Three years, $2,000 in civil and criminal fines, and a trio of misdemeanor charges later, a former state Senate candidate finally turned in her overdue campaign finance reports, the Rhode Island Board of Elections announced Wednesday.
The resolution comes after Jennifer Douglas, a Charlestown Democrat, provided the state elections panel with seven missing campaign finance reports spanning 2021 to 2022. Douglas turned in the paperwork on Friday, May 9, a day after entering a no contest plea in Rhode Island District Court on three criminal misdemeanor charges of violating campaign finance laws, according to public court records.
Douglas in an interview Thursday said she failed to keep up with the paperwork due to a loss in her personal life.
“I went through a very difficult time and was only concentrating on my kids and myself,” Douglas said. “Things just got away from me.”
She emphasized that failure to file reports was different from misuse of campaign funds.
“My campaign finances are to the penny right now,” Douglas said. “It wasn’t like I stole campaign funds, it was simply bad accounting, and a failure to do my due diligence.”
She added, “I was wrong. It played out the way it should have.”
Douglas, who was backed by the progressive Rhode Island Political Cooperative, failed to unseat Republican Sen. Elaine Morgan for the Senate District 34 seat in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections.
The Board of Elections referred Douglas’ case to the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General in July 2023, after it was unable to resolve the problems with her campaign finance reports solely through civil fines. The AG then referred the case to Rhode Island State Police, which charged Douglas in December 2024 with three counts of criminal misdemeanor charges for failing to report campaign donations and expenses.
Douglas was fined $1,100 on May 8 after entering her plea in Rhode Island 3rd Division District Court in Warwick, according to the public court docket.
Of her no contest plea, Douglas said, “I just wanted it to be over.”
Typically, candidates who flout campaign finance rules are able to work out the problems directly with the elections board through a consent agreement and some type of financial penalty.
Douglas first ran afoul of campaign reporting rules in 2021. She agreed to pay a $1,200 fine after the elections board found she failed to disclose a combined $4,600 in campaign donations and spending from her 2020 run for the same seat.
But the problems persisted. Following the November 2021 agreement, Douglas failed to file the next seven regular campaign finance reports, spanning the fourth quarter of 2021 to 2022. A 2021 report submitted five months late also showed a $54 discrepancy not accounted for in her receipts.
Attempts to contact Douglas — an elections panel audit report documents 18 emails, multiple voicemails and one successful phone conversation — yielded no progress in fixing the unaccounted for money or supplying the past-due reports.
The elections board voted in April 2023 to order Douglas to appear before them to explain why they should not hold her in contempt. But she never showed, nor did she supply the missing campaign documents. In June, the board voted to hold her in contempt, imposing a $1,000 fine. That penalty was paid in April 2024, Christopher Hunter, a board spokesperson, said via email.
However, she still owes more than $1,100 in court fees and fines for the criminal misdemeanor charges, which have been set on a payment plan, according to court documents. Douglas said she plans to pay the full amount Friday.
Douglas said she has no plans to run for office again.
“No thank you,” she said Thursday.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
