A Maria Evans post contains some evidence which shows that Stewart, “was taken to court, in 2002 with American Express and in 2004 with Citibank,” and that in both cases there is a “default judgement in favor of plaintiff (s) for want of an answer by defendant.”
The post notes that according to her campaign, Ms. Stewart has since paid off her $10,000 debt to American Express.
Evans concludes:
So Karen Weldin Stewart, who wants to run the State Insurance Commissioner’s Office with a budget of tens of millions of dollars, a state office that has the responsibility of making sure financially unstable insurance companies pay their debts, can’t even manage $20,000 of her own debt, ended up in the Court of Common Pleas twice for not paying her bills and both times she didn’t even bother to answer the complaints
Note: It sounds pretty bad, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if not showing up is standard in this type of case or not. Perhaps a commenter can speak to that point.