Teresa Purcell, who ran for a 19th District House of Representatives seat earlier this year only to lose to Republican Jim Walsh by a few hundred votes, says she was blindsided by the news that a complaint was filed against her by State Attorney General Bob Ferguson Monday.

“I am horrified at this, and literally have not seen anything from the Attorney General’s office,” she said Tuesday, adding the first word she heard about the complaint came from reporters at The Daily World who contacted her for comment late Monday afternoon.

The complaint alleges Purcell and her campaign team failed to follow campaign finance laws. Specifically mentioned were not reporting the occupations or employers for 42 donors and failure to report debts incurred for video and film creation, political advertising and yard signs before the invoices were paid.

Purcell says she has already been dealing with the Attorney General’s office, which recently asked her to provide receipts and other information detailing her campaign spending, “but they did not reference this (complaint) in any way, shape or form.” Purcell says she is fully cooperating and “never intended to violate any kind of law.”

The initial complaint was filed by Glen Morgan, who runs a website encouraging government whistleblowers to come forward and has filed many similar complaints over the years. He was described by Purcell as a person “paid by the Republican Party, an operative to do this kind of harassment.” Purcell believes this complaint is just continued fallout from a campaign that was hotly contested and, at times, nasty.

“I could have made many charges against my opponent, but chose not to because I didn’t want to waste taxpayer dollars. I guess it’s just one more element of losing an election by 500 votes in a campaign where the opposition did not say a single true thing about me,” she said. Purcell called the complaint a “distraction” to the real issue: “This district needs folks who can work across urban and rural lines and provide the infrastructure to attract and keep businesses. This is the conversation I want to have. At this point it feels like they’re just trying to destroy me. I am going to fight back. There was no intentional wrongdoing.”