Federal lawmakers can legally use campaign committee funds for travel, food, events and even child care, as long as those funds are not for “personal use,” meaning they may not cover activities that would exist irrespective of the campaign, according to the FEC. Leadership PACs are not even beholden to that “personal use” rule, meaning lawmakers have broad latitude to use the money they raise as long as it has some fundraising function. Ruben Gallego has leaned into that leeway, with his three children, Sydney Gallego, her mother and their full-time au pair frequently joining the senator on donors’ dime, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation.
“He just spends his campaign account like it’s his personal slush fund,” said the person. “He’s using campaign cash to live a luxury lifestyle.”
Gallego did not dispute using donor funds to pay for family travel or child care. “This is not breaking news,” he said in a statement to POLITICO. “With the rising costs of child care and the burden it has on the budgets of American families, Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House alike regularly travel with their wives and children, as is permitted by the FEC.”
Gallego is considering a presidential run in 2028. On Friday, Gallego traveled to South Carolina, where he took part in the Democratic Party’s “On the Road” series on Juneteenth.
But the pattern of spending could pose a major liability on top of his longtime friendship with Swalwell, who resigned from Congress in April amid allegations of sexual assault and a series of headlines about his misuse of campaign funds. Gallego’s team has recently brought on former Biden White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates to assist in political communications. Jacques Petit, Gallego’s communications director, told POLITICO that Gallego “is weighing all options for his political future. He has brought on Andrew to help navigate those processes.”
The person familiar with his spending said that there was concern among some members of Gallego’s inner circle that he would not pass the required vetting to be president or vice president.
“Any person close to Gallego would know that he is one of the most vetted candidates after his tough 2024 campaign where millions of dollars were spent against him,” Petit said in a statement to POLITICO. “Despite that, he overperformed the top of the ticket. Now he is focused on delivering for Arizonans and electing Democrats in 2026.”
Gallego has denied any knowledge of Swalwell’s actions and called for him to be expelled from Congress. Swalwell has called the allegations against him “false” and pledged to fight them.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told CBS News in April that she had asked Senate leadership to investigate Gallego about allegations of misconduct that are “sexual in nature,” as well as “issues of campaign finance violations” but did not release details. A Gallego spokesperson called those allegations “right wing conspiracy theories.” Luna did not respond to a request for comment.
Asked about the status of the ethics probe, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune directed POLITICO to comments he made in April, when he told reporters that “the Ethics Committee will be tasked with trying to determine whether there’s a there there.”
Last month, Gallego established a legal defense fund.
The Big Game
In February 2023, 20 days after Gallego had launched his Arizona Senate bid to replace Kyrsten Sinema, the Gallegos, Swalwell, Swalwell’s then-chief of staff Yardena Wolf and several donors and their guests piled into State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, to watch Super Bowl LVII.
The gathering was billed as a fundraiser for the “Swallego Victory Fund,” a joint committee Swalwell and Gallego established in October 2022. Tickets to attend cost $5,000 and included a “pre-game brunch” that could be attended independently for $1,000, according to a copy of the invitation provided to POLITICO by Swalwell’s lawyer, Sara Azari. The committee raised a total of $56,505, all but $900 of which the FEC logged between Jan. 31 and Feb. 13, 2023, the day after the Super Bowl, according to FEC records. It spent $34,700 on event tickets and about $2,715 at The Henry, a brunch restaurant in Phoenix, the records show.
Donors to the committee included Rick Smith, the country’s highest paid CEO in 2024, and Dina LaPolt, a celebrity entertainment lawyer, both of whom attended the Super Bowl with family members. Neither Smith nor LaPolt responded to a request for comment. Wolf, Swalwell’s chief of staff at the time, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Gallego and Swalwell established the joint committee “in connection with Super Bowl LVII, and supporters who met the applicable contribution requirements were eligible to attend,” a Gallego spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. The spokesperson added that “tickets were purchased at fair market value” and that “Hosting donors and supporters at sporting events in their areas is a common, bipartisan practice.”
