CAMDEN, N.J. — A New Jersey congressman has spent at least $97,000 in campaign money on at least 18 trips over the past five years to California, where his daughter has been pursuing a singing and acting career, The Associated Press found.
Campaign finance reports show U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews pulled in about $260,000 in donations from California residents and political action committees during the period, apparently holding major fundraising events during about a half-dozen of the trips. It's impossible to tell from the records whether he met with donors on other visits. Federal campaign finance regulations allow campaign funds to be used for certain non-fundraising travel.
But campaign experts say that raising less than $3 per $1 spent on fundraising is a lower rate than normal for most candidates, and it raises questions about why Andrews is making so many trips to California.
Andrews is not accused of any wrongdoing, and his campaign says that his expenditures in California were legitimate, in part because connections there have helped him raise money in other states.
A Washington watchdog group has urged federal election regulators to examine whether Andrews has been using campaign money for personal expenses in his California travels. It highlighted a November 2011 trip on which he spent nearly $12,000 in campaign funds, met with donors and raised at least $5,000 while he stayed at Beverly Hills Plaza hotel, hired limousine services for $1,400 and was photographed attending his daughter's recording session. The records do not say whether the campaign paid for her expenses, though Andrews says it never did so improperly.
It turns out the trip wasn't a one-time event but rather part of a regular pattern.
In the first review of Andrews' longer-term campaign spending practices, the AP examined his campaign finance reports going back 10 years and found that the Democratic congressman began regular campaign-funded trips to California starting in 2007. By that time his daughter, Josie, now 17, was spending time in California for auditions, according to her biography on the Internet Movie Database.
At least four of Andrews' trips coincided with her recording sessions, based on her tweets and web posts from her record label.
In an emailed statement, Andrews spokesman Fran Tagmire said the congressman has properly disclosed all his campaign expenditures and used personal money for any personal expenses. Tagmire declined to be interviewed or arrange an interview with Andrews but did send a lengthy email addressing some of the questions the AP asked about his California travels.
"His constituents ask him every day about jobs, education, health care and other issues that affect their lives — not the questions you are raising," Tagmire said.
The Andrews campaign says it was doing what political experts say Democratic candidates do: go to the Los Angeles area to raise money from deep-pocketed liberals. The campaign also says he has spent time there meeting with experts on topics from education to foreign policy, though the campaign has declined to identify those experts. Tagmire also said that California contributors have used their connections to help the campaign raise money in other states.
"The political benefits of these expenses have far outweighed the costs," he said, adding: "Your numbers are wrong."
Tagmire declined to answer follow-up questions about what details from the AP analysis he believes are incorrect.
Federal campaign rules give candidates latitude in how they can spend donors' dollars, though they are barred from using the contributions on vacations and other purely personal expenses.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which acts as a public-interest watchdog in campaign finance policy issues, said the difference between what Andrews is spending and collecting looks odd.
"The closer you get to having a wash," said the center's associate counsel, Paul Ryan, "the more it looks like a ruse and that campaign donors are really footing the bill for trips that are not principally about raising money."
Andrews has previously come under scrutiny for his use of campaign money.
In 2009, Andrews repaid his campaign for more than $900 for replacing clothing that was lost by an airline. The FEC had ruled that that expenditure was not permissible.
Last year he reimbursed more than $13,000 he used to take his family to a wedding in Scotland. Even as it repaid, the campaign said there was nothing wrong and that the trip was made for a donor's wedding. The FEC has not ruled on that one.
And in February, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which takes aim at what it sees as ethical problems by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, called for the FEC to audit his November 2011 California trip. The FEC does not disclose ongoing actions.
Last week, CREW issued another report based on campaign finance reports and federal spending requests to examine how members of Congress use their jobs to benefit their families. That report criticized Andrews for donating campaign money to performance groups with which his daughter has been involved and earmarking federal appropriations for the Rutgers University School of Law in Camden, where his wife is an administrator. Tagmire has defended those actions.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW — a group Tagmire described as "a shadowy organization," saying it doesn't make public its funding sources — said the AP's newest findings look bad for Andrews. "It's unusual for a member from New Jersey to spend so much of his time allegedly fundraising in California," she said. "It suggests that he's been using his campaign funds for personal use."
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Andrews, now 54, was elected to Congress at the age of 33.
The Cornell Law School graduate was seen — and saw himself — as a politician who might be able to be elected statewide, a rare accomplishment for someone from southern New Jersey, the less populous end of the state.
Throughout his career, he has been easily re-elected in a heavily Democratic district where even Republicans don't think they have a real shot at winning.
