Campaign Finance: In the U.S., different sets of campaign finance rules govern those who seek federal office versus those running for state-level positions. Of course, politicians who hold state office often seek federal office, and vice-versa, but the rules governing whether they can transfer funds raised for one type of campaign account to another vary widely.
There’s one simple rule: Candidates for federal office—Senate, House, or president—can never transfer money from a state account to a federal account. However, some states, but not all, allow candidates to transfer federal money to state accounts. But which states allow what? Fortunately, Ballotpedia has exhaustively researched the topic and compiled a list of each state's rules.
However, as the list shows, there are often limitations on how much money can be moved in this manner, and sometimes, it’s even unclear what the actual rules are. (Seventeen states fall into this category, while 21 allow such transfers in some form and 12 firmly prohibit them.) In the past, some of these ambiguities have needed to be settled in court.
For example, back in 2017, two members of Congress who were both running for the governorship in New Mexico—Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Republican Rep. Steve Pearce—asked the secretary of state's office how much of the cash they’d amassed in their federal accounts they could move over to their gubernatorial campaigns. Both House members were told that state law, which allowed one campaign to transfer a maximum of $11,000 to another campaign, applied to them.
Lujan Grisham didn’t argue, though the stakes were relatively low for her, as she finished out 2016 with just $75,000 in her federal kitty (she sent most of that remaining money to other candidates and PACs). However, Pearce had $900,000 sitting in his congressional account, so he went to court, where a federal judge ruled that he could indeed use those funds in his bid for governor. Ultimately, though, these campaign finance wranglings didn’t have much of an impact, as Lujan Grisham defeated Pearce by a hefty 57-43 margin.