Whatever his strengths as a Council chairman or auto enthusiast, Kwame Brown just couldn’t run a clean campaign. That’s the conclusion LL’s drawing from a $45,000 fine Brown’s 2010 campaign for chairman received earlier this month from the Office of Campaign Finance.

LL ran down Brown’s comically mismanaged 2010 bid when OCF’s initial report came out this summer. Among the campaign’s misdeeds: paying $215,294 to companies that didn’t have a contract with the campaign, failing to get documentation on $134,282 of contributions, and allowing Brown’s brother Che Brown to cut $92,260 worth of checks from its funds.

Amazingly, this isn’t the heftiest fine levied against a Brown campaign. That distinction belongs to his 2008 At-Large run, which was finally fined $53,400 over the summer by the Board of Elections.

Brown won’t be paying a dime of either fine. Neither will anyone else associated with Brown’s run, including his brother or treasurer Dawn Cromer, who worked as treasurer for both of the campaigns. OCF spokesman Wesley Williams confirms to LL that, because the fine is restricted to the committee itself ,OCF can’t pursue Brown for the money. The committee is out of money; it couldn’t even repay $2,700 in excess contributions it was supposed to refund.

Three years after the election, and once the candidate has resigned from office and pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge, LL has to wonder what the point of the fine here is.

[documentcloud url=”https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/805537-kwame-fine.html”]

Photo by Darrow Montgomery