I’ll limit this answer to the funds the politician’s own campaign raises, not Political Action Committees (PAC) associated with candidates, since that part gets pretty messy. Also, it should be noted that it’s pretty rare to have a lot of excess funds at the end of a race—most money raised gets spent quickly, and the reason why many candidates drop out is that they ran out of money.However, failed politicians do have a few options for leftover cash. The laws vary from state to state, but at the federal level, they’ll first tie up whatever loose ends the campaign might have, like debts or outstanding operating costs. With the rest, they can donate it to charities or political parties, donate up to $2,000 of it per election to another candidate (or $5,000 to a PAC), or save it for