There is little to no oversight on campaign funds after the elections.
One former congressman, now dead, still has an open account.
Interesting – candidates go into debt to run their campaigns, rather than wait on the contributions to come in.
This left HRC in debt $25 million in 2008.
Venders of signs and paraphernalia often never get their money.
The original page is now missing. Archived.
https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2018/04/26/fec-plans-crackdown-on-zombie-campaigns/
https://archive.is/e4bfp
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https://www.npr.org/2018/02/05/583461863/how-lax-regulations-make-it-easy-for-politicians-to-run-zombie-campaigns
How Lax Regulations Make It Easy For Politicians To Run 'Zombie' Campaigns
We started looking at the spending of lawmakers who have left office and what they're doing with their leftover campaign donations and were kind of surprised to find that there was actually a hundred campaigns that are still spending unused campaign donations.
Yeah, campaigns where the lawmaker has - it's been at least two years since they were either in a office or campaigning. And even though they've moved on to new careers or they're retired, they're still spending from their campaign accounts - in some cases, home items that would almost certainly be deemed personal use.
Well, that really depends on who you ask, and that's one of the things the investigation found.
It's that there's almost no laws about what happens once you leave office. Basically the reports are treated the same way. So it's almost as if the FEC isn't paying attention to who's in office or campaigning and who is, as we call them, a zombie.
So some of our zombie campaigns are genuine zombies in that the candidate has - is deceased, but their campaigns are still spending money.
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https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article101662047.html
sept 14, 2016
Clinton had nearly $25 million in debt after her failed presidential run in 2008. That sum was paid off in 2013, about 18 months before she formally declared her candidacy for 2016. Another presidential loser, Republican Newt Gingrich, will never pay $4.6 million in debt from his 2012 campaign. Gingrich will not face any civil or criminal action for stiffing businesses that provided services to his campaign like yard signs and phone-banking.