chrisod3

Thank you. For me it was just how former lawmakers just assumed they can keep on spending even when they're no longer campaigning. We found dozens of campaigns like that with donations being used to pay for phones, internet, office space, etc even when the candidate was many years out of office. If I had to pick one campaign that should attract attention it would be that of Robin Tallon, a former S.C. congressman. He left office in 1993 and is still spending.

Thanks for noticing. It's just part of the culture here that accountability and watchdog journalism is valued. We have an investigations team and the team is often bolstered with beat reporters. My beat is social services yet I was allowed to focus on this project for several months. The Times' ownership model also helps. The paper is owned by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit set up to advance and promote journalism.

It started with finding out about one or two campaigns. That made us wonder how many more there were out there. So we started digging into FEC records and found more than 100 campaigns that met our definition of a Zombie campaign. Here's a link to the story: http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2018/investigations/zombie-campaigns/spending-millions-after-office/

Well, one watchdog group has already taken action and filed a petition with the FEC. http://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2018/02/05/we-need-to-fix-it-watchdogs-lawmakers-try-to-halt-zombie-campaign-spending/

As the story states, one congresswoman is also planning to file a bill to tackle this problem. So, cliche though it may be, the best chance for change would be if people contact their D.C. representatives and demand action.

There were quite a few that just made us just go huh! For me it was Mark Foley, a former Florida congressman, paying for his opera society membership.