Frank Lautenberg has been dead for nearly eleven years, but he still files quarterly reports with the Federal Election Commission.
Lautenberg has $89,427 cash-on-hand, with a debt of $1,090,000.
The former five-term U.S. Senator, who died in office in June 2013, continues to carry a campaign debt from October 2002, when he made a last-minute bid to return to the Senate after the Democratic incumbent, Bob Torricelli, dropped out of the race at the end of September. Lautenberg’s ability to seed his late-starting campaign with his own money was one of the reasons Democrats picked him as their candidate.
Just before Torricelli’s exit, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll put Republican Douglas Forrester, a former deputy state treasurer and West Windsor mayor, in the lead by a 41%-34% margin.
Lautenberg raised $3 million for his five-week campaign, including a $1.5 million loan. A mid-October Rutgers-Eagleton poll had the race tied at 44%, but by Election Day, Lautenberg defeated Forrester by a 54%-44% margin.
Torricelli ended his campaign with $2,202,325. He terminated his campaign account in 2018 with $177,789 in the bank. He said he did not expect to be a candidate again and was no longer making political expenditures; instead, he said he would distribute his campaign account to non-profit groups, including his own, The Rosemont Foundation.