In 2020, Roger Marshall's Senate campaign ordered decorated cookies with his name on them, plus brownies and cupcakes, for his primary-night watch party. The bakery that made them was Holly's Sweet Treats on Main Street in Hutchinson, Kansas — a brand-new small business at the height of COVID.
The bill was $678. It went unpaid for six years.
"Do you know why I will never vote for Roger Marshall?" owner Holly Thomas wrote on Facebook last week, as Kansas Public Radio reported. "Because six years ago, when I was a brand-new small business owner, his campaign ordered cookies and treats from my bakery for his primary election watch party. And I never got paid. For nearly a year, I made repeated attempts to collect payment, reaching out by phone and email. I never received a return phone call, and the invoice was never paid."
"It was in the middle of COVID, so every dollar mattered then," she told the station. "It was a big deal."
Her post went viral and reached the New York Times homepage. Then — and only then — the campaign paid.
"We have absolutely no idea how this happened"
Marshall posted a screenshot of a $1,300 payment. "We have absolutely no idea how this happened, but rest assured as soon as it became known to us, we immediately attempted to contact the business in order to apologize, and we have repaid the bill from 2020, double," he wrote, according to CNN, via KCRA.
Two problems with that.
First, it was known to them. Thomas says she spent nearly a year calling and emailing to get paid and never heard back.
Second, it wasn't double. KCUR noted that $1,300 is a little less than double the original bill.
Thomas confirmed the invoice is finally marked paid. She still won't vote for him.
When his patients owed him, he didn't wait six years
The reason this story landed so hard in Kansas is what Marshall did when the money was owed to him.
Before he went to Congress, Marshall was an OB-GYN in Great Bend. As we reported in September, his practice took more than 700 of his own patients to court over unpaid bills, garnished their paychecks and bank accounts, and asked judges for arrest warrants when they missed hearings. At least 81 of them were arrested. One woman was sued over a $129 postpartum visit.
Marshall has defended his methods as "very common." Over the weekend, The Kansas City Star tested that. It reviewed medical debt lawsuits from roughly 150 practices in the Kansas court system, according to MS NOW's summary of the Star's findings:
- Suing patients isn't unusual. But the 18% annual interest Marshall charged on unpaid bills was by far the highest of all of them.
- The Star "found no other medical providers that charged annual interest at 18% or any other specified rate above 12%."
- The lawyer who represented Marshall's practice told the Star it was Marshall's office, not the lawyers, that decided how much interest to charge.
- The Star gave Marshall and his campaign two weeks to answer questions. They declined.
So here is the record. When a patient in Great Bend couldn't pay, Marshall's practice charged 18% a year, sued, and asked judges for arrest warrants when patients missed court. When his campaign owed a small-town baker $678, it didn't answer her calls for a year and paid up six years later — when it became a campaign problem.
Part of a pattern with money
The bakery isn't the only question about how Marshall handles money that isn't his. His chief of staff booked campaign trips on the taxpayer dime, texting that the "primary purpose is what we say it is." He also kept his family's pandemic stock trades hidden for 17 months, despite a law requiring members of Congress to disclose their trades on time.
Marshall is in a close race with Democrat Adam Hamilton for the Senate seat on November 3.
What the record shows
Roger Marshall's 2020 campaign ordered $678 in baked goods from a new Hutchinson bakery and, according to its owner, ignored a year of calls and emails about the bill. It paid $1,300 six years later, after her post went viral. As a doctor, Marshall's practice sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills and charged 18% annual interest — the highest of roughly 150 Kansas practices The Kansas City Star reviewed, a rate his own lawyer says Marshall's office set.
