OFFICIAL BUSINESS
Quick ethics quiz. If your chief of staff texts “Primary purpose is what we say it is,” is that (a) a philosophy seminar, (b) a calendar color key, or (c) a taxpayer-funded campaign on wheels? In a joint investigation, Kansas Reflector and MS NOW reviewed more than 200 texts, along with audio, video, photos, and calendar items, from Sen. Roger Marshall‘s 2020 Senate run, when he was still a Kansas congressman. KCUR ran the package this morning. The answer is not (a).
OFFICIAL BUSINESS is supposed to mean the work taxpayers pay for. In these records, it often means whatever label made the flight reimbursable.
Roger Marshall in his 2017 official House portrait, from his first term as a Kansas congressman. Three years later his office was color-coding campaign trips as “Official.” Credit: Eric Connolly, U.S. House Office of Photography, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
One meeting. Whole trip. Taxpayers fly.
According to the texts, chief of staff Brent Robertson arranged a single official meeting in Chicago and then told staff the entire campaign trip would be deemed “Official,” so Marshall’s flights could go on the taxpayer tab. Staff kept a color-coded calendar to tell official events from campaign ones. The Members’ Congressional Handbook is blunt about this: if the “primary purpose” of a trip is non-official, “the office cannot schedule official activities around the non-official event/purpose to make the travel eligible” for reimbursement.
Robertson read the rule differently. Booking a March 2020 trip to Philadelphia for Marshall, whom staff called “Doc,” he wrote: “We have a lot more leash than even I thought. Go ahead and book Philly for Doc. There is no ratio system at all.” Then came the business model: “Will literally need one official meeting per trip.”
Brett Kappel, a campaign-finance lawyer at Harmon Curran, told the reporters that “staff do not, actually, have a long leash.” Craig Holman of Public Citizen called the accounts “both breathtaking and seemingly very damning of Marshall’s character.”
The trips tell the story. On a late-September 2020 swing through Oklahoma, Marshall’s leadership PAC paid for his flights, while Robertson put the hotels and restaurant meals on the Members’ Representational Allowance, the taxpayer-funded office account. On an October 2020 trip to Dallas, campaign money bought the flights, but taxpayers bought a meal, even though the only official event on the calendar was a Zoom meeting. The same color-coded calendar marked a Cowboys-Giants game, three meetings, and a fundraising dinner as political. When staff objected to booking a campaign-looking trip with government money, a former staffer texted their mother that Robertson said they could blame him if they were ever deposed.
Then there was dinner. A staffer asked whether anyone else had eaten at Prime on Nine, a Dodge City steakhouse, because “they’re questioning the $170 price tag for 2.” Robertson replied, “Who is they,” declared “there’s no statutory limit on what I can spend on meals,” and wrote, “Approve it.” Experts pointed out that there is a limit, the daily meal rate set by the General Services Administration. For Kansas in 2020, it was $55. Math is not a partisan sport.
The pep talk on the official Zoom
On Oct. 13, 2020, Marshall texted senior staff on both the official and campaign sides to set up a “pep talk” with “everyone.” Just to be clear, he added: “Yes everybody.” The “MANDATORY ALL-STAFF CALL” landed on official email calendars, and congressional and campaign aides joined, many of them on taxpayer-funded phones and computers. Video of the Oct. 14 Zoom, reviewed by the outlets, shows Marshall discussing a shortage of campaign signs and what door-knockers were hearing. He also asked his campaign manager for “talking points” and “helpful hints” for voters worried about health care.
Michael Brooks, then Marshall’s legislative director, texted another staffer that “we objected to this illegal (activity)” and that he had raised it with superiors. Holman said the pep talk “clearly crosses the line into illegal behavior,” noting that every congressional staffer is briefed on “how to honor the wall between official duties and campaign activities.” In his words, “Both Marshall and the staff may be held liable for that violation.”
A pep talk about yard signs on a mandatory official call is not constituent service. It is a campaign meeting that forgot to change rooms.The unpaid campaign that
The unpaid campaign that somehow runs
Marshall is now in a race with Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton that recent polls show essentially tied, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. According to his July FEC filing, nobody working for his campaign had received a paycheck in five years, which experts said was potentially unprecedented. Robertson now says the campaign has some paid staff, but he wouldn’t say how many or since when. From the start of 2025 through August, the campaign spent just $206,869.
“For a Senate campaign, it is extremely uncommon for there not to be expenses for campaign staff and countless other normal campaign expenses,” said Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center. If the office “used taxpayer funds for campaign activity disguised as official business,” he said, “it is a clear violation of one of the most basic ethics rules.” His bottom line: “These very serious allegations warrant at the very least an immediate and credible explanation from the senator’s office. Otherwise, a Senate Ethics Committee investigation is needed.”
That explanation has not arrived. Campaign lawyer Ryan Dollar promised to respond “meaningfully” to the reporters’ questions, then sent a statement that answered none of them. He said the campaign follows FEC and Senate ethics rules, refused to share campaign operations with “our opponent’s reporters,” and blamed “a disgruntled employee.” That one disgruntled employee apparently produced 200 texts, a color-coded calendar, and a Zoom with its own calendar invite.
The same records show how blurry the line stays. Robertson told staff to fly Marshall “from Kansas to Sarasota as a stopover,” near the Florida home that drew a crowd chant of “You don’t live here!” at last month’s State Fair debate. The Kansas City Star counted at least 14 official trips through Sarasota from 2021 to 2024, costing taxpayers $18,886. Robertson’s own commute from Lynchburg, Virginia, to Washington has now cost taxpayers more than $71,000, up from the $44,000 Politico reported last year. And communications director Payton Fuller draws a taxpayer salary in the Senate office while serving as the campaign’s unpaid volunteer spokeswoman. It is the same staff in the same building, just on different letterhead.
