Santa Clarita Valley News
By Luke Money
May 8, 2015
http://www.signalscv.com/m/section/36/article/136772/
Freshman Santa Clarita Valley Congressman Steve Knight admitted this week that he failed to file a necessary financial disclosure statement — an issue he says he’s working to fix.
National Democrats, however, say it calls his trustworthiness into question.
The missed disclosure statements detail the financial interests and holdings of congressional representatives and candidates with the purpose of outlining where they could potentially have a conflict of interest.
“I take total blame for this,” Knight, R-Palmdale, said Thursday. “This is part of getting everything done.”
Congressional candidates are required to file a disclosure statement within 30 days of becoming a candidate or by May 15 of that year, whichever comes later.
Candidates must then file a second statement on May 15 the following year if they are still a candidate.
Knight officially qualified as a candidate, meaning he had raised or spent more than $5,000 in his campaign in late 2013.
As of Friday, Knight did not have financial disclosure statements on file, according to online records from the Office of the Clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Other candidates in last year’s 25th Congressional District election — including Tony Strickland, Lee Rogers, Evan Thomas, Troy Castagna and Navraj Singh — do have disclosure reports on file, according to online records.
“The hardworking families of California’s 25th District deserve a representative they can trust,” said Matt Thornton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “If ‘one-term wonder’ Steve Knight isn’t willing to disclose his financial interests, how can his constituents trust him at all?”
The DCCC has added Knight to its “one-term wonder” list of freshman Republican lawmakers whom the committee is targeting to defeat in next year’s election.
Now that he is a member of Congress, Knight, who represents the Santa Clarita Valley and portions of the Antelope and Simi valleys, is supposed to file a disclosure statement by next Friday, May 15.
“If I make a mistake, our goal is to first take responsibility for it and then correct it,” Knight said. “We’re trying to correct that.”