Former Speaker of the House Tom Foley lost his final bid for reelection in 1994 after three decades in office.
In 2013, Foley died.
But the “Committee to Reelect Tom Foley” — his still-technically active campaign committee — lives on, and it reported earning a small profit this year from several financial investments, including stock in tech giants Microsoft and Meta.
Foley’s old committee stands among scores of federal campaign operations that reap the rewards of invested campaign funds, a NOTUS review of federal records indicates.
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For prolific fundraisers, including current members of Congress, such investments can yield six- or seven-figure windfalls annually, with political figures of all partisan leanings making sometimes lucrative stock and financial gambles using money donors gave their campaigns for election purposes.
There are no set limits on the amount of money campaigns can earn by investing donor cash, giving politicians an added — although potentially risky — tool for boosting their campaign coffers beyond traditional fundraising methods.
Campaign committees’ investments are often secretive, too: Few campaigns report details beyond a dollar figure and their bank or investment house of choice. This leaves voters unable to determine whether a political campaign’s specific investments could potentially conflict with a candidate’s official duties, such as a member of Congress who oversees military matters while investing campaign cash in defense contractor stocks.
While members of Congress are notorious for making improperly disclosed personal stock trades while in office, their penchant for using campaign cash to play the markets is far less scrutinized and, often, even more opaque.
NOTUS attempted to contact the campaigns of nearly 150 current members of Congress to ask whether they would voluntarily share details about their campaign committees’ specific financial investments.
Only five responded, and those who did said their investments were conservative — largely just earning interest from bank accounts.
Investors of the 119th Congress
It makes sense for candidates with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in their campaign accounts to park their cash somewhere where it can accumulate interest over time, if only to defend against inflation.
Many federal candidates report steady earnings consistent with conservative investment accounts such as money market funds or certificates of deposit.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tennessee), for example, has reported stable monthly yields between $10,000 and $13,000 in “bank interest” for the past two years. For over two decades, both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have earned steady interest from the millions of surplus dollars sitting in their campaign accounts.
The campaign of Rep. Julia Brownley (D-California) stores its money in a “non-traditional bond fund,” two high-yield bond funds and “short term CDs,” a campaign spokesperson said.
For candidates who invest their campaign money more aggressively, many have good months … and bad months.
In February, the campaign of Rep. Bill Foster (D-Illinois) reported a $16,525 “investment gain.” But in March, he reported a $21,356 “investment loss.”
Other lawmakers’ campaign portfolios swing wildly from quarter to quarter.
In November 2024, the campaign of Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Michigan) reported $1.9 million in “investment income.” In February 2025, it reported a $1.2 million “loss.” Mounting losses across this election cycle caused his cash on hand to fall more than $1.8 million — a remarkable drop for a campaign already $13.6 million in debt to Thanedar himself. Last quarter, his campaign reported a loss of $634,129, which it labeled “Investment Income Loss from a mutual fund.”
Representatives for Thanedar, who faces a competitive Democratic primary in August, did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2025, Thanedar vowed to personally stop trading individual stocks after NOTUS reported that he violated the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’s disclosure provision with improperly disclosed personal trades.
“Members of Congress should not trade in individual stocks,” Thanedar told NOTUS at the time. “Many of my individual stock purchases I did are from years before I was in Congress. My goal is to get rid of all the individual stocks in my portfolio, but it takes time.”
In a single December 2024 filing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July, reported more than $1.1 million from “investment account earnings” and another $229,000 in dividends. Graham’s campaign committee had $2.3 million in remaining cash, with several options for disposing of it.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) faced criticism during the 2008 financial crisis for dumping much of his personal stock holdings as markets reeled and Congress prepared relief legislation. Federal filings show his personal campaign, in contrast, was months ahead of the curve, selling its stocks in May 2008 and netting $137,471 in the process.
Nowadays, Durbin’s campaign nets about $100 a month in basic interest.
What’s legal, what’s not
The reporting requirements for trading using campaign cash are far less stringent than what lawmakers are obligated to disclose when making financial trades that affect their own personal finances.
It’s generally easy to spot possible conflicts of interest when lawmakers who have jurisdiction over specific industries buy and sell shares of companies directly affected by their actions. That’s because the STOCK Act requires them to publicly detail and disclose within 45 days any stock, bond or cryptocurrency trade that they make in their personal capacity.
That same scrutiny cannot be applied to those lawmakers when they trade using their campaign funds under the current rules.
“The current opaque investment income for campaigns conceal potential conflicts of interests from the media and voters, such as campaign investing in the personal business interests of the candidate or candidate’s family,” Public Citizen lobbyist Craig Holman said. “If campaigns are enriching their own pockets or those of political friends, that is information that donors and voters would want to know.”
“The requirements also need to be enhanced to provide the full picture of investment income by campaigns, much in the same way as personal financial disclosure requirements placed on officeholders,” Holman said.
Some lawmakers fail to even meet the low bar for campaign-finance reporting requirements under the current rules.
To the ire of federal regulators, Thanedar repeatedly failed to disclose the financial institution his campaign used to invest donor dollars, prompting several letters to the campaign’s treasurer: Thanedar himself. (The congressman clarified in April that his campaign used LPL Financial.)
Where lawmakers’ campaigns do their banking is often a partisan affair.
At least 86 incumbent Democrats park their campaign funds at Amalgamated Bank, a unionized and labor-aligned institution that champions accessibility and affordable housing.
Republican lawmakers and presidential hopefuls flock to Chain Bridge Bank, founded by former Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald.
Beyond standard banking, other members employ wealth managers to grow their campaign cash.
Janney Montgomery Scott, a Philadelphia-based wealth management firm that predates the Civil War, is particularly popular: In recent years, nearly three-dozen campaign committees have hired the firm, according to NOTUS’ review of FEC records.
