleitman said.
“The real issue remaining out there is that the party has to and the state committee has to bury this stuff, and end these issues in order to start working together, rather than fighting with each other. And Pat Crowley’s continued presence as treasurer divides the state committee and the state party.”
Crowley did not respond to a request for comment.
Of the competing requests, Carnevale said she does “not support the removal of the treasurer,” but plans to “look at the resolution” concerning the assistant treasurer. She plans to ask the committee to dismiss the lawsuit against Crowley.
“I do think it is clear that the spending that took place over the last year, especially under the prior leadership of the committee, was, at a minimum, inappropriate,” Carnevale said.
“So I think it’s certainly fair to ask questions of the assistant treasurer who’s acting as treasurer as to what transpired, but I have not made a decision as to what kind of level that rises to, the inappropriateness it rises to.”
The removal of officers requires a committee vote, but subcommittee chairs are within the purview of Carnevale, who plans to announce leadership changes this week.