Marshall pays bakery bill after complaint goes viral

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) paid a Kansas bakery $1,300 Saturday after its owner publicly accused his campaign of leaving a nearly $700 bill unpaid for six years.

The payment came days after Holly Thomas, owner of Holly’s Sweet Treats in Hutchinson, Kan., said Marshall’s 2020 Senate campaign never paid for cookies, cupcakes and brownies ordered for his Republican primary election watch party.

Marshall said he had no knowledge of the outstanding bill and moved to settle it after learning of Thomas’s claims.

“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,” Marshall wrote on social media Saturday.

The senator also shared a screenshot of a digital receipt showing a $1,300 payment to the bakery.

Thomas said Thursday that the campaign had left her with a $678.75 bill at a time when her newly opened business was struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Do you know why I will never vote for Roger Marshall?” Thomas wrote on Facebook . “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.”

According to an invoice Thomas shared, the campaign ordered $375 worth of custom sugar cookies, $75 in cupcakes and $175 in fudge brownies.

Thomas said she spent nearly a year trying to collect payment, repeatedly contacting the campaign by phone and email without receiving a response.

“Not only was I just starting out, but we were also in the middle of COVID, when small businesses everywhere were struggling just to keep their doors open. Every single dollar mattered,” she wrote. “Those cookies and treats cost money to make, employees’ time to prepare, and resources that my little business couldn’t afford to give away.”

Marshall, a physician who was first elected to the Senate in 2020, has previously been scrutinized over his medical practice’s efforts to collect unpaid bills from patients. The New York Times uncovered hundreds of debt collection lawsuits involving the practice.