{"id":383420,"date":"2026-07-23T04:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/383420\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T04:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:32:08","slug":"el-paso-city-council-candidate-cites-error-after-finance-report-flags-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/383420\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso City Council candidate cites error after finance report flags spending"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14\/CBS4) \u2014 A candidate running for El Paso City Council said he is correcting the record after his campaign finance disclosures raised ethical questions about spending on restaurants and clothing following a report by El Paso Matters.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Arturo Alluin, a businessman who is running to represent District 8 in Downtown and West El Paso, filed his campaign expenses, which included clothing and restaurant spending. <\/p>\n

According to Alluin’s Campaign Finance Report, which is public record<\/a>, Alluin raised more than $30,200 in monetary contributions, loaned his campaign $35,000, and spent $42,750 so far on his bid for office.<\/p>\n

The report further states more than $6,000 was spent on restaurants and clothing out of the $42,000 spent on his campaign so far. The expenses included meals at Alluin’s own local restaurants and locations in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n

While the Texas Ethics Commission said it does not comment on individual cases, it stated that state law strictly prohibits using campaign funds for personal use, including ordinary clothing, and limits payments to candidate-owned businesses to actual reimbursed costs.<\/p>\n

Speaking to KFOX14\/CBS4 on Wednesday, Alluin said the spending on clothing and restaurants was included in the report because of what he described as an error and inexperience with campaign reporting.<\/p>\n

He added that the spending listed in the reports was not paid for with campaign donations, but instead came from his personal funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI filed on time, and I filed in detail, and my lack of experience in clerical campaign reporting led to me sharing things that I shouldn’t have shared, but not a single dollar from what was spent was campaign money,\u201d Alluin said. \u201cIt was all personal funds, and it was all incurred during the first four months that I financed my campaign. Not a single dollar was from a donor… but I’m not in office, and I didn’t use taxpayer dollars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Filing season for the Nov. 3 election officially opened Saturday, though Alluin filed his campaign treasurer report in February, allowing him to begin fundraising then.<\/p>\n

Alluin, a businessman, owns several restaurants in El Paso, including Sushiitto, Mykonos Mediterranean Steakhouse, and the Melting Pot located at the Fountains at Farah.<\/p>\n

According to the finance report, Alluin spent money at his own restaurants and other local establishments that were described as campaign strategy meetings, fundraising meetings, volunteer recruitment, community outreach, or constituent engagement.<\/p>\n

Alluin said the meals were legitimate meetings with community leaders and that he discounted menu prices at his own restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s no taxpayer funds that were misused because I’m not in office and there’s no contributions that were misused because I didn’t receive any contributions during the first four months,\u201d Alluin said.<\/p>\n

Alluin is running to unseat incumbent Chris Canales, who was elected to City Council in 2022. <\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED: <\/a>El Paso council approves fast-track legal response to utility rate, project filings<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up<\/a> to receive the top interesting stories from in and around our community once daily in your inbox. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14\/CBS4) \u2014 A candidate running for El Paso City Council said he is correcting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-383420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}