Congressmen John Lewis spent millions while cruising to re-election
/The money went to luxury fishing trips on the Chesapeake Bay, fundraisers at D.C.’s poshest restaurants and a 75th-birthday blowout at the Tabernacle in Atlanta.
There were also tickets to the Masters golf tournament and a hotel room in the Virgin Islands, not to mention a stable of high-level campaign and social media consultants.
Georgia’s U.S. House members faced only token opposition at the ballot box last year, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by the way they spent campaign money.
The state’s 13 incumbent representatives collectively spent more than $12.9 million in the two years leading up to last year’s election, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of federal campaign finance records. All of them cruised to re-election by at least 20 percentage points in November, some without any major-party opposition in the general election.
Since then, many of those lawmakers have kept their spending apace, even with their re-election bids more than a year away.
The granular details reported in public filings paint a vivid picture of Washington’s permanent campaign culture — the nonstop mixers, strategy sessions and message rollouts that keep D.C. churning. [MORE]
