Virginia’s campaign finance laws are unique because they allow candidates to spend campaign funds pretty much however they want. Brad Kutner was at a recent Board of Elections meeting where a long-awaited ban on personal spending passed its first regulatory hurdle.
“I introduced this 12 years ago naively thinking ‘oops, I found this oversight. You want to fix it, don’t you?’" Fairfax Delegate Marcus Simon said about his long-running effort to close Virginia’s personal use of campaign spending loophole. "And it started a 12-year odyssey to finally get something passed.”
Governor Glenn Youngkin signed his bill into law earlier this year, and the State Board of Elections unanimously approved regulations to end the practice at their September meeting.
The new language pretty much mirrors a similar personal use ban in federal campaign finance laws.
A list of specifically banned spending was included, but an advisory opinion system is expected to fill in gaps when candidates ask what’s allowed or not.
Senator Jennifer Boysko, another Northern Virginia official, waited for her own kids to graduate high school before running for office. Another long-time advocate for closing the personal use loophole, she worked to make sure there was a carve out for candidates to spend funds on daycare and care for older adults.
“There have been very few women in the general assembly," Boykso said. "We see more women entering, but that comes with a cost of family care time because women are the primary caregivers quite often.”
Anyone who follows elections knows trying to slap an opponent with an alleged campaign spending scandal could impact a final vote. But Simon said there’s safeguards in place.
“There’s only so much you can do when writing a law to account for deliberate misuse," Simon said. "The answer for a dozen years was ‘we just won’t have any prohibition at all. I don’t know if that was the right answer either.”
Approval of the regulations was the first step in the process - the new prohibition on personal use of campaign funds won't go into effect until the 2027 election cycle.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
