Investigation finds $150K Missing in Senator Neal’s Campaign Reports

Democratic State Senator Dina Neal’s (SD-4) campaign finance reports allegedly show that $150,000 is unaccounted for or has “seemingly disappeared.” Victor Joeck’s of the Review-Journal found that, since 2021, her year-0ver-year totals are also off-balance.

His eye-opening report reveals:

Despite her modest start, Neal’s fundraising soon took off. Eventually chairing the Taxation Committee undoubtedly helped. Her annual reports and most recent quarterly filing show she’s raised more than $775,000 in monetary donations. That included more than $100,000 in both 2016 and 2020. In 2018, she raised more than $90,000. Despite running in a safe district, her reports also show that she’s spent a bit more than $600,000.

Given that, you’d expect Neal’s ending fund balance would be around $175,000. But that’s not what her most recent campaign finance report shows. That report was filed April 15 and covered the first quarter of 2024. It says she has a bit under $27,000 in the bank. Once you crunch the numbers, about $150,000 is unaccounted for.

This isn’t a one-time concern. Her year-over-year totals don’t add up either. For 2021, she listed her ending-fund balance as $13,446. In 2022, she raised $87,700 and spent $63,729, according to her finance report. That means her campaign account should have increased by almost $24,000. Instead, her listed ending fund balance for 2022 was only $18,721.

“I have never and would never, misappropriate or misuse campaign monies,” she wrote in an email. She didn’t respond to further requests for comment by phone and email.

In 2023 at the beginning of the legislative session, The Globe found that Neal was in violation of Nevada law which prohibits a legislator from accepting monetary contributions 30 days prior to and after a legislative session. Legislators normally take down these campaign fundraising buttons so people don’t accidentally donate. However, Neal’s website had an active donation link to a PayPal account for her campaign. At the time, Neal told The Globe she was “unaware” of the violation and disabled the link after our brief conversation.

The embattled North Las Vegas Democrat is also under a FBI investigation after a College of Southern Nevada professor claimed she had pressured him to direct federal money toward businesses that didn’t meet grant requirements, including one owned by her friend. Last year, the Review-Journal reported that North Las Vegas city officials met with law enforcement regarding concerns Neal had used campaign funds to pay a $20,000 lien on her home.

When the investigation began, Senator Neal made her X account private and has publicly referred to the allegations and ongoing investigation as a “smear campaign.”

Neal won election to the Nevada Assembly in November 2010 and served five terms before her successful bid for State Senate in 2020. The seat was formerly held by Democratic Senate Majority leader Kelvin Atkinson who was arrested in 2019 and eventually pled guilty to stealing almost $250,000 in campaign funds.