Now that the various races are over, what happens to the money leftover held by candidates that were running for office? Do they pocket was left as a type of salary? Do they pass some up the line to state or national party committees?
The money can be kept in the Campaign’s account to be used for a future run, or it can be donated to another campaign, to charity, or returned to the donors.
Candidates can’t keep money donated to their campaigns.
In Minnesota, there is one exception to this.
If a candidate had a campaign account with money in it prior to the passage of our Campaign Finance Act, when they close their campaign committee, they ARE allowed to keep up to the balance they had at that time.
But since it was many years ago when we passed the Campaign Finance laws (at least 25 years, I think), there aren’t too many candidates around to whom this exception would still apply. And it’d get some bad publicity, too.
It’s much easier to just hire your spouse as campaign manager, and your kids as campaign office staff, at a salary that will use up the remaining campaign funds in a few months. (We used to have a local guy who used this a lot. He’d file as a token candidate against the well-liked incumbent, get that party’s share of the public campaign financing money, and feed it all back into his family income this way. Requiring a minimum number of matching small donations has closed that loophole now.)
Senators and Congressman usually still have campaign organizations that keep any leftover funds. They then keep these funds for their next campaign or use them to pay for travel and other political expenses that the Senator’s/Congressman’s federal office cannot pay for.
Or they can donate that money to other candidates, the national parties, or charity.