Cortez Masto donates campaign contribution from Barlow

By Megan Messerly

Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 | 12:35 p.m.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto’s campaign has donated a $1,000 campaign contribution from Las Vegas City councilman Ricki Barlow to charity after news broke this week of an FBI investigation into Barlow.

A Cortez Masto campaign aide confirmed today that the campaign donated Barlow’s $1,000 contribution, made in February, to the Nevada Network Against Domestic Violence. A copy of the check provided by the campaign confirms a $1,000 check was written from the campaign to the organization on Wednesday, the same day that news broke of an ongoing FBI investigation into Barlow’s campaign contributions.

Barlow also was announced in January as one of the more than two dozen founding members of “African Americans for Cortez Masto,” described as a “coalition of community leaders, clergy and elected officials” from across the African American community who support Cortez Masto’s Senate campaign.

The campaign aide said Barlow’s name was removed this morning from the archived media release posted on the campaign’s website that had announced the formation of the group.

A state Republican operative trying to connect Cortez Masto to Barlow mistook state Sen. Kelvin Atkinson for Barlow in a tweet Thursday morning. Both Atkinson and Barlow are black.

“Another friend of (Cortez Masto) involved in political corruption?” the state party’s rapid response director John Burke wrote on Twitter, with a picture of Cortez Masto and Atkinson attached to the tweet.

Burke later deleted the tweet and apologized for it on Twitter, calling it “disrespectful."

Barlow also donated $1,000 to Democratic congressional candidate Ruben Kihuen’s campaign in January. Kihuen’s campaign said Friday afternoon that the contribution would be donated to the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.

Kihuen is running in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District against Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy.