RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) – Virginia’s lax campaign finance laws allow state lawmakers to use campaign cash on vacations, club memberships, high-priced hotel stays and dinners and other personal spending unrelated to their political work.

Efforts to set limits on that spending and other campaign finance reform proposals, including capping donations and banning public utilities like Dominion Energy from giving money to candidates, have failed to pass in Virginia for years.

This year, many of these bills had quiet deaths in Virginia’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly. 

Richard J. Meagher, a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College, said years of failing bipartisan efforts could come down to a few factors: Virginia’s part-time legislature, the continual cycle of elections and lawmakers lacking the incentive.

“It’s always hard to get politicians to pass rules that will limit what they can do in order to stay in office,” Meagher told 8News.

Virginia stands out

Virginia is among the few states that don’t ban the personal use of campaign funds – which is barred on the federal level. An Associated Press review from 2016 found that legislators have used the funds on business club memberships, gas and phone bills.

It’s only illegal for a lawmaker or candidate to use the last of their political donations when closing out their campaign’s account on personal spending.

In past debates over the issue, lawmakers have argued that spending on essential expenses like childcare should be allowed if it’s tied to the campaign as it widens the field of potential candidates, allowing them to avoid being cut out of politics because of those costs.

Also, Virginia is one of a handful of states without contribution limits for political action committees, corporations or individuals donating to candidates, per a 2022 report from the Coalition for Integrity.

And Virginia allows party committees to donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns.

Proposals to set guardrails stall

Like past years, the 2024 General Assembly session started with proposals to rein in the state’s campaign finance rules and lawmakers backing change.

The bills included renewed efforts to ban personal spending of campaign money, prevent the state’s public utilities from political spending and set up contribution limits. One bill proposed to ban fundraising during special sessions.

There was also a proposal to broaden the scope of disclaimer requirements for campaign ads to include electioneering communications and require disclaimers on referendum campaign ads with the names of the ad sponsors’ three largest contributors.

All of these measures failed, most not moving very far in the legislative process and being put aside without recorded votes.

Bills to end political spending by public utilities, which Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power opposed because they said they feel it unfairly targets them but allows special interest groups to still contribute, were left in the House Privileges and Elections Committee when no delegate on the panel made a motion for it and moved out of one Senate committee to not being put forward in another.

Noting the ongoing push to legalize skill games again, and the money funneling into Virginia because of it, Meagher said he understands the argument from public utilities that special interest groups backing legislative efforts also fund campaigns.

Meagher said Dominion’s political giving reflects “the weird way we treat utilities,” saying the conversation should be “What is Dominion?”

“Is Dominion a private company just like any other or is Dominion something different because the thing that it does, the service it provides is a public good,” he said. “So, it’s a private company providing a public good and that causes all sorts of questions about how should it be regulated, what kind of special role it has in the state.”

Dominion Energy is one of the top donors in the state, per the Virginia Public Access Project, but it’s been outmatched in recent years by megadonor Michael Bills and his Clean Virginia Fund, a Dominion rival in the political giving game that often funds candidates who refuse the utilities’ money.

The longstanding effort to ban the personal spending of campaign donations – with an exception for childcare costs tied to campaigning or holding office – stalled in the House but passed the Senate on a 35-4 vote.

But when it got back to the House, it failed to move forward as lawmakers opted to continue it to next year on a voice vote without an official recording of how legislators voted.

With the help of two Democrats, the Senate defeated the Democratic-led bill to expand disclaimer requirements on campaign ads.

Nancy Morgan, a coordinator with BigMoneyOutVA, a nonpartisan group that advocates for campaign finance reform and transparency, said she was stunned to see how the bills failed in the Democratic-controlled legislature.

Subcommittee votes to kill campaign finance reform bills last year in the then-Republican-controlled House of Delegates were expected, Morgan told 8News. “But at least they voted,” she said, criticizing the moves in Democratic-led committees to squash bills with voice votes or not even bringing them forward to be heard.

“Democrats used a smoke and mirror technique to make Virginians think that they supported it but at the end of the day they let them die in committee,” Morgan said.

Some lawmakers centered on the long effort to ban the personal spending of campaign money, including Republican Del. Paul Milde (Stafford).

During one discussion over the bill this session, Del. Milde said that the only rationale he could see for the more than decade-long resistance could be because lawmakers “want to have the flexibility to buy things that really aren’t campaign-related things.”

Can Virginia change?

Campaigns need money to live. And while total campaign spending has declined for half of all Virginia House elections and dipped slightly for half of all Virginia Senate elections from 25 years ago, the costs for the most expensive races have risen sharply, and top donors are doling out millions each election cycle.

Morgan, who told 8News she expected some change under Democrats this year, said despite polling showing that most people want to ban personal use of campaign funds, “legislators don’t seem to care.”

Morgan said her group is nonpartisan and works with legislators on both sides of the aisle, but said it’s not clear what Republicans in the state support in terms of campaign finance reform.

Spokespeople and the offices for the Democratic and Republican caucuses in both chambers of the General Assembly did not respond to interview requests.

Meagher said he believes lawmakers could press for campaign finance reform, saying it “would have been unthinkable 20 years ago” for a bill to ban public utilities from political spending to be proposed.

He said efforts from lawmakers new to the assembly and those who have pushed for transparency in campaign spending, along with potential support from Gov. Glenn Youngkin, could change the tide on some changes.

But with elections every two years for the House, continuous campaigning, travel and a part-time legislature in place that pays delegates $17,640 and senators $18,000 a year, Meagher says that campaign cash makes it possible for some people to run for office.

“The campaign money, as much as nobody admits this, is like part of the salary,” he said. “It’s what you do to cover your expenses.”