Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner had only been a member of Congress for two months when he died unexpectedly in March. In the weeks that followed, the Texas lawmaker’s congressional campaign committee reported spending thousands of dollars in surplus campaign funds on expenses related to Turner’s funeral, including on airline tickets, an upscale hotel stay and security services.
After Rep. Donald M. Payne Sr. died in 2012 after representing New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District for 23 years, the late Democrat’s congressional campaign reported spending more than $8,500 on an air ambulance service for his medical transport.
And after Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings died in 2021, his congressional campaign reported dispensing more than $29,000 in campaign funds to his stepdaughter and widow.
Campaign finance experts told NOTUS they believe these expenditures are possible misuses of campaign funds. The Federal Election Commission, the federal agency that primarily enforces campaign finance law, generally prohibits candidates from using election money for “personal use.”
But what falls under that “personal use” umbrella is at best unclear, and at worst, indiscernible, the experts told NOTUS.
“What counts as personal versus non-personal can be fuzzy, and the FEC doesn’t really have the bandwidth and/or political will to track this and really enforce that difference,” said Omar Noureldin, senior vice president for policy and litigation strategy at nonprofit government watchdog organization Common Cause.
“Are you traveling back to your home state for personal use, or are you doing it for a quote, unquote, event? Are you paying your brother as a consultant or as your brother? The lines here can get really fuzzy,” Noureldin added.
NOTUS reviewed the campaign committee finances of more than a dozen deceased members of Congress, most of whom served in the past decade, and found irregular expenses after their deaths. Among them: campaign funds used for funeral and medical expenses, and direct payments to family members.
Dead lawmakers’ campaigns also made donations to charitable organizations — generally, a permitted expenditure — but sometimes to groups directly affiliated with the lawmaker or their family.
Hastings’ campaign, for example, reported giving thousands in remaining campaign funds to his widow, Patricia Williams, according to federal records. The campaign also reported paying his step-daughter, Maisha Williams, $2,000 in excess funds. When this was flagged by the FEC, the purpose for the disbursement was changed from “Transfer excess funds to Congressman Alcee Hastings Daughter Ms. Maisha Williams” to “storing campaign office items in storage.” The campaign subsequently paid Maisha Williams $4,000 more for the “disposal” of campaign and office materials.
Patricia Williams had previously been employed by Hastings’ congressional office but was not at the time the money was disbursed. Maisha Williams works for the congressional office of Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat representing Florida’s 20th Congressional District, according to congressional salary data.
Taken together, the Williamses received about $29,000 from the campaign after the congressman’s death. Neither Patricia Williams nor Maisha Williams could be reached by NOTUS.
Payments from a campaign committee to a family member are prohibited unless the relative is doing work for the campaign and being paid a fair price for that work, according to the FEC.
Asked what the FEC is doing to ensure deceased members’ campaigns are following the law, FEC spokesperson Myles Martin referred NOTUS to the agency’s most recent Review and Referral Procedures handbook.
The handbook defines personal use as “Funeral, cremation and burial expenses unless the expenses are used for a candidate, employee, or volunteer of an authorized committee whose death arises out of, or in the course of, campaign activity.”
The congressional campaign for Turner, the congressman who represented Texas for two months before his death in March, reported spending $2,810.97 on United Airlines and $351.32 on the Ritz-Carlton in April.
Grant Martin, a campaign consultant for Turner’s campaign, told NOTUS that the committee decided to expense the charges because they were “related to the planning and execution of the congressman’s funeral services.”
Jack Bailey and Myron Brady, who worked as Turner’s security guards during his time as Houston mayor, were listed as receiving $2,625 and $1,820, respectively, for “security services” by the Turner campaign about a month after the funeral. Bailey told NOTUS that he was paid for security services he provided during the funeral and that his work for the campaign committee ceased afterward. Brady could not be reached by NOTUS. Both men are listed on the funeral arrangements website as being pallbearers for Turner’s funeral procession.
Martin did not respond to NOTUS’ questions about why the campaign paid for security expenses related to Turner’s funeral.
The FEC outlines some prohibited personal expenses, including mortgage payments and funeral expenses for a death that occurs outside of the campaign trail, said Tom Moore, a former FEC chief of staff to longtime commissioner Ellen Weintraub and current senior fellow at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress.
“Generally, those are considered personal use unless there is a clear connection to the campaign,” Moore told NOTUS. “A committee needs to explain why it believed a particular charge was campaign-related; without that context, it’s impossible to determine whether the use of funds was proper.”
NOTUS found that multiple campaign committees donated to charities affiliated with dead lawmakers. Political money can end up being controlled by the lawmakers’ families in a way that is not expressly prohibited by federal law or FEC regulations, according to campaign finance watchdogs.
For example, Rep. Donald Payne Jr. won his father’s seat in 2012, following his father’s death. When Donald Payne Jr. himself died in 2024, his campaign donated $5,000 to the Donald Payne Sr. Global Foundation, the foundation in his father’s name. In the years after Donald Payne Sr. died, his campaign committee also disbursed $365,315 to the foundation.
