A Fulton County Superior Court judge rejected former Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine’s bid to get ethics charges stemming from his failed 2010 campaign for governor dismissed.
Judge Henry Newkirk ruled Tuesday that the state ethics commission should be able to adjudicate Oxendine’s case before the former longtime Georgia politician can fight the issue in court.
“Under clearly established Georgia law, any party to an administrative action must completely exhaust their administrative remedies before seeking judicial review,” Newkirk wrote.
Stefan Ritter, executive director of the ethics commission, said Tuesday, “We think it is the correct decision.” Oxendine’s attorney, Douglas Chalmers, declined to comment.
Oxendine has been battling ethics complaints since 2009, following a report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he accepted $120,000 in contributions from two insurance companies.
An ethics complaint against the insurers for giving the money was dismissed in 2014 because the ethics commission’s staff had made so little progress on it. But the commission didn’t dismiss charges against Oxendine, the recipient of the donations.
The case remained largely dormant until the AJC reported last year that Oxendine failed to return more than $500,000 worth of leftover contributions from his gubernatorial bid and spent money raised for Republican runoff and general election campaigns that he never ran because he lost the primary.
Following the AJC report, ethics commission staffers filed an amended complaint against Oxendine, accusing him of improperly spending more than $208,000 raised for the runoff and general elections and accepting more than the legal limit in contributions from 19 donors.
The commission dismissed many of the charges in December after Chalmers argued that the statute of limitations had run out on charges involving the 2010 campaign.
But the commission kept alive the allegations that he took illegal contributions from the insurance companies and spent money raised for races he never ran, rather than returning it to donors.
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