The Tennessean: Dry cleaning, tickets and Barney Fife: How Tennessee lawmakers spend your donations
While lawmakers may rationalize the expenses, governments create checks on how candidates can use their campaign funds in order to avoid the potential for corruption, said Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit advocacy group.
“If a donor can give to a candidate, and then the candidate can use that money for whatever they want, they can live a lavish lifestyle, or (pay for) travel expenses or oil changes or whatever, then the contribution looks like less of a campaign contribution and more like a gift, which has much more of a corrupting potential,” Fischer said...