Today, the foundation’s website and phone number are inactive, and it does not post on social media. Its 2019 federal tax return — the most recent that NOTUS could identify — indicated it had earned about $2,500 that year, much less than the five- and six-figure sums it recorded in years past. It ended 2019 with about $53,000 in reserve.
Isabel Cruz, a former constituent services coordinator for Donald Payne Jr. who the tax return lists as the foundation’s treasurer, said the foundation continues to operate and provide scholarships for students of the Donald M. Payne Sr. School of Technology in the lawmaker’s district.
“Congressman Payne Sr. was a global person, and he wanted students, here in Newark, to also have the ability to travel the world and know that there’s something beyond Newark,” Cruz told NOTUS. “So that they can also achieve the way he did.”
Other foundations are much less transparent in sharing how campaign funds are used.
Before the campaign committee of 16-term Rep. Louise Slaughter, who died in 2018, officially folded, it reported donating its remaining cash on hand — more than $205,000 — to the Louise and Bob Slaughter Fund. The fund is dedicated to preserving the congresswoman’s legacy, according to its former website, though it offered little detail. The fund’s website has not been active for several years, according to the WayBack Machine Internet Archive. Its Facebook page hasn’t been active since 2023.
The current status of the Louise and Bob Slaughter Fund is unclear. An archived web page for the fund from 2019 directs prospective donors to make a donation to the fund via the Rochester Area Community Foundation. A representative for the Rochester Area Community Foundation in New York, which “stewards” the fund, told NOTUS the fund was “established to carry forward their legacy of public service and community commitment.”
“Funds transferred from the Congresswoman’s campaign account were used alongside other gifts from the community to create this charitable fund, ensuring that their dedication to the community will continue in perpetuity,” Denishea Ortiz, vice president of the foundation, said in an email to NOTUS.
The congressional campaign for Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District from 2019 until his death in February 2022, reported a series of charitable transactions after the congressman died.
The committee reported donating about $125,000 to James L. Hagedorn Cancer Charities, a charity run by his widow, Jennifer Carnahan, months after Hagedorn’s death.
In the year that followed, before the committee terminated in late 2023, the funds were passed back and forth between the charity and the campaign before ultimately remaining with the committee.
Neither Carnahan, the campaign’s treasurer, nor Hagedorn Cancer Charities replied to NOTUS’ requests for comment.
The campaign committee for Republican Rep. Don Young, who represented Alaska for 49 years and was dean of the House before his death in 2022, reported dispensing $674,096 in funds and assets to the Don Young Institute.
“The whole purpose of the institution is to go through his papers, and eventually they will be donated to the University of Alaska,” Curtis Thayer, former treasurer for Young’s campaign and principal officer for the Don Young Institute, told NOTUS. “When they’re donated to the University of Alaska, any funds associated with that will also be donated to the University, to support those papers.”
Ultimately, what becomes of the papers is up to the family because they own them, Thayer told NOTUS.
In addition to charitable contributions, the campaign committees of dead lawmakers can transfer money to other political committees, refund donors or send leftover funds to the U.S. Treasury.
Campaign funds can also be used for “winding down” expenses, which the FEC describes as any cost incurred in the six months after a campaign decides to cease operations. As a result, thousands of dollars often continue to flow to former staff and campaign services even after a member has died — in many cases, it’s not immediately apparent who is responsible for handling what remains of the campaign.
“There isn’t really much regulation and oversight over this,” Noureldin said. “The default is the treasurer, but there aren’t really limits or guardrails on who else could be added as the treasurer or replaced as the treasurer, or even just added as an authorized user or officer of the campaign to be able to spend those unused funds.”
The FEC is primarily responsible for probing suspected misuse of campaign funds, but the bipartisan agency is experiencing a de facto shutdown. Since May 1, it’s lacked the minimum number of commissioners required — four — to conduct high-level business, including formalizing investigations, punishing scofflaws and even conducting public meetings.
NOTUS previously reported that President Donald Trump has, for weeks, failed to nominate any of the three FEC commissioner candidates recommended to him by congressional leaders.
While some committees remain operational for years after a member passes away, others close fairly quickly, with little to no activity after the member’s death: Rep. Ron Wright’s campaign committee ended with only a handful of transactions between his death and the committee’s termination eight months later.
Others stay open for years. Take the campaign committee of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat who represented New Jersey until he died in 2013.
More than a decade after his death, Lautenberg’s campaign committee is still technically active. In response to an FEC inquiry in April, the committee said it cannot terminate itself because of “significant outstanding debt,” some of which it said it plans to resolve with the campaign’s remaining funds.
But FEC filings show the more than $1 million in debt is from loans the senator had loaned to the campaign in 2002, and the campaign’s most recent financial disclosure shows a cash balance of less than $87,000. The campaign committee’s treasurer did not respond to inquiries from NOTUS.
“The committee is cognizant that its assets may not be used for personal purposes and has no intention to convert remaining funds for such purposes,” it told the FEC.
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This story has been updated to reflect that the FEC generally classifies funeral expenses as personal use expenses.
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