Holly Thomas spent nearly a year chasing a campaign invoice that never got answered. Six years after her Hutchinson bakery filled a primary watch-party order for Sen. Roger Marshall, a Facebook post finally produced a check.
Daily Mail reporting laid out how the owner of Holly’s Sweet Treats described a 2020 order of custom cookies and other treats, repeated collection attempts that went nowhere, and payment that arrived only after she went public last week.
Thomas said Marshall’s campaign ordered 150 sugar cookies stamped with the campaign logo, plus 100 cupcakes and 100 brownies, for a primary election watch party. The invoice came to $678.75. She said she never received the money.
The timing mattered. Thomas was a brand-new small business owner in the middle of COVID, when cash flow decided whether many shops stayed open. She said every dollar counted.
Marshall, a Kansas Republican due for re-election this year, responded once the unpaid bill drew attention. His office repaid the bakery and posted that the campaign had no idea how the lapse occurred. Thomas later confirmed the invoice was marked paid. The sequence is simple: a local vendor waited years, spoke up, and then got paid.
Thomas described the order and the silence that followed in a Facebook post last Thursday. She attached the old invoice and made clear she had tried the ordinary channels first.
She wrote that the campaign never returned her calls and never settled the bill during the stretch when she pressed for payment.
“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.”
She detailed the collection effort that came next.
“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 tied the unpaid bill to the thin margins of a startup bakery under pandemic pressure. Ingredients, labor, and time all came out of her pocket. She said her shop could not afford to give product away.
“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.”
She added that the treats cost real money to produce and real hours for her employees. In her telling, those dollars were not optional extras. They were the difference between covering costs and eating the loss.
COVID-era waste and favoritism have drawn hard scrutiny elsewhere, including cases where two Massachusetts Democratic officials faced federal charges tied to COVID relief funds. Thomas’s complaint was narrower and more familiar: a small vendor filled an order and waited for a check that did not come.
Two days after Thomas’s Facebook post, Marshall addressed the bill on X. He said the problem reached his office only after it became known, and he described immediate steps to fix it.
“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’s post included payment proof. The attached figures showed a $1,300 payment against the original $678.75 invoice. That total falls $57.50 short of a precise double of the listed bill, even as his statement called the repayment double. The bakery owner still treated the matter as closed.
In a follow-up Facebook post the next day, Thomas confirmed the money had landed.
“Better late than never, right? Six years later, I guess we can finally mark that invoice PAID!”
She had already said she would not support Marshall’s re-election. Payment did not erase the years she carried the cost. It did end the open invoice.
Marshall is running again for his Senate seat this year. Campaigns burn through caterers, printers, and local shops every cycle. Most invoices get paid without a viral post. This one did not.
Kansas politics rarely stays quiet in a Senate year. One recent flashpoint came when a Kansas Democrat publicly told Kamala Harris to stay away from his Senate campaign, a reminder that candidates and their teams are already managing public collisions over judgment and associations.
Thomas’s dispute is smaller in scale and clearer in paperwork. A bakery produced logo cookies and desserts. An invoice issued. Phone calls and emails went out. No payment arrived until the owner put the record online.
Marshall’s explanation was straightforward on its face: the campaign did not know, then it did, then it paid and tried to apologize. Campaigns are busy operations. Vendors still have rent and payroll. The gap between those realities is where unpaid invoices fester.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Marshall, while working as an obstetrician-gynecologist, sued about 700 patients over debts and that 81 patients went to jail. The coverage included an example of a mother sued over a $129 postpartum visit.
That separate record involves medical bills, not campaign catering. It does show a long pattern of public attention on money owed and money pursued. Senate hopefuls elsewhere have watched debt-related claims unravel under documents, much as El-Sayed’s $700 million medical debt boast collapsed under Wayne County records when the paperwork failed to match the rhetoric.
In Hutchinson, the paperwork was a bakery invoice. Thomas posted it. Marshall’s office answered with a payment larger than the original bill and a public note that the lapse should not have happened.
The order sat in 2020. Thomas said she chased payment for nearly a year by phone and email and got no return call. The invoice stayed open. Last Thursday she described the history on Facebook and said she would not vote for Marshall’s return to the Senate. Two days later Marshall posted that his office had repaid the 2020 bill and tried to reach the business to apologize. The following day Thomas announced the invoice could finally be marked paid.
Absolute calendar dates for the posts and the transaction were not pinned down beyond those relative markers. The watch-party venue was not named. The precise campaign entity listed on the original invoice was not detailed beyond the parties’ descriptions. What was detailed were the product counts, the $678.75 bill, the $1,300 payment, and the two public statements that bookended the resolution.
Midterm messaging is already framing the choice voters face. Vance has framed the midterm elections as a fight between common sense and Democratic extremism, and basic vendor payment sits on the common-sense side of that line. Campaigns that order from Main Street shops should close their tabs without needing a Facebook flare-up.
Other Senate campaigns have had to explain gaps and staff pushback when public timelines slipped, including when Texas Democrat James Talarico returned after a multi-day campaign gap and staff rejected critics. Marshall’s episode was not a schedule hole. It was an unpaid local invoice that survived for years until sunlight hit it.
Holly’s Sweet Treats did the work in Hutchinson. The campaign took delivery for a watch party. The bill sat. Thomas kept the lights on through a hard season for small shops and kept the record of what she was owed. When she posted, the senator’s office moved.
Marshall said he had no idea how the nonpayment occurred. He also said repayment and an apology contact came as soon as the office learned of it. Thomas accepted the money and closed the invoice with a dry line about better late than never. She had already announced her voting decision for the next cycle.
No criminal charge or formal campaign-finance case was described around this bakery bill. The dispute played out as a vendor complaint, a public post, a campaign response, and a confirmed payment. The amounts were modest by Senate-race standards and large by the standards of a new bakery counting every tray of cookies during COVID.
Local businesses that cater campaign events are not donors and not props. They are contractors. They buy sugar, pay decorators, and schedule staff on the promise the invoice will clear. When it does not, the shop carries the loss while the campaign moves on to the next rally.
Marshall’s team fixed the specific bill once it surfaced. The longer lesson does not require a press release. Campaigns that want credit for supporting Main Street should not need a viral post to settle a six-year-old cookie order.
Pay the local bakery on time. Voters notice who does.
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