By CHRISTOPHER O’DONNELL, ELI MURRAY,
CONNIE HUMBURG AND NOAH PRANSKY
Times/WTSP Staff Writers

WASHINGTON, D.C.

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE since South Florida Rep. Mark Foley was forced out of Congress for sending sexual text messages to teenage boys.

But Foley tapped his congressional campaign fund to dine on the Palm Beach social circuit four times in early 2017, ending with a $450 luncheon at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches.

Then there’s baseball-star-turned-senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky. He paid his daughter $94,800 from campaign money in the four years after he left office, only stopping when he’d bled his fund dry.

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And over the past 17 months, political advisor Dylan Beesley paid his firm more than $100,000 from the campaign account of Hawaii Congressman Mark Takai for “consulting services.”

It’s hard to imagine what Beesley advised. Takai was dead that whole time.

In their political afterlife, former politicians and their staffers are hoarding unspent campaign donations for years and using them to finance their lifestyles, advance new careers and pay family members, an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, 10News WTSP and TEGNA-owned TV stations found.

Their spending makes a mockery of one of the fundamental principles of America’s campaign finance laws: Donations must be spent only on politics, not politicians’ personal lives.

The TV investigation

Times/WTSP reporters analyzed more than 1 million records detailing the spending of former U.S. lawmakers and federal candidates. They found roughly 100 of these zombie campaigns, still spending even though their candidate’s political career had been laid to rest.

Of course, history is full of politicians stretching the definition of legitimate campaign expenses. But most of those cases at least involved a campaign of some sort.

By contrast, former Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, had been out of office for more than three years when he spent $4,555 on Ohio State football tickets. Former Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, rented office space from his father’s hardware company for $9,600 and paid his wife almost $22,000 to handle paperwork in the six years after he left office.

Other ex-candidates spent leftover donations on airline tickets, club memberships, a limo trip, cell phones, parking and new computers, the investigation found. Some former lawmakers paid themselves thousands of dollars without providing any explanation for where the money went. One spent $940 at Total Wine.

They weren’t all low-profile political figures. Former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, still has an active presidential campaign account that he used to pay almost $16,170 to his daughter through 2017, five years after he last sought office.

Republican candidate for president in 2012
Left office in 2013
Paid his daughter $16,170 (January 2015-September 2017)

Paul drove away without answering a single question. He and his daughter didn’t respond to other requests for comment.
None of the spending was formally investigated by the Federal Election Commission, which is responsible for stopping federal candidates from treating their campaigns like personal slush funds.

By law, donations should be spent on campaigning and the cost of being in office. They can also be refunded to donors or given away to other candidates, political committees or charities.

But the law doesn’t stop ex-lawmakers and losing candidates from keeping their campaigns running forever, even if they never re-enter politics.

Twenty of the campaigns identified by the Times/WTSP stayed active for more than a decade. Eight kept on spending even after the candidate they were supposedly working to elect had died — buying lavish dinners, paying cell phone bills and writing rent checks.

Six campaign finance experts told Times/WTSP reporters that some of the zombie campaign spending was a potential election-law violation that should have been investigated by the FEC.

“There’s just no legitimate explanation for that, and it’s just outrageous,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It’s the kind of abuse that people only perpetrate when they’re sure nobody is watching and they can get away with anything.”

Times/WTSP reporters requested interviews with all five FEC commissioners. Only two responded. They both declined.

FEC spokesman Christian Hilland said the agency cannot comment on individual cases that may end up under investigation in the future.

“There are personal use prohibitions,” Hilland said. “Outside of that, if there are still costs associated with a campaign, utilities or a lease on a building – that can still be paid.”

Confronted about their spending, most candidates said they kept their accounts open in case they ran again one day, and they disputed that the money benefitted them personally.


Getty Images
Former Rep. Mark Foley tapped his campaign fund to dine on the Palm Beach social circuit.
Several said they would consider shutting their campaigns down. Many didn’t return requests for comment. Two fled when questioned about their spending by reporters from the Times/WTSP and TEGNA-owned partner TV stations around the country.

Foley, the former Palm Beach congressman, said ethical lines are “in the eye of the beholder,” but added that the FEC doesn’t draw lines or provide guidance.

Campaign experts said that while FEC rules are vague, it’s clear that someone out of politics should not have expenses that come with campaigning.

“It’s hard to imagine how some of this is not illegal,” said Larry Noble, a former FEC attorney and senior director of ethics for the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center. “If you’re not in office and you aren’t running, there aren’t a lot of expenditures you should be having.”

★★★

http://www.tampabay.com/projec...llions-after-office/

What are the alternatives to them spending away the campaign money?

I knew long ago that campaign money was politician's slush funds. They run their campaigns one of two ways: in the red and leave vendors hanging or keep it as a "warchest" for funneling to other politicians or after they retire.

The one that gets me is the dead guy.