Congressman Ted Lieu gave $50,000 to his alma mater Stanford University a couple of years back, but two details make this notable.
First, Lieu didn’t spend his own money on the donation but instead spent the money of Ted Lieu for Congress, the committee created to fund his election and reelection to Congress. Second, the donation came a few months before his son applied to Stanford.
An alumnus donating money to his alma mater is not odd. A congressional campaign making charitable contributions, even to a college, is not odd, and certainly not illegal.
What’s odd is a mid-five-figure gift from an active congressional committee to a massive university.
Look at all the disbursements made to Stanford University, and all the rest of them are expenses, such as catering or lodging on campus for campaign travel. Mike Honda, another California Democrat, spent $1,000 at Stanford back in 2008, and his campaign marked it down as “Contribution — Local.” So, at least one other congressional candidate donated campaign money to Stanford, and Ted Lieu for Congress accounts for 98% of all federal campaign money donated to Stanford.
Plenty of congressional campaigns donate their money to charities and other nonprofit organizations, including colleges, and sometimes those donations are in the six figures. But in almost every case, those are the committees of retired, defeated, or deceased candidates donating leftover money after their political careers.
Lieu’s $50,000 to Stanford is the second-largest contribution on record from an active congressional candidate to a college or university. Lieu’s campaign is outspent only by Mississippi Democratic Rep. Benny Thompson, whose campaign donated $130,000 in 2011 to his alma mater, the historically black college Tougaloo College.
Most congressional campaigns that do donate to colleges donate to smaller colleges more in need of money. The only other Ivy League donation of comparable size from a congressional campaign was the August 2011 gift of $37,000 to the Kennedy School of Government from the campaign of the late congressman John Adler, to establish the John H. Adler Memorial Fund for Veterans’ Affairs.
Devin Nunes, a California Republican, gave $40,000 from his campaign coffers after the 2020 election to the College of the Sequoias, the small school from which he graduated and on whose board of directors he served before running for Congress. This donation established a scholarship fund, to help students affected by the wildfires, in the name of the Intelligence Committee’s former staff director who had recently died.
Lieu’s contribution, then, is unique. He owes it to his supporters, constituents, and the public to give an account for his donations.
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UPDATE: This story was updated on Aug. 13 to add an explanation for the Nunes campaign’s donation.
