Candidate for Philly DA fined $1,500 for late campaign filing

The campaign of former Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni has paid a $1,500 penalty to the Philadelphia Board of Ethics for filing its April 4 campaign finance report nine days late.

Deni is one of seven candidates for city district attorney in the May 16 Democratic primary.

Campaign manager Lewis Thomas said the campaign’s treasurer suffered a medical setback and was unable to file the report, leaving Thomas to assemble the records and complete the filing.

“It was just an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Thomas said.

The campaign’s latest filing shows that more than four-fifths of the $154,427 the campaign has raised has come from Deni herself, who has provided a total of $130,000.

Deni loaned the campaign $35,000 last year, a debt reflected in the campaign’s year-end filing.

The latest report shows Deni made three more contributions to her campaign fund in February and March totaling $95,000.

Lewis said those payments were intended to be straight contributions and not loans.

The $35,000 loan Deni made in 2016 should also be reflected as a debt on the campaign’s latest filing, but it shows no debts owed by the campaign.

Thomas said he believed that was an error that would be corrected.