Following the Money: What Yuma’s Mayoral Campaign Finance Records Reveal

An 80-cent discrepancy in one report. A $4.02 difference in another. A $500 contribution removed through an amendment. And several transactions that leave questions the available paperwork cannot answer.

None of these findings, by itself, establishes wrongdoing. But campaign-finance reports exist so the public can see where political money comes from, where it goes and how much remains. When the numbers disagree or information is missing, that job becomes harder.

Yuma Informed reviewed the campaign-finance filings available online for Mayor Douglas Nicholls’s Elect Douglas Nicholls committee (PC2017-06) and Carlos Adams’s Adams for Yuma Mayor committee (PC2026-03).

The review went beyond reading the totals printed on the covers. We recalculated reported balances, checked supporting schedules, examined 101 transaction and obligation entries against their source pages, and compared Adams’s original and amended second-quarter reports line by line.

The original and amended filings were examined separately, rather than treating the amendment as though the first version never existed.

Some figures reconciled. Others did not. And in several cases, the records simply stop short of providing an answer.

There is an important distinction throughout this audit: a discrepancy is not proof of misconduct, and a missing document on the City's website does not mean the document was never filed.

We have not requested additional records from the City Clerk. This review is limited to the filings currently available online, and it is not a legal determination of whether campaign-finance laws were violated.

Douglas Nicholls: When the numbers don't quite agree

The first discrepancy appears in Nicholls’s 2022 Post-General fourth-quarter report.

The report's cover lists $1,208.88 in campaign disbursements. Turn to the Summary of Disbursements and Schedule B, however, and the figure is $1,208.08.

That's an 80-cent difference.

Using the cover's opening balance of $4,908.38, adding $6,500 in receipts and subtracting the cover's stated disbursements produces a closing balance of $10,199.50.

But the campaign reported $10,200.30.

Use the $1,208.08 figure from Schedule B instead, and the reported closing balance works.

The difference is small, and the supporting schedule provides a figure that reconciles. What the filing does not explain is why the cover carries a different amount.

A similar problem appears in Nicholls's 2026 second-quarter report, this time involving expenditures.

The six itemized amounts extracted from Schedule B(1) add up to $10,886.12. The schedule reports a total of $10,890.14.

That leaves $4.02 between the individual entries and the reported total.

We checked the amounts against the filing. The difference remains, and the available records do not identify an adjustment or individual entry that explains it.

Four dollars and two cents is hardly a campaign-finance scandal. It is, however, a difference in a public financial report that ought to be explainable.

Two contributions without dates

The same second-quarter report contains two itemized contributions with blank date fields.

One is a $300 contribution attributed to Tim Dunn. The other is a $198.50 in-kind contribution attributed to Gary Pasquinelli.

Arizona's campaign-finance reporting requirements call for dates on itemized contributions, including the applicable individual and in-kind contribution categories.

Neither entry provides one.

That does not establish when the contributions were received or why the dates were left blank. It does mean a reader cannot determine their receipt dates from the reported entries.

What does three dashes mean?

Nicholls's July Post-Primary report presents a different problem.

Instead of a dollar amount, the cash-receipts field on the cover contains three dashes: ---. The corresponding cash-receipt schedule fields are blank.

The other figures fit together.

The report begins with $22,727.07 in cash, lists $7,326.47 in disbursements and ends with $15,400.60.

Those numbers reconcile if net cash receipts were zero.

But the filing does not actually print a numeric zero in the receipts field. It prints three dashes, and that is how the entry is recorded in this audit.

The report separately lists $612.40 in in-kind equity. That figure should not be confused with cash received by the committee.

Three questions the Nicholls filings leave unanswered

Other entries involve more than arithmetic. They concern gaps between reporting periods, transaction dates and cumulative spending totals.

The missing bridge between 2022 and 2025

Nicholls's 2022 year-end report closes with $10,200.30 in cash.

The 2025 Annual report opens with $9,766.21.

That is a $434.09 difference.

The online City folder reviewed for this audit contains no intervening 2023 or 2024 report explaining how the committee moved from one balance to the other.

There may be an explanation in records not currently posted. Without those records, we cannot reconstruct the transactions or adjustments between the two figures.

Nor can we conclude that any required report was never filed simply because it does not appear in the folder.

