U.S. Rep. Jim Baird fined for failing to disclose campaign loan repayment

The Federal Election Commission fined U.S. Representative Jim Baird of Indiana earlier this month for failing to disclose $160,500 less than two weeks before the May 7, 2024 primary election, according to a review of agency records.

His campaign committee, Elect Jim Baird for Congress, omitted the disclosure from a pre-primary report required of all candidates for federal elected office. In June, the FEC contacted the campaign after identifying several discrepancies, noting that they “appear[ed] to be incorrect.”

On the July deadline, the campaign filed an amended report.

It included an additional transaction of $160,000 from the committee to repay Republican candidate Baird on April 15, 2024 for a loan he had made to finance his re-election bid. It was one of four loans the candidate extended to his committee. In not reporting this disbursement, it seemed like the campaign had over $533,000 in cash on hand when it actually had around $370,000.

The remaining $500 was a payment to the Builders Association of Greater Lafayette.

The FEC reached out to the campaign again in August, noting more discrepancies, including the “substantial increase in disbursements.”

“What he did was actually disclosing a repayment to himself for a loan after the fact,” said Stuart McPhail, who directs campaign finance litigation for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government watchdog group.

McPhail said that candidates loaning money to their committees happens all the time. The issue here was a lack of disclosure: The new loan repayment on the amended report was not included on the original April version.

“Please provide clarifying information as to why this activity was not disclosed on your original report,” the FEC wrote to the committee in August.

The Baird campaign told the agency the error was, in part, a computing mistake. The campaign entered into a negotiation with the agency known as the Alternative Dispute Resolution process, which is a method the agency uses to reach settlements in certain situations outside of the primary enforcement process. Fines levied in this program are on average lower than those issued under the traditional FEC enforcement procedure.

The committee appointed the Congressman’s son, Beau Baird, to represent it in negotiations with the FEC. He's worked on his father’s campaign since its inception, with his information included on the committee’s 2017 statement of organization. He’s also a state representative for District 44 in the Indiana General Assembly.

On March 5, 2025 the Commission voted 4-0 to fine Elect Jim Baird for Congress $7,475, ordered the committee to create a “policy document” to distribute to campaign staff so that the error wouldn’t happen again, and closed the case.

In a statement to WFYI, campaign spokesperson Mark Warner said, “Congressman Baird has always prioritized running a grassroots campaign focused on meeting and serving the people of Indiana’s 4th District rather than heavy fundraising. As a result, he has occasionally self-funded his campaign to ensure its operation.”

“The campaign identified this reporting error internally and proactively self-reported it to the FEC. The issue stemmed from a clerical mistake related to software use, and once discovered, it was promptly corrected,” the statement read. “The campaign fully cooperated with the FEC, resolved the matter through the appropriate process, and implemented additional measures to prevent similar issues in the future. The FEC considers the matter closed.”

The committee had also explained to the FEC that the $500 check “had not been entered into the accounting system or cleared the bank at the time of the original filing. This error was discovered during the audit performed in response to the Request for Additional Information (RFAI) on the original report” and was due to an “internal miscommunication.”

Nearly a full page of a settlement document is redacted.

Laura Merrifield Wilson is a political scientist at University of Indianapolis who has studied campaign finance. She said that campaign finance reporting and documents are complicated, but she’d expect newly-elected officials to struggle with the reporting process more than incumbents.

“The hardest part of that to understand is why it would be repeated,” she said.

The Baird campaign told the agency it didn’t didn’t expect changes in FEC software.

This is the second time the campaign was fined, the first being an administrative penalty for $6,538 in 2019 for failing to disclose nine transactions totaling $61,000 leading up to the primary election in Baird’s first bid for U.S. representative.

In 2025 so far, the FEC has closed 16 cases under the Alternative Dispute Resolution process. The average civil penalty was $6,714.

These campaign finance filing requirements are intended to foster transparency and fair elections, said McPhail, of CREW.

“They want to make sure voters have the most up-to-date information about the campaign right before an election that they can have, and if campaigns are withholding information — even negligently, but definitely purposely — you’re depriving the voter of information that we think they should have,” he said.

Contact WFYI data journalist Zak Cassel at zcassel@wfyi.org.