He lost a hard-fought gubernatorial primary in 1997, and wanted a chance to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate in 2006 but was not selected by then-Gov. Jon Corzine.
In 2008, he bucked many party officials by running a U.S. Senate primary campaign against longtime incumbent Frank Lautenberg. After losing, Andrews returned to Congress, where he had a key role in passing President Barack Obama's health insurance overhaul in 2010.
As Andrews' efforts to move on to higher office hit a wall, his teenage daughter's career was blossoming.
Josie Andrews has spent most of her life in ballet and theater productions in New Jersey and Philadelphia. She sang at the White House in 2005. She's recorded songs in a Hollywood studio and has been an opening act for concerts by teen-pop stars such as the Naked Brothers Band. Some of her songs were also featured in last years' Brooke Shields movie, "The Greening of Whitney Brown."
Her father's time in California has increased along with hers. He had one campaign-funded trip to Los Angeles spanning Christmas 2004 and New Year's 2005.
Campaign finance disclosures show his donor-funded travel there became a regular event in 2007.
He made two or three California trips each year from 2007 through 2010, then made seven last year alone. Most of the trips have included time in Los Angeles, though he's also travelled to San Francisco, the Silicon Valley, Orange County and San Diego.
The $97,727 of campaign money that paid for trips since 2007 excludes the $18,000 in donor funds he spent on travel on the 2004-2005 California trip. It also does not include most airfare to get there. On most of Andrews' disclosure filings, there are airline ticket purchases, but no note with most about where he flew. Tagmire declined to provide more detail about airfare.
For 14 of the trips, donors paid for lodging at Beverly Hills Plaza Hotel, ranging from under $1,000 to more than $4,000 per trip. Current rates for suites, as advertised on the hotel's website, top out at $325 per night before taxes. He said he also holds meetings and dinners at hotels, which increase the bill.
He said it is permissible to use donor money to pay for lodging for a candidate's minor child on a campaign-related trip but added that Josie's other expenses have been paid out of personal money. "The Congressman's daughter's activities have been fully paid for out of personal funds and any inference by anyone, to the contrary is false," Tagmire said.
His paperwork also does not show how much of his personal money he is spending on the trips.
On campaign trips to California in 2004, 2007 and 2008, his campaign rented Andrews a car. But on most of the trips, it paid for limousine service. On the last reported trip, in November 2011, the car service bill was more than $1,500.
Some of the California excursions coincided with Josie's recording sessions. For instance, the record label Vendetta Entertainment has website posts about her sessions in April, July and November 2011 — all months when Andrews' campaign sent him to California. In a website photo from November, the congressman is pictured in the recording sessions. And Josie Andrews posted Twitter messages about traveling to and recording in California in July and August 2011 — when her father was also traveling there, according to the records.
Andrews clearly raised money in California in conjunction with several of his trips there, though it appears from the filings that there were some trips where he didn't bring home any donations.
Overall, he raised more than $310,000 from California sources from 2002 through 2011 — more than $260,000 of it during the past five years.
His California fundraising from 2007 through 2011 represented about 7 percent of his campaign donations; spending there represented at least 2 percent of his campaign disbursements.
Last year — his busiest California year — he spent more than $31,000, excluding most airfare, and raised $58,000 there.
Like other members of Congress, Andrews is paid $174,000 per year. Records show his wife, Camille Andrews, was paid $174,000 by Rutgers last year.
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Bradley Smith, a former Federal Elections Commission member who now teaches law at Capital University in Ohio, said that campaign finance regulations allow candidates to spend campaign money on virtually anything that's not considered a personal expense. The funds can be used for fundraising or expenses required that are part of the job — such as travel for giving speeches or gathering information.
"The presumption is something is OK if it can be reasonably justified by the campaign," he said, adding that spending time with his daughter might be a "fringe benefit."
Legal expenses, meal costs and travel costs are to be determined on a case-by-case basis. The FEC regulation says that candidates must reimburse their campaign accounts for the personal parts of trips that include both personal and campaign components.
There are differing views on how much donors are concerned with how their money is used by campaigns.
"What donors want is influence and access," said Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, "and don't care how the money isn't being spent."
Grover Connell, a corporate CEO from Westfield, N.J., who gives to many candidates — mostly Democrats — has contributed $7,000 to Andrews' campaigns since 2005, said he believes Andrews is an "intelligent, capable legislator."
He said he didn't know about the California travels, or whether they may be for personal purposes.
"I believe it's against the law" to use campaign money for personal expenses, Connell said. "I presume that he's intelligent enough not to do anything that would be a violation."
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