A July contribution reported in the second quarter

The 2026 second-quarter report lists a $1,000 contribution from Chris Miller dated July 19.

The problem is the reporting period. The second quarter ended June 30.

The next report covers July 1 through July 21, a period that includes the listed contribution date. Yet the July filing contains no matching cash-receipt detail.

Was the July 19 date entered incorrectly? Was the contribution received earlier? Is there another reporting explanation?

The filings do not establish the actual receipt or check date, so none of those possibilities can be confirmed from the available records.

The Echo Canyon spending difference

The second-quarter Schedule B(1) includes an Echo Canyon entry dated July 13, with cumulative expenditures of $7,476.54.

The July report then lists a $5,000 expenditure dated July 21, bringing reported cycle-to-date spending for Echo Canyon to $12,746.53.

Subtract the $5,000 July-period expenditure and the implied earlier total is $7,746.53.

That is $269.99 more than the cumulative amount shown in the second-quarter filing.

The dates add another complication, since the Q2 entry itself carries a July date.

The public filings do not establish when the underlying purchases were authorized, recorded or paid, or whether an adjustment explains the difference. Vendor invoices, payment records or other committee documentation would be needed to sort that out.

Carlos Adams: An amendment changes the picture

Unlike the discrepancies identified in Nicholls's reports, the cash balances in the Adams filings reviewed here reconcile.

The more interesting development is what changed between Adams's original and amended 2026 second-quarter reports.

The original filing reported $9,600 in receipts and $8,936.60 in disbursements, leaving $663.40.

The amended filing reported $9,100 in receipts and $8,593.41 in disbursements, leaving $506.59.

Both versions add up correctly.

But the amendment changes the underlying transactions.

A $500 receipt included in the original report no longer appears in the amended version. Two expenditures, one for $173.18 and another for $170.01, were also removed.

Together, the deleted expenditures total $343.19.

The result is straightforward: receipts fell by $500, disbursements fell by $343.19, and the reported closing cash balance fell by $156.81.

Reported figureOriginal Q2Amended Q2

Receipts

$9,600.00

$9,100.00

Disbursements

$8,936.60

$8,593.41

Closing cash

$663.40

$506.59

The amended closing balance also matches the opening balance in Adams's July Post-Primary report.

That July report begins with $506.59, adds $886.55 in receipts and subtracts $386.55 in disbursements. It closes at $1,006.59, exactly as reported.

In other words, the amendment changes the financial picture, but the revised cash figures reconcile with the following report.

The records establish what changed. They do not establish why the original transactions were removed.

Two contributions, two spellings, two addresses

One question remains in Adams's July filing, involving contributor information rather than arithmetic.

The report lists a $500 cash contribution under the name Jose De La Crus, with an address of 8 Greenside Drive.

It also lists a $3,424 in-kind contribution under Jose De La Cruz, with an address of 6 Greenside Drive.

The names differ by one letter. The street is the same, but the house numbers are different.

These entries may concern the same contributor, or they may not. A similar name is not enough to establish that two records identify the same person.

The $500 receipt removed from Adams's original second-quarter report does not resolve the discrepancy in the July entries, either.

Without additional contributor or committee records, we cannot determine whether either name or address needs correcting.

What the records establish, and what they don't

The audit found specific differences in Nicholls's reported figures, blank contribution dates, and transactions whose timing or cumulative amounts cannot be fully explained from the online filings.

For Adams, the reviewed cash balances reconcile. His amended second-quarter report removes transactions and changes the closing balance, while the July report contains contributor details that remain unclear.

Those are findings about the records, not conclusions about anyone's intentions.

Several questions could be settled with additional documentation.

For Nicholls, the most useful records would be the intervening 2023 and 2024 filings or balance records, documentation establishing when the Chris Miller contribution was received, and transaction or vendor records explaining the Echo Canyon expenditures.

For Adams, committee records identifying the contributors and their reported addresses could clarify the July entries.

Until those documents are available, the unresolved items will remain unresolved. Calling an unexplained difference a violation would go further than the evidence allows.

The purpose of this audit is to establish what the publicly available reports actually show, including where their numbers agree, where they conflict and where they leave the public guessing.

Yuma Informed will update the findings if additional records become available.