Pueblo Democrats admit bingo money went unreported, settle for $3,202

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Across three campaign finance reports filed in the summer of 2024, the Pueblo County Democratic Party told the state it had taken in just over $6,500.

Over the nine months those reports covered, the party’s affiliated committee netted $40,936.74 running bingo.

None of it appeared on a disclosure report.

The party has now signed a document admitting that. A settlement with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Elections Division, approved Sept. 28 by Deputy Secretary of State Andrew Kline, resolves a case that took nearly two years, a dismissal of both complaints by the state and a judge’s order to reopen it.

What the party admitted

Ambler provided a copy of the signed agreement. The Secretary of State’s office has not posted it to the case docket or to TRACER, where both complaints, 2024-77 and 2024-116, still show as pending settlement approval.

The agreement covers Oct. 28, 2023 through July 25, 2024 and three Reports of Contributions and Expenditures, filed June 4, June 21 and July 30 of 2024.

In those three reports the party disclosed just over $6,500 in contributions and just over $9,000 in expenditures.

The agreement describes the Central Committee as a nonprofit corporation registered with the Secretary of State and as an affiliated party organization of the party. Under the settlement’s reading of Article XXVIII of the state constitution and the Fair Campaign Practices Act, that makes its contributions and expenditures reportable by the party.

Unreported, by the party’s admission, was $40,936.74 in contributions, which is net bingo income, and $17,109.68 in expenditures tied to the party’s headquarters at 602 W. 9th St.

That spending covered a cleaning subcontractor, liability insurance, maintenance, office supplies, payroll for a building supervisor, utilities and security systems.

The two figures total $58,046.42.

The penalty is $3,202.32. State rule sets the fine at $100 per report plus 5 percent of the activity left off the books. Five percent of $58,046.42 comes to $2,902.32. Three reports at $100 each add the rest. The party has 14 days to pay once the Division sends an invoice.

It also agreed to follow campaign finance law going forward, released its claims against the state and waived its appeal rights.

A dismissal, then a reversal

Pueblo resident Jonathan Ambler, now the Republican nominee for Pueblo County treasurer, filed the first complaint in October 2024 and a second that December. The Elections Division consolidated them and moved to dismiss both as untimely.

Then-Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall granted that motion in April 2025. He found the bingo money was not a reportable contribution because the committee keeps its gaming receipts in a separate account and spends them on the licensed organization as a whole.

Ambler took it to court. On March 26, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones upheld the dismissal of the untimely claims and reversed the dismissal of the rest in case 2025CV348.

“Evidence in the record makes it clear that one of the purposes of the Property was to benefit PCDP and the candidates and issues it supported,” Jones wrote.

He found an “overlap in leadership, combined with the commingling of the Property as a shared asset between the Committee and PCDP,” and said that shows “a lack of separation between the entities.”

The dismissal, Jones wrote, “failed to address any of the evidence that the Property acts as the ‘Pueblo Democrats HQ’ and solely relied on PCDP’s unsubstantiated representations.”

In June the Division filed its own complaint against the party, brought by Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office with Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter G. Baumann as counsel of record. A hearing was set for Sept. 10. The parties moved to stay the case on Aug. 12.

What the settlement leaves alone

Claims over reports filed on or before April 19, 2024 were ruled untimely, and the Division’s complaint says it is not pursuing them. The multiyear history that drew Ambler’s attention in the first place is gone as a charge.

In its June complaint, the Division asked for penalties and “such other relief as the Hearing Officer may deem appropriate.” Nowhere does it ask for an order compelling amended reports.

The settlement does not require them either.

The agreement imposes the penalty without ordering the party to amend the three reports to show the $58,046.42.

Quarterly charitable gaming reports filed with the Secretary of State show the Central Committee took in roughly $3.6 million in gross receipts from bingo, pull tabs and raffles between 2013 and mid-2024. Those same filings report about $857,000 in net across all three categories. Carry the same running totals through the first quarter of this year and they reach $4.3 million and roughly $1 million.

Those published figures are not calculated the way the settlements are. The quarterly net subtracts prizes and covers bingo, pull tabs and raffles together. The settlement uses net bingo income after bingo-related expenses, which is both a narrower category and a smaller number for the same stretch of time.

The settlement makes no finding that those earlier gaming proceeds were unreported campaign contributions.

“The settlement does not establish what happened to the money generated during the earlier years, nor does it establish that those funds were improperly spent,” Ambler said in his Oct. 6 release announcing the settlement. “What it does establish is that this type of financial activity was required to be disclosed. That makes the unanswered historical question significant: what happened to the money?”

The state’s gaming reports start in 2013. The building may predate them.

Pueblo County assessor records for schedule number 05-254-47-013 list the last sale of 602 W. 9th St. as July 25, 2013, for $165,000, and the settlement puts the purchase in 2013. Jones put it earlier, writing that the committee used bingo income to buy the building “in or around 2011.”

The committee’s reported net from gaming in 2013 was $62,849. Its highest annual net in the published record is $109,246, in 2018, with 2024 close behind at $106,350. Whichever purchase date is correct, the $165,000 price is more than the committee reported in net proceeds in any single year the state has published.

The complainant is on the ballot

Ambler ran for House District 46 as a Republican in 2018, 2020 and 2022 and lost each time.

The release also put net bingo proceeds at roughly $1.5 million over more than a decade, more than the state filings show. It called that figure his own estimate, not a finding in the settlement. Asked about the gap, he said in an email where the number came from.

“The $1.5 million is an estimate, and that is precisely the problem,” Ambler said. “The publicly available bingo reports I’ve reviewed began in 2013, but the Central Committee purchased its headquarters in June of that year for $165,000. Where did that money come from? There may have been substantial bingo proceeds before 2013. The actual amount could be considerably different. We simply don’t have a complete accounting.”

He said he was not party to the settlement talks and cannot explain how the state reached its numbers. His objection is to what the agreement leaves out.

“It treats net bingo proceeds as political contributions without identifying the underlying contributors,” Ambler said of the settlement. “That goes directly to the transparency requirements at the heart of my complaints.”

“Perhaps most importantly, people now know where to look,” Ambler said in the release. “The records are there. Citizens, journalists, and others can examine the evidence for themselves and ask the questions that should have been possible to ask all along.”

What the state found, and did not

The agreement records that the party cooperated and turned over documentation that let the Division size the violations.

It also states that nothing in that investigation suggested an intent to mislead the electorate.

Martha Tierney, the Denver attorney representing the party, did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The party was reached through counsel.

Once Kline signed, the agreement became final agency action. The Division will move to dismiss the administrative case with prejudice.

What that leaves on the public record is an admission that $58,046.42 went unreported, a penalty of $3,202.32, and no order to amend the three reports.