U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz is demanding that Democratic challenger J.D. Ford remove or correct campaign website statements about her finances and congressional record, while challenging him to a public debate on health care, Big Tech and data centers.
The Republican congresswoman outlined her objections in a Sept. 18 letter to Ford. The two are competing for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District seat, which includes Hamilton County.
“These are not differences of political opinion. These are objectively verifiable facts,” Spartz said in a campaign news release. “If Mr. Ford has evidence to support these allegations, he should produce it. Otherwise, he should correct the record.”
Ford’s campaign website alleges that Spartz traded $5 million in stocks in industries she regulated, resisted congressional stock-trading reforms, violated disclosure rules and used her office to enrich herself.
Spartz denies those allegations. In her letter, she says she has never personally owned or traded individual stocks and that the transactions cited by Ford involved her husband Jason’s retirement account.
A congressional transaction report included with her letter identifies a September 2024 sale of Simon Property Group stock as a transaction made through Jason Spartz’s Roth IRA. It lists the sale in a disclosure range of $1,000,001 to $5 million, rather than specifying an exact $5 million amount. Spartz says the proceeds were substantially below $5 million and were used to purchase farmland.
Spartz also disputes the claim that she opposed stock-trading reform, citing her July 22 vote for H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act. The House’s official roll call confirms that she voted for the measure, which passed 232-198.
On financial disclosures, Spartz says the House Ethics Committee confirmed that a filing questioned in earlier news coverage complied with applicable requirements. The materials supplied with her letter do not include that committee confirmation.
She also rejects Ford’s assertion that congressional service enriched her, saying her financial position has not materially changed because of her service.
Beyond the financial dispute, Spartz proposes a debate covering both candidates’ legislative records, campaign contributions and committee service. She disputes Ford’s claims about her health care and technology positions and says she has refused campaign contributions from Big Tech.
In a separate Sept. 18 letter to media organizations, Spartz asks them to independently verify disputed allegations against public records before running advertisements or other paid communications containing those claims.
Ford’s response to the letters was not included in the materials provided for this story. His campaign website contained the disputed allegations when reviewed for this report.