The most attractive method for re-using campaign cash is to donate it to an educational institution or independent foundation bearing the name of the candidate, for example, the Tom Harkin Institute at Drake University in Iowa, the John McCain Institute for International Leadership of Arizona State University (located in Washington, DC), The Evan and Susan Bayh Foundation; and the Joe Lieberman Connecticut Scholarship Fund. Bayh's campaign funds total $10.02 million. He left the Senate in 2011.
There is even campaign cash after death. The Donald M. Payne Sr. Global Foundation has $185,000 in the bank. Payne, a New Jersey Democratic congressman, died in 2012. Payne's family is permitted to determine how to use the leftover cash. New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg died in 2013. Yet, Lautenberg's campaign committee paid Common Sense Consulting, the personal company of the campaign's treasurer, $14,000 between 2013 and 2015.
When a politician must travel to an annual or ad hoc meeting of his or her generic PAC or nonprofit institute, the old campaign slush funds come in handy for paying for business class airline tickets, limousines, country club membership (Mar-a-Lago anyone?), expensive dinners, or booze.
Some former members of Congress, who are lobbyists, use their campaign war chests to donate to sitting members of Congress. Believe it or not, FEC rules and campaign finance laws permit such donations.
With some two dozen Democratic presidential candidates and the possibility of at least two Republicans joining former Massachusetts governor William Weld in challenging Trump in the Republican primary, there will be millions of dollars in campaign cash left over at the end of the 2020 race. As in the past, much of its will be plowed into quite legal "slush funds" that will fatten the political wallets of the failed presidential candidates while an emaciated FEC is left to muddle its way through another election cycle as best as it can.
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