The U.S. Capitol’s west front. Under the Members’ Congressional Handbook, an office cannot schedule official activities around a campaign trip to make the travel reimbursable. Credit: Architect of the Capitol, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The red costume: ethics theater with a color key
Republicans love a lecture about draining the swamp, right up until the calendar needs a legend. Marshall’s office color-coded official and campaign events, then treated “Official” like a password that unlocks taxpayer airfare. “Primary purpose is what we say it is” is not a gray area. It is a confession with autocorrect turned off.
It also sits awkwardly next to Marshall’s own motto. In 2020 he told the Kansas Reflector, “My philosophy has always been if it’s gray, stay away. That’s what I tell my staff.” Apparently the staff heard “stay away from the color key.”
We have covered this neighborhood before, in Not a Campaign Ad and Integrity for Thee, Recurring for Me. The tools change, but the costume doesn’t: virtue on the stump and creative accounting in the group chat.
If your ethics brand cannot survive a Zoom recording and a text thread, it was never ethics. It was branding.
The blue costume: franking as a second campaign account
Democrats, put the popcorn down.
Marshall himself has a franking history. In 2016, his campaign ran a commercial accusing then-Rep. Tim Huelskamp of “cheating taxpayers to bankroll dishonest mailers” with franked, taxpayer-funded mail, according to a 2020 Kansas Reflector report. Then he warmed to the tool. In the year before Pat Roberts announced his retirement, Marshall sent about a dozen franked messages. In the 18 months after the Senate seat opened up, he sent around 75, and he spent $145,000 in tax dollars on franking in 2019 and the first half of 2020. Kansas Democrats called that “blatant hypocrisy and cynicism.” They were right, and the same report shows they had a franking habit of their own. Kansas’s lone House Democrat, Sharice Davids, spent $188,000 on franking over the same stretch, more than Marshall did. The four Kansas House incumbents together spent $1.1 million. Both parties treat the frank as a stealth ad buy with better stationery.
If you want a newer blue receipt, look at Michigan. Business Insider found Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar smiling down from taxpayer-funded highway billboards. His office started paying billboard companies in October 2023, after it became clear he would face a primary challenge. His office spent nearly $327,000 on advertising in 2023. Then LegiStorm found that in 2024 he spent $964,740 on printing and reproduction, which came to 51.5% of everything his office spent. Nearly $930,000 of it went to ads, and Thanedar himself was listed as the vendor for more than $484,000 of that. He told The Detroit News that House rules only allow payment after the services are delivered. Sources told HuffPost the billboards felt “more like campaign self-promotion than official communication.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., whose office spent $964,740 on printing and reproduction in 2024, nearly all of it on ads, per LegiStorm. Credit: U.S. House of Representatives, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Democrats do not get to dunk on Marshall’s color-coded calendar while one of their own runs highway billboards off the office budget.
Both costumes
Here is the rule neither party wants on a yard sign. Official funds pay for official work, and campaign funds pay for campaigns. Franking and the office allowance are not a second PAC with a congressional seal. One official meeting does not turn a fundraising weekend into government travel. A mandatory Zoom about door-knockers is not a staff meeting, and a $170 dinner for two does not shrink to $55 because a chief of staff says so.
Republicans lecture about ethics, then text “Primary purpose is what we say it is.” Democrats preach about franking, then buy billboards and mass mail that work like incumbency insurance. Marshall attacked Huelskamp’s franking, then expanded his own. Kansas Democrats attacked Marshall’s franking while their own congresswoman outspent him. The swamp is bipartisan, and the color key is optional.
Own one standard. If it is a campaign trip, the campaign pays. If it is a pep talk about yard signs, keep it off the official Zoom. If your FEC spending looks like a bake sale while your office calendar looks like a war room, expect questions.
So ask your senator one question this week, whether it’s Marshall or anyone else: show me the wall between the taxpayer calendar and the campaign calendar, in writing, with receipts. If the answer starts with “primary purpose is what we say it is,” you already have yours.
Receipts
- Kansas Reflector, Oct. 9, 2026. Joint investigation with MS NOW by Sherman Smith and Matt Fuller: 200+ texts, the Chicago “Official” trip, the color-coded calendar, the Oklahoma and Dallas trips, “Primary purpose is what we say it is,” the $170 Prime on Nine dinner against the $55 GSA meal rate, the Philadelphia “leash” texts, the Oct. 14, 2020 pep-talk Zoom, the Brooks text, quotes from Holman, Kappel, and Payne, the $206,869 FEC spending figure, Dollar’s statement, Sarasota travel, Robertson’s commuting costs, and Fuller’s dual role.
- MS NOW, Oct. 9, 2026. The same joint investigation, with video.
- KCUR, Oct. 10, 2026. Kansas City’s NPR station carrying the Kansas Reflector and MS NOW investigation.
- Members’ Congressional Handbook. The House rule on official travel and “primary purpose.”
- Kansas Reflector, Oct. 8, 2020. Marshall’s 2016 Huelskamp commercial, his “if it’s gray, stay away” quote, about $145,000 in franking for 2019 and early 2020, Davids at $188,000, $1.1 million for four Kansas House incumbents, and the Kansas Democratic Party’s “blatant hypocrisy” charge.
- Business Insider, March 21, 2024. Thanedar’s taxpayer-funded billboards, nearly $327,000 in 2023 office advertising, and HuffPost’s “campaign self-promotion” sources.
- LegiStorm, April 21, 2025. Thanedar’s $964,740 in 2024 printing, 51.5% of his office spending, nearly $930,000 in ads, and more than $484,000 listing himself as vendor.
- Earlier Hypocrisy Democracy: Not a Campaign Ad and Integrity for Thee, Recurring for Me.
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Originally published on Substack.