HUTCHINSON, Kan. (KPR) — The owner of a south-central Kansas bakery did not expect a Facebook post she made last Thursday to go viral and end up featured on the New York Times homepage on Sunday.
Holly Thomas, the owner of Holly's Sweet Treats on Main Street in Hutchinson, made a post about a $678 bill from 2020 that a customer never paid.
The customer: Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who is now in a close fight for re-election with Democrat Adam Hamilton.
"Do you know why I will never vote for Roger Marshall? 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," Thomas wrote on Facebook.
"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."
Thomas told Kansas Public Radio that she made decorated cookies with Marshall's name on it, brownies and cupcakes. But after a few years, she stopped pursing the bill.
"For a starting business, being able to do an order of that size for a politician and thinking I'm getting all of this exposure, and it was in the middle of COVID, so every dollar mattered then. It was a big deal," Thomas said.
Thomas said she "never dreamed" that her Facebook post would blow up.
In an email, Marshall campaign spokesperson Brent Robertson told KPR, "We have no idea how or why that happened in 2020 — the moment this came to our attention we paid the business back, double (what was owed)."
The campaign actually paid Thomas $1,300, a little less than double the original bill.
"Better late than never, right?" Thomas wrote on Facebook. "Six years later, I guess we can finally mark that invoice PAID!"
Thomas said she still does not plan to vote for Marshall.
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