The campaigns of Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-New York), Pete Aguilar (D-California) and Jim Himes (D-Connecticut) each pay five- or six figures annually to Janney Montgomery Scott in various management or brokerage fees. Each has pulled in six-figure sums this cycle alone via their investments. Torres’ total is nearly $900,000.
No incumbent Republicans bank with the firm.
The campaign of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) has paid steadily increasing four-figure quarterly fees to Blue Trust, a Christian wealth management firm dedicated to bringing “financial expertise and biblical wisdom together.”
In 2024, Foxx reported $127,662 in “Realized Capital Gains on Investment” via Blue Trust. (Foxx’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment).
Republican Michael Carbonara is the founder of the fintech firm Ibanera, and his tenure as CEO overlapped with the first few months of his bid to represent Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.
In that time, his congressional campaign made sizable purchases of Bitcoin and Ethereum through Ibanera, paying thousands of dollars in fees to the company he still ran, according to federal records.
Carbonara’s campaign sold the Ethereum stake for $169,649 in November, a week after stepping down as chief executive, realizing a roughly 80% gain on his investment. Last quarter alone, he reported $1.86 million in cryptocurrency liquidations. Bitcoin’s price, meanwhile, has tumbled.
Carbonara did not respond to a request for comment.
Roots of campaign investing
The practice of political campaigns investing donor dollars has a long history.
Two decades before former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) went to prison over a bribery scheme that saw him receive payoffs in cash and gold bars, his campaign spent years trading stocks in various individual companies.
Eight of those companies were gold mines — literally. Among them: Glamis Gold, Harmony Gold, Newmont Mining and Goldcorp.
Former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign earned $1.58 million from bank interest alone. In 2024, the presidential campaign committee inherited by then-Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out pulled in $1.35 million in interest via Amalgamated Bank. Both were simple cases of campaign cash accumulating interest over time.
Trump-aligned PACs Trump 47 Committee and Never Surrender brought in over $1 million in “interest revenue” from their Chain Bridge Bank accounts in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Other campaigns have taken riskier approaches to their investments.
Several Trump administration officials retained their campaign accounts after leaving office, and the old committees continue to net investment gains.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy departed the House in 2019 and hasn’t run for elected office since. But his old campaign has earned more than $1 million in unspecified “investment gains” across the past several years, FEC records indicate.
Duffy, ever the family man, recently contributed $1 million in campaign funds to Northwoods Future, the super PAC supporting his son-in-law, Michael Alfonso, who is running for Congress in Wisconsin.
Perhaps no other former member of Congress has pulled in as much investment income as Trump loyalist Devin Nunes.
When he left Congress to oversee Trump’s media venture Truth Social, Nunes had $11 million in his congressional campaign coffers. That figure ballooned to $15.5 million during his time out of office via funds placed with Edward Jones Investments, a remarkable sum that his lawyer told federal regulators could be for “a potential future election.” Last quarter alone, he reported pulling in $1.5 million from his investment account.
Nunes’ campaign did not respond to questions about its specific investments.
Nunes is one of several former lawmakers teasing a future run to justify his campaign’s continued existence.
Tom Byrne, the son of former New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne, never made it into elected office despite House and Senate bids over 25 years ago. Over the years, Byrne has mulled another statewide run and has grown his campaign cash in a Charles Schwab account, bringing in over $880,220 this cycle alone.
Now, in his 70s and facing questions from federal regulators, Byrne said he’s still on the lookout for an opportunity, with his campaign telling the FEC: “it is hard to predict when another [statewide] opening may occur but it is an effort to level the playing field versus the number of self-financing statewide candidates in NJ.”
Former Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) is using a similar tactic to keep his campaign operational and collecting interest over a decade after leaving Congress. Late last year, Stearns, now 85, told federal regulators that he would wind down his committee — with a significant caveat: “We will continue to move to terminate the committee … unless we decide to be a candidate for federal office again.”
Former Democratic Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II of Massachusetts, the elder brother of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has maintained his personal campaign committee — “Citizens For Joe Kennedy 1988” — as a de facto investment vehicle for more than 25 years after leaving office.
As Kennedy racked up “dividend income, interest income, quarterly portfolio appreciation, and capital gains,” the campaign repeatedly assured federal regulators in recent years that any expenses would be “for legal and accounting purposes in connection with keeping the committee open.”
The campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment, regularly pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in investment income.
As of July 30, Kennedy’s old committee reported having more than $1.3 million in its account — after earning more than $129,000 between April 1 and June 30 from investments with Goldman Sachs, according to FEC records.
The FEC recommends that the dormant campaign accounts of retired or deceased lawmakers be wound down within six months, but there is no hard rule requiring that deadline to be met. Dormant campaign accounts with surplus cash can, by law, donate the money to charity, transfer it to political party committees, disgorge it to the U.S. Treasury or — as is so often the case — just sit on it.
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California) died while in office in 2008, but it took four years to fully close his committee, which continued to collect interest income across eight bank accounts. The campaign ultimately contributed the proceeds to the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice — $846,408 across three donations.
Former Rep. John LaFalce (D-New York), who left Congress in 2023, died last year. But his campaign committee lived on with money in its account — until September, when the committee emptied out the remaining $112,820 and gave it to the nonprofit Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.
As for Foley, the late house speaker from Spokane, Washington, his campaign is managed by his widow and former chief of staff, Heather Foley, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Every so often, FEC officials ask her what the campaign intends to do with its cash on hand.
And just as often, she replies: “I wrote you previously that I do not intend to spend any of the campaign funds left [after] my husband’s death for personal use.”
“As soon as I have accumulated sufficient funds,” she writes, “I intend to give it to the Spokane Parks Foundation.”
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