(Updated April 27, 2025 on azcentral.com)
Arizona Republic: Kari Lake’s campaign debt is unlike most former Senate candidates’
By Ronald J. Hansen
Kari Lake’s $1 million campaign debt to others easily exceeds that of other former U.S. Senate candidates who don’t hold elected office and raises concerns about how she can repay her creditors while working for the Trump administration.
Federal campaign finance records show the Arizona Republican is one of 23 Senate candidates whose campaigns have debts totaling at least seven figures, but in most cases that is for loans the politicians owe themselves.
That isn’t the case for Lake, who didn’t loan her campaign any of her own money.
Entering April, only two Senate candidates owed more in campaign-related debt to others than Lake — and, unlike her, they won their 2024 races, giving them years longer to raise campaign funds to pay down their debts.
A spokesperson for the Lake campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the debt.
Robin Kolodny, a Temple University political science professor and co-author of “The Fundamentals of Campaign Finance in the U.S.,” said there are rules against raising money while working in an official capacity for the government.
That could create a hazy line of when Lake is working for the Trump administration and when she is appealing for money to retire debt.
“Everybody’s been told don’t do this stuff,” Kolodny said. “But if you’ve just decimated the offices in all these places where you go to register those complaints, what happens? This stuff has a tail on it for years.”
She said the loss of inspectors general across the government and a longstanding vacuum of watchdog actions by the Federal Election Commission suggest there is no threat of accountability for campaign finance rules.
Brad Smith, a former commissioner for the FEC from 2000 to 2005, said he doesn’t expect problems separating Lake’s official work from her fundraising responsibilities. But there will be debt to retire.
“Vendors can’t say, ‘Oh Kari, glad you ran.’ They can’t do that,” he said. “They’re supposed to treat a campaign just like they would treat anybody else.”
Most vendors won’t wait six months or longer from other debtors for full payment, said Smith, who is a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. “So you normally have a relatively tight time frame to pay off campaign debts. Otherwise, it’s considered a loan to the campaign and that’s considered a contribution to the campaign.”
While the debts are expected to be paid, he said, “some of these things can hang out there for a long time.”
Former astronaut and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, memorably piled up $3 million in campaign debt from his short-lived presidential run in 1984. The unpaid balance remained on the books until 2007.
After elections, shifting dynamics
“It’s hard to raise money to pay it off if people don’t think you’re going to run again,” Smith said.
Smith said the FEC has to sign off on efforts to close down a campaign and that involves reconciling debts.
“Some of that reduces itself without having to fundraise for it,” Kolodny said.
That’s because money and invoices routinely move around after campaigns end. Advertising firms, for example, bill for one amount of TV ads they placed for the campaign, but that often exceeds what they were able to actually get aired. That results in refunds and adjustments after the race is over, she said.
Former candidates have joined what are known as joint fundraising committees to continue to raise money to retire their debts. In those cases, the former candidate’s campaign gets a predetermined slice of money collected at fundraisers where other, more active candidates are also raising money.
Kolodny said donors to members of the Trump administration may not want anything. Instead, they may want the status quo.
“Everybody’s always looking for what’s the favor that’s going to be purchased?” she said. “The (cryptocurrency) people do not want a law to help them. They want no regulation, which is what they currently have.”
Kolodny said it’s worth noting who allowed a campaign to pile up sizable unpaid bills in the first place. “They’re convinced that other people are going to come and make good on this. There’s a lot of businesses that can’t do that.”
A new role tied to Trump
Lake is a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media with an evolving role as a liaison for that agency to the State Department. She has an office at the State Department “to facilitate enhanced coordination between the agencies,” but is not considered to be working for the State Department in any capacity, according to a spokesperson for that agency.
She remains an ever-present cheerleader for President Donald Trump on social media and conservative television. But her work in the administration, as well as her public disavowals of future campaign runs, may complicate her ability to lawfully retire her debt.
Lake lost to Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., in a campaign in which he consistently outraised her and as key GOP donors withheld their financial backing from a candidate seen as unelectable by then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Lake posted six-figure debt within her first three months in the race and unpaid bills have hung over her campaign at the end of each reporting period since.
Her campaign’s debt crested at $2.4 million just weeks before the election before dipping to less than $700,000 by the end of last year, records show.
Her debt shot up to $1,025,000 by the end of March, reflecting a combination of longstanding, disputed debt and new creditors expecting payment. The campaign still had $263,000 in cash entering April, but that won’t cover its debts, even if the disputed ones were fully erased.
While Lake’s race is over, the bills remain a matter of unfinished business.
Big debts over a long time
One of Lake’s newest creditors was the biggest debt she owed entering April.
Her campaign owed Opn Sesame, a Florida-based company that provided the technology behind the campaign-related text messages, $328,000.
Opn Sesame was involved in Trump’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns and works on behalf of Republican clients. Only the Trump Save America campaign’s $379,000 debt exceeded Lake’s debt to Opn Sesame, records show.
That company did not respond to a request for comment.
Most of Lake’s campaign debt involves three Alexandria, Virginia-based political services firms that her team has owed from her first three months in the race in 2023.
None of them responded to requests for comment.
The biggest current debt from that group — $288,000 entering April — is to Tag Strategies LLC, which provided her digital consulting and fundraising services.
That company also worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign and has worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, among other GOP clients.
Their bill to the Lake campaign had reached $1.2 million just before the election.
Lake’s campaign owed America’s Marketing Group $276,000 for online advertising entering April and has also disputed the debt for more than a year. The campaign has paid AMG $880,000, records show.
AMG had no other clients in the past election cycle, records show.
A third creditor, A-Team Digital, handled digital fundraising services for her campaign and Lake’s campaign owed it $125,000 entering April. The Lake campaign has disputed that debt for more than a year, too.
Lake’s campaign has paid the company $1.6 million, records show. During the 2024 election cycle, only the Trump National Committee paid A-Team more, $2.2 million.
None of A-Team’s 10 other clients formally disputed a debt involving the firm, records show.
AMG and A-Team both use Alexandria Post Office boxes, their websites are nearly identical, and both use a similar triangle-shaped “A” for their corporate logo.
The Lake campaign also owed $6,200 to We Are Airstream Superstore of Chandler for vehicle maintenance. An employee there declined to comment when asked about the debt.
The campaign also owes Tiffany Marie Brannon, who works in conservative media, $2,500.
Lake’s debt is different
An Arizona Republic analysis of FEC records found that only two Senate candidate committees owed creditors more than Lake’s campaign entering April.
Sens. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, each owe $1.7 million to others. They also each owe themselves far more for personal campaign loans that remain unpaid.
Both McCormick and Moreno were not in Congress at the time of their Senate run.
Most Senate-related debts involve personal loans that have not been repaid.
The Republic found that of the 23 former Senate candidates whose campaigns owe at least $1 million, 98% of that debt involves loans the candidates made to themselves.
Former Rep. David Trone, D-Md., easily owes the most: $73 million for a failed bid to succeed Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who retired after 2024, as well as earlier debt for a failed run for the House of Representatives.
Trone, who co-founded Total Wine & More, won three terms in the House. In 2024, he failed to win the Democratic nomination to replace Cardin.
Mehmet Oz, the former celebrity doctor who now oversees Medicare and Medicaid for the Trump administration, still hasn’t gotten $26 million back from his failed 2022 Pennsylvania Senate campaign.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is owed $24 million, while McCormick is owed $20 million.
Jim Lamon, who sought the GOP nomination in Arizona’s 2022 Senate race, still hasn’t gotten back $18 million from his campaign.
After Lake’s $1 million debt to others, the debt to outside creditors falls off sharply.
The next-highest total is $234,000 by the failed 2020 Senate campaign for Manny Sethi in Tennessee. Part of his debt involves unpaid refunds sought by donors.
That debt isn’t close to the oldest.
Former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., last ran for office in 2008 and he is owed $1 million for a loan to his campaign. Lautenberg died in 2013, but the debt is still on the books.
A long lesson in debt
Retiring campaign debt, especially in pricey Senate races, is challenging once a candidate is no longer running.
Federal rules governing the limits for individual campaign donations still apply, and in most cases, there’s little incentive to back a candidate who has already lost.
That may be especially true for Lake, who has repeatedly said she has no plans to run again in Arizona and in Iowa, where she grew up.
But some former candidates find new interest from donors when they find a new role in government.
Consider the recent experience of former Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo., who lost his 2022 Senate bid and finished with an unpaid $130,000 balance on a $250,000 loan from himself.
For two years, beginning after his 2022 election loss through November 2024, Long’s campaign raised only $40 from individual donors and $5,000 from a political-action committee.
On Dec. 4, Trump named Long as his pick for commissioner of the IRS, and his campaign quickly found new benefactors.
Starting the day after Trump’s announcement, Long raised $28,000 in December and $137,000 before the end of January. His campaign repaid Long’s loan to himself and formally terminated the campaign’s operations debt-free.
There were few signs of big money pouring into Lake’s campaign after Trump said she would work in his administration.
Records show nearly all her donors this year had given previously to her campaign. More than 600 of them made contributions totaling less than $1, though they had given her campaign more than $200 overall.
Fewer than 50 people gave $1,000 or more during the quarter.
However Lake retires her campaign’s debt, the U.S. Supreme Court has given its legal blessings to a big role for donors.
In 2022, the court held that donors can fully pay back candidate personal loans that are campaign debts after the elections.
The 6-3 ruling along the court’s ideological lines kept in place the usual limits for each election cycle, but did away with a $250,000 cap on donor money to retire loans from the candidates.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the ruling acknowledged the reality that low-profile candidates may need to underwrite their own campaigns early in the election process.
“As a practical matter, personal loans will sometimes be the only way for an unknown challenger with limited connections to front-load campaign spending,” he wrote. “And early spending — and thus early expression — is critical to a newcomer’s success.”
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan predicted the ruling would create new and unwanted financial ties between donors and former candidates.
“The candidate has a more-than-usual interest in obtaining the money, and is now in a position to give something in return,” she wrote.
“The donors well understand his situation, and are eager to take advantage of it. In short, everyone’s incentives are stacked to enhance the risk of dirty dealing.”