In a statement, Azari told POLITICO that Swalwell had “followed his campaign counsel’s guidance to plan the event,” noting that “Tickets were purchased [and] distributed through the fundraiser, and all activity was properly reported and conducted in compliance with applicable campaign finance rules.”
The Swallego Victory Fund, which raised no money after March 2023, was shut down on Jan. 1, 2025. Swalwell and Gallego each received $7,643.89 in their personal campaign committees, with the remainder going to standard operating fees.
It is unusual, though not unheard of, for candidates to fundraise at the Super Bowl. Former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich) hosted a fundraiser at the Super Bowl in 2010 that cost $5,000 to attend. And Swalwell dipped into campaign funds in 2024 to watch his San Francisco 49ers play in Las Vegas.
Lawmakers also sometimes have their tickets paid for in other ways. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a fellow Democrat widely viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, drew headlines when he attended the 2023 Super Bowl at the expense of a nonprofit. In President Donald Trump’s first term, for example, the Republican National Committee paid almost $500 per seat at the World Series for Trump, 11 members of Congress and senior White House staff, The Washington Post reported.
But it is far more common for politicians to pay their own way. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) attended the 2023 Super Bowl in Glendale but paid personally, his office told POLITICO. When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani watched the Knicks play in the NBA finals earlier this month, he emphasized to reporters that he had personally paid for his $1,000 nosebleed seats.
Earlier this year, Gallego used the high price of Super Bowl tickets to lean into Democrats’ affordability messaging. “The average Super Bowl ticket now costs $6,773,” he wrote in an X post. “That’s not just a game — it’s a luxury bill.”
‘There’s a pattern’
Gallego cemented himself as a battleground-tested Democrat when he defeated Republican challenger Kari Lake in 2024, despite sweeping losses for his party across the country — immediately elevating him to the 2028 conversation.
In February 2024, about a month after being sworn in to the Senate, Gallego established the “JUNTOS PAC,” a leadership PAC used to raise and spend money separate from his official campaign committee. Since then, that committee has raked in nearly $1.5 million, more than half of which came from corporate PACs, according to FEC records.
Gallego, like many politicians with leadership PACs, has used those funds for an array of campaign and fundraising-related travel. He has also paid for his family to come along on several of those trips, according to the person familiar with Gallego’s spending.
That includes PAC retreats at Disney World where Gallego brought his wife, children and their au pair, and another to Disneyland with his wife and kids that FEC records show totaled nearly $1,500 in meals and hotels, not including flights, the person said.
The Gallegos also used PAC money to travel to St. Barts for Sydney Gallego’s boss’ birthday and to Miami for Sydney Gallego’s own birthday, according to the person familiar with his spending, staying at a Loews hotel on Miami Beach that cost more than $9,000, FEC records show. And when Gallego traveled to Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood in November 2025 to denounce the federal immigration crackdown there, the family stayed in a vacation rental, the person said, which records show cost the PAC nearly $1,500.
The Gallego spokesperson did not address the birthdays, but told POLITICO that all of those trips included fundraising activity. The Gallegos’ trip to St. Barts was part of “a multi-stop political and fundraising swing—as senators regularly do,” the spokesperson said. They added that Gallego hosted a fundraiser in Chicago and that the Gallegos “attended several widely attended political events and fundraisers” in Miami.
Gallego’s campaign committee and leadership PAC have also disbursed more than $18,000 in child care reimbursements and direct payments to an au pair company — including a $400 payment to Sydney Gallego’s mother, Moria Comini, for “Babysitting while at [a] campaign fundraiser.”
The child care reimbursements and trips to Miami and St. Barts were first reported by The Daily Beast.
Sydney Gallego and the children also used campaign committee and leadership PAC funds to fly between Washington and Phoenix 13 times in 2025, according to the person familiar with his spending.
“There’s a pattern,” the person said, adding that Sydney Gallego “just basically rides [Ruben Gallego’s] wave.”
Adam Wren contributed to this report.
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