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As of Wednesday morning, at least four candidates in this year's city election had addressed violations in their campaign finance reports, including one aldermanic candidate who faced a referral to the Frederick County State's Attorney's Office for not turning one in at all.

All but three of the 26 candidates vying for public office were notified by the city's board of election supervisors that they had errors in the campaign finance reports submitted on Aug. 17.

Twenty-three candidates were sent letters last week from the city's Board of Supervisors of Elections, informing them of errors — which ranged from a failure to classify contributions as cash or check, to neglecting to set up a bank account with a financial institution.

Republican aldermanic candidate Senitta Conyers — who was noted as the most egregious violator of the batch of 23 candidates who had errors — submitted her campaign finance report on Tuesday, which noted no expenditures and $155 in contributions thus far.

Conyers said there was a miscommunication between her and her treasurer. "I [had] the report. There was just a miscommunication between the treasurer and I," Conyers said Tuesday. "I'm not trying to get in trouble for $100."

The other three candidates who fixed the errors by The Gazette's deadline Wednesday were Joseph Cohen, Chris Huckenpoehler, and Ron Tobin.

Mayoral candidate Clint Hoffman faces a referral to the state's attorney for not setting up a campaign bank account at all, though he reported expenditures of about $1,200 and no contributions by the Aug. 17 deadline.

Hoffman said he has no intention of meeting the Friday deadline. "I'm going to let them send it to the prosecutor and deal with it from there," said Hoffman, who said he used his Visa credit card for all of his purchases and could prove his expenditures.

"It's like, why bother, for two more weeks," he said. The city primary elections are Sept. 15. He said he would send a certified mail response to the county's election board, which handles the city's elections, but didn't handle the finance reports. "It says a few things that they're not going to like."

The majority of the other candidates have the same violation: "failure to pass personal contributions and expenditures through treasurer," which means expenditures not paid for directly from the candidates' designated campaign bank account.

"Those are not really that serious. They could be in the future, but we're just nipping them in the bud now," said Anne Leffler, president of the Board of Supervisors of Elections for the city.

Still, candidates are taking the notifications seriously, and making strides to rectify some of the mistakes and ensure they don't happen in the future.

Chris Huckenpoehler, a Republican running for alderman, had three minor violations, and said that there were small campaign roadblocks that led to some of the violations.

For instance, his treasurer has had time constraints and could not handle a lot of the contributions, and his campaign bank account was in the red as result of spending.

Huckenpoehler has since hired a new treasurer, Eric Myers, the former treasurer for the Republican Central Committee of Frederick County.

"I've been struggling for money, and I don't ethically have it in me to ask for money unless I make it past the [primary]," Huckenpoehler said. "If I can show people that I can make it past the [primary], then I'll ask them for money."

The city's Board of Supervisors of Elections did not have issues with the finance reports filed by candidates C. Paul Smith (R), John Daniels (D) and John Shupe (R).

The primary will have 10 Republicans and eight Democrats; the top five vote-getters in each party will appear on the Nov. 3 General Election. The mayoral primary has three from each party.

E-mail Erica L. Green at egreen@gazette.net.