The Texas Trib explores the question of what happens to the money after a candidate drops out or an incumbent retires.
Let’s say you’re a donor to a candidate or an elected official who quits a race mid-campaign or chooses not to run again. What if you made a contribution to one of the nine Texas legislators who decided not to seek reelection this year — to Plano’s Brian McCall (who had nearly $542,000 in his campaign account, according to his latest filing with the Texas Ethics Commission), or Lubbock’s Carl Isett (nearly $139,000), or San Antonio’s Frank Corte (more than $123,000)? What if you gave to Tom Schieffer, the former Texas House member and American diplomat who campaigned as a prospective nominee for governor before deciding against running, or to Jack McDonald, the former tech executive who raised more than $805,000 while considering a challenge to U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul that he utimately thought better of? What happens to your money?
Almost-candidates and former officer-holders have wide latitude in how they can unload their campaign cash. The same rules apply to lawmakers who leave office and to abortive hopefuls. According to Texas campaign finance attorney Ed Shack, the only firm Thou Shalt Not is that candidates can’t dip into contributions for personal use (which is a narrowly proscribed territory, as shown by the Texas Ethics Commission’s recent approval of Sen. John Whitmire’s purchase of $90,000 in baseball tickets with campaign funds). Candidates must also clear campaign-associated accounts within six years after they get out of office or leave electoral politics, whichever is later.
As long as they make sure they’re using contributions in a way that’s related to serving in office or campaigning, the recipients of your cash have a few options. They can give it to their political parties, other candidates or political committees, charities, or to the state comptroller for deposit in the state treasury (though a spokesperson for the Comptroller’s office said they don’t have a record of that ever happening). As long as it’s used for the express purpose of setting up or helping a scholarship program, candidates can even donate to schools or colleges. State candidates can also opt to refund contributions to donors; the only limit is that they can’t reimburse more money to a donor than that donor contributed during the past two years.
Well, I don’t know what will happen with any of these folks’ money, but I do know that it’s now been five years since former State Rep. Steve Wolens and former US Rep. Jim Turner left their offices, and as of the last reporting deadline each of them still had over a million dollars in the bank. As neither of them is on a ballot this year, I for one would like to know what they plan on doing with all that money. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are some other elections of interest this year, and there are plenty of good homes for their dollars if they want to look for them. What’s it gonna be, fellas?
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