Last Updated on February 23, 2021, 6:25 PM | Published: February 23, 2021
OKLAHOMA CITY — Supporters of Ward 3 Candidate Jessica Martinez-Brooks helped discover an error in her latest pre-primary campaign records filed earlier this month.
Tuesday, Martinez-Brooks told Free Press that her supporters reached out to the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce Monday after reading the Free Press campaign finance article. We had reported the Wards 1 and 3 campaign finance reports for City of Oklahoma City Council seats.
They wanted to know why the Chamber’s PAC was not supporting the candidate for Ward 3, which led to the discovery of the missing contributions in the ethics report.
In fact, the Chamber PAC is giving an equal amount, $3,000, to both Young and Martinez-Brooks.
“Other people were calling Drew [Dugan, with the Chamber] and saying, ‘Hey, how come you’re not supporting Jessica?” She said. “He’s like, well, we did.”
“As soon as I read your article, and then looked over my ethics report, I was like what happened?” Martinez-Brooks told Free Press in a phone call. “So we started doing some digging.”
She contacted Dugan to notify the Chamber about the error. It’s unclear how the contributions went unreported, but the candidate says it might be due to a clerical error or a computer glitch.
Amended report
The amended pre-primary report of contributions reveals that Martinez-Brooks received an additional $3,600 on Jan. 20 from three individuals and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
Tuesday’s report corrects the most recent campaign finance reports that were filed earlier this month and include cash raised as well as expenses up to Jan 25.
The amendments to the report (embedded below) show the added individual contributions totaled $600 from three prominent local metro bankers. The Greater OKC Chamber donated the remaining $3,000 in support of Martinez-Brooks, an equal amount given to her opponent, Young.
The amended report shows that Martinez-Brooks is now leading in Chamber support over Young, with support from both the Greater OKC Chamber and the South OKC Chamber of Commerce.
Candidates in the runoffs for Wards 1 and 3 will file their final contribution reports prior to the general election on April 6.
The last day to register to vote in the upcoming election is March 12 and the deadline to request an absentee ballot is March 30, at 5 p.m.
PrePrimary-JMB-Full-Report-AMENDED
Brianna Garcia is a freelance journalist covering local politics and culture for Free Press. She has a degree in Journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma.
