Some Details Are Presented By Prosecution

A former Loudoun County candidate accused of election fraud turned in campaign finance reports that were riddled with inaccuracies, a prosecutor said yesterday, revealing for the first time some of the specific allegations that led to a grand jury indictment on nine felony counts last month.

Over the past five years, in two campaigns for state Senate, Mark D. Tate failed to report some donations, reported others multiple times and often reported wrong amounts or dates, prosecutor Matthew J. Britton told a Loudoun Circuit Court judge during a hearing.

"There are literally hundreds of misfiles in this case," said Britton, the commonwealth's attorney from King George County, who is serving as the special prosecutor.

Tate, 41, a Middleburg restaurateur, is also accused of writing bad checks, court documents show.

Tate's attorney, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., has said that none of the errors in Tate's campaign filings rose to the level of a crime.

"He's clearly made mistakes before in filing returns, and so have many, many, many other candidates before him," MacMahon said in an interview yesterday.

Tate was defeated in the June 12 Republican primary by lawyer Jill Holtzman Vogel, who received nearly 65 percent of the vote. The Senate seat is held by H. Russell Potts Jr. (R-Winchester), who is retiring. In November, Holtzman Vogel will face Democrat Karen Schultz and independent Donald Marro.

Some Tate supporters have questioned the timing of the indictment, announced three weeks before the primary. Holtzman Vogel was supported by the resident who first brought Tate's filings to the attention of authorities and by the prosecutor who began the formal investigation.

The prosecutor, Loudoun Commonwealth's Attorney James E. Plowman, handed the case over to Britton in April because of the conflict of interest.

Yesterday, Judge Charles H. Duff rejected a motion by prosecutors to have MacMahon dismissed from the case. Prosecutors had hoped to call the Middleburg lawyer, who donated hundreds of dollars to Tate's campaigns, as a witness.

Prosecutors say they found problems in the way MacMahon's contributions were recorded by Tate. For example, the State Board of Elections shows that Tate reported a $5,000 contribution from MacMahon on Dec. 31, 2002.

Yesterday, Britton called that contribution "a fiction." In a countermotion, MacMahon acknowledged that he has no record of the check.

"My records do not show any contribution to Mr. Tate in the amount of $5,000 on December 31, 2002, or at any other time," MacMahon wrote.

MacMahon, however, argued that there was no need to call him to the stand.

"If I thought I had a conflict of interest in this case, I would be the first one to leave this courtroom," he told the judge.

Tate is next scheduled to appear in court July 10.