Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-12_m6hn.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

20  FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. TED CRUZ FOR SENATE 

Opinion of the Court 

candidate’s debt could only arguably enrich the candidate if 
the  candidate  does  not  otherwise  expect  to  be  repaid.    In 
other words, the Government’s gift comparison is meaning-
ful  only  if  the  baseline  is  that  the  campaign  will  default. 
The  Government,  however,  provides  no  reason  to  believe 
that most or even many winning candidates—the only can-
didates  with  whom  its  anticorruption  interest  is  con-
cerned—expect not to be repaid by their campaigns.  To the 
contrary, the Government has recognized throughout this 
litigation that winning candidates are commonly repaid in 
full.  See  App.  31–32  (citing  the  former  FEC  Commis-
sioner’s  statement  that  “only  winners  have  an  easy  time 
dealing with debt”); id., at 317 (same); see also Ovtchinni-
kov,  Self-Funding  11  (concluding  that,  even  with  BCRA’s 
limitations  on  loan  repayment  in  place,  two  out  of  three 
winning campaigns were able to repay a candidate’s loans 
in full).  For such a candidate, then, post-election contribu-
tions bear little resemblance to a gift, because there is less 
of a chance that his campaign will default.  Such contribu-
tions instead restore the candidate to the status quo ante, 
a position to which he legitimately expected to return.  As 
for  losing  candidates,  they  are  of  course  in  no  position  to
grant official favors, and the Government does not provide 
any  anticorruption  rationale  to  explain  why  post-election 
contributions to those candidates should be restricted.  See 
Brief for Appellant 45–46. 

The analogy also proves too much.  By the Government’s
logic,  post-election  contributions  to  retire  candidate  loans 
are little different from gifts given directly to the candidate.
But that logic is belied by how the Government treats the
two categories of purported “gifts.”  On the one hand, fed-
eral  law  flatly  prohibits  candidates  from  using  campaign
contributions  for  personal  purposes.
  See  52  U. S. C. 
§30114(b)(2).  And it forbids Senators from accepting gifts 
worth  $250  or  more.  See  2  U. S. C.  §4725(a)(1).    By  con-
trast,  the  postulated  “gift-by-loan-repayment”  limits  are