In the heart of Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, guests at Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Silvers Omakase are served champagne in a dark room, then escorted into a dimly lit 10-seat sushi bar. One night this spring, a candidate for California’s 3rd congressional district, Rep. Ami Bera, was among those patrons.
There are only two seatings per night and guests dine on a set-price 15-course menu that’s $285 per person, plus a $25 deposit per person just to make the reservation.
Bera charged the $1,861 evening to his campaign on May 26.
Bera currently represents California’s 6th district in Sacramento but is running for the remapped 3rd district seat that includes Tahoe. His disclosure form listed the sushi bill as “Event catering” with “Fundraising” as the purpose. Based on the fixed price and bill, Bera was likely one of five or six people in his party that night.
Bera and his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including a detailed list of questions on specific expenditures.
On another disclosure form filed on the same date, Bera’s campaign reported spending $5,177 at Hotel Californian, a high-end 5-star resort just a 5-minute walk from the sushi restaurant. In May, rooms go for no less than $664 per night, closer to $900 on weekends. The data doesn’t show the dates of travel.
From January 2025 through Oct. 14, when the most recent Federal Election Commission filings are available, Bera’s campaign also spent more than $20,900 at golf resorts, $12,600 at Michelin recommended restaurants and $12,400 at a D.C.-based luxury sporting suites broker — all in the name of fundraising. He also spent considerable amounts in Kentucky and Oregon, hundreds of miles from both his home district and the political center of gravity, Washington, D.C.
Bera’s campaign spent $56,593 total at restaurants labeled for event catering, and 19 times during this election cycle, he spent four figures at restaurants.
During this same period, Bera raised $1,492,834, so his high-end fundraising spending accounts for a relatively small percentage. The Cook Political Report rates his newly redrawn district as favoring Democrats by 6% and he is expected to win handily.
In the misty world of campaign finance, there are few rigorous checks on spending, leaving congressional candidates leeway to cash in on luxury experiences and let their donors foot the bill. Still, compared to similar candidates and his opponent, the reach of Bera’s spending is striking.
“It probably surprises a lot of people how little money actually gets put back into the campaigns and how much is spent on overhead and more fundraising,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at campaign transparency nonprofit Open Secrets.
Glavