On a chilly November afternoon, a well-coiffed woman at the entrance of the tony Capitol Hill Club, called out to another woman wearing a pink pea coat, “Stay out of trouble and have fun!”
“Well, I can’t do all of those things!” she responded.
And have fun they do, since some members can afford to pay $2,000 for the pleasure of membership in 2025, with all of the privacy and prime rib it offers.
Every member of Colorado’s GOP congressional delegation has spent thousands of campaign funds on this private club.
They do so without any legal pushback because members can spend campaign money on events and memberships at private political clubs under Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules, the justification being that they wouldn’t use these memberships if they were not a member of a political party and an officer holder. And they’re allowed to spend money on social clubs to secure events and catering services for fundraising.
Stuart McPhail, director of campaign finance litigation for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Colorado Times Recorder, “Certain expenses, like the payment of membership to a country club or other social club, are always improper,” he said. “The Federal Election Commission, however, permits the use of funds to pay for membership to clubs that are political. Accordingly, it found that payments to join the Capitol Hill Club and similar political clubs are permissible. Essentially, the agency decided that candidates and officeholders would not join that club but for their being a candidate or officeholder.”
Brendan Glavin, director of insights at OpenSecrets, a D.C. nonprofit that tracks data on campaign finance, said that regardless of the rules on campaign spending, many donors of small amounts may not realize just how much money gets spent on fundraising in campaigns.
“It gets brushed aside a lot, how much money gets spent in bringing the money in. It’s a whole economy unto itself,” he said.
The Capitol Hill Club, a leisurely walk from the U.S. Capitol and congressional office buildings, is one of the older private political clubs in D.C. It was established in the 1950s and has been housed in its current building since the 1970s, according to its website. Other private political clubs in D.C. cater to Republicans, such as the new Executive Branch Club co-founded by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, which has a $500,000 membership fee and is frequented by wealthy tech executives.
Shortly after entering office for the first time in November of last year, all three of Colorado’s newly elected GOP members of Congress coughed up $2,000 for the Capitol Hill Club. Rep. Jeff Crank’s (R-CO) campaign expense appears in FEC records as “membership dues” to the club, while Rep. Gabe Evans’ (R-CO) campaign calls its club expenditure an “initiation fee.” Rep. Jeff Hurd’s (R-CO) campaign labeled his $2,000 payment as a “sub-vendor “ expense. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has paid about $1,500 in membership fees and dues to the club since 2021, when she entered Congress.
Boebert’s campaign spent a total of $15,807.02 from the beginning of 2021 through this year on the membership fees, as well as meeting expenses and event catering.
Hurd’s campaign spent a total of $14,398.75 at the club on fundraising food and beverage and “sub-vendors,” according to FEC data.
Crank’s (R-CO) campaign’s expenditures at the club this year amount to $4,843.55 for membership dues and meeting expenses.
Evans’ (R-CO) campaign dropped $3,061.17 at the club for the $2,000 “initiation fee” and a meeting that racked up $1,061.17.
The Colorado Times Recorder reached out to each member’s office for comment and further details on how many people attended the events, and on what the lawmakers got for their money. None of the offices responded. The Capitol Hill Club did not respond to a request for comment.
Although the spending at the club is allowed under FEC rules, that doesn’t mean there aren’t political challenges resulting from the optics of members attending private, expensive clubs at this time of increased economic uncertainty and growing concerns among voters about affordability issues. Tens of thousands of voters in Colorado are poised to lose health insurance due to the loss of the Obamacare tax credits, consumer confidence fell to the lowest level since April, and the age of first-time homeownership has risen to an all-time high. The unemployment rate rose in October, and the pace of hiring has slowed.
McPhail said the larger issue with the flow of spending isn’t so much with a member’s campaign spending at private political clubs as it is with Leadership PACs, which support candidates of various federal and nonfederal offices and do not include political party committees, that can spend a lot of money on social clubs of all sorts of different expenses.
“When it wasn’t failing to enforce the law, the FEC was working to make the laws easier to evade. The FEC recently declared that the law against embezzlement did not apply to every account held by a candidate or officeholder,” he said. “Where a candidate set up an account to support candidates — called a ‘Leadership PAC ’— the FEC permitted candidates to use those accounts as personal slush funds. That means contributions to those accounts are no different than checks written to the candidate themselves, and candidates can freely pay for social club membership — or anything else they like — with the funds.”
Even in the case of tracking the use of campaign funds at the Capitol Hill Club through FEC data, there’s only so much you can understand through publicly available disclosures alone.
Glavin said, referring to looking for improper use of campaign funds, “The FEC is not known for its rigorous clamping down on regulations. It usually has to be clear-cut stuff that can’t be tied to the campaign. If they’re having fundraisers, meeting potential donors at this facility, and it requires them to join, you can see how they can put that justification out there.”
