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When Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, travels — and he travels frequently — he often uses his personal credit card to pay for a flight or a rental car, lunch and hotels. Then he gathers his receipts. Those that are political in nature get sent to an accountant who reimburses him from his campaign account.
His Republican challenger, Chia-Chi Teng, is questioning those reimbursements, which total more than $500,000 since Chaffetz first ran for office in 2008. Teng, a professor of information technology at Brigham Young University, suggests Chaffetz is slipping in some personal spending and says the numbers don't add up. Chaffetz has received $77,000 over the past eight years that is not explained in the reports.
"If you want to hold other people accountable, shouldn't you hold yourself accountable as well?" said Teng in his first direct assault in his long-shot bid to unseat Chaffetz, who is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Chaffetz is using a Delta American Express card that would accrue frequent flier miles and other benefits, but he said his motivation for using his personal card is for the sake of simplicity. He said he is acting aboveboard and that Teng, a first-time candidate, is misreading the campaign finance reports publicly available through the Federal Election Commission.
"Everything is disclosed. You can look at every expenditure," he said. "I think it is much ado about nothing, because all of my expenses are rigorously scrutinized and they are all online."
He also criticized his opponent for financing his campaign through personal loans.
"I'm debt free," said Chaffetz. "I guess if I were to point something out about my challenger, it is that he instantaneously went into debt."
The charge and countercharge highlight the flexibility politicians have to manage their campaign money under federal law, and how the disclosure reports they file don't tell the full story.
Teng is correct that the reimbursements Chaffetz has received, sometimes as much as $10,000 at a time, don't always add up to the itemized charges for everything from postage to jackets emblazoned with his campaign logo.
As an example, on Dec. 5, 2015, Chaffetz received a reimbursement for $9,413 but the itemized costs only added up to $9,087.
His campaign accountant, working for the Orem-based firm Hawkins, said the differences are small charges that by law Chaffetz doesn't have to disclose, such as a quick stop off at McDonald's or Five Guys, a Chaffetz favorite.
If the campaign doesn't spend at least $200 with the same vendor during an election cycle, which in the House is two years, then the campaign doesn't have to disclose it. Hawkins provided The Salt Lake Tribune the previously undisclosed reimbursements made at the end of 2015; they were mostly meals, airport fees and media, such as a copy of The Washington Post.
But Teng's critique didn't end with the unaccounted-for money. He also questioned the two campaign vehicles Chaffetz has bought, a Ford F150 and a Ford Edge. Teng also questioned the money Chaffetz has spent on hotel rooms in D.C. and child care.
Chaffetz argues that buying campaign vehicles is more cost effective than reimbursing himself and his campaign team for mileage in a district that stretches from Holladay to the southeastern tip of the state. Teng suggests that Chaffetz has failed to reimburse his campaign for personal uses of the vehicles, such as driving them from his home to the campaign office.
"I don't know if I ever just drive to the office and not do something political along the way," Chaffetz said.
He said the hotel rooms in Washington are used by his campaign staff when they come to D.C. and by his wife. Chaffetz famously sleeps in his House office while in D.C., but his wife, Julie, has refused to share the cot he keeps in the closet.
When she visits, they stay in a hotel. Chaffetz said if the purpose of the visit is personal, he pays out of pocket, but if she comes to D.C. for a campaign event or something political in nature, he bills the campaign. And that's where the child care comes in, too.
"I wasn't going to leave a 12-year-old overnight by herself," he said.
Chaffetz is the only Utah House member who regularly uses a personal credit card for campaign expenses, resulting in a series of reimbursements. But there is no rule against it. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has occasionally sought similar reimbursements.
"There's some leeway in how I spend those dollars, but I've always done it in a responsible and transparent way," Chaffetz said. "I'm trying to be as frugal as I can be."
Teng, who used to work as a software developer for Microsoft, has loaned his campaign $227,000 and has raised $15,000 from friends and supporters. He's spent more than $86,000 to gather the 7,000 signatures necessary to guarantee a place on the primary ballot. Chaffetz is seeking the nomination only through the party convention.
Teng also has spent roughly $100,000 on campaign consulting to Greg Powers' G1 Consulting. His federal disclosure doesn't explain where that money was spent, and it doesn't indicate any spending on such things as phones or travel, signs or polling. At the request of The Tribune, Teng has placed those invoices on his campaign website. Those invoices show that he's paying Powers $5,000 per month and has spent more than $1,500 on signs, $10,000 on surveys and $72,000 on voter ID and research.
Teng doesn't look at his personal spending as debt, the way Chaffetz described it, but as an "investment." Because it is in the form of a loan, Teng is keeping the option open to repay himself, a common political practice.
"If I can show people our campaign is credible, I'm hoping for some grass-roots support," he said. "I want to make this a grass-roots effort."
Teng promises to keep the pressure on Chaffetz, who he believes has become more invested in the national Republican Party than in representing his district in Utah. The professor plans to run as a more conservative alternative to Chaffetz, criticizing his support for government spending plans and the Internet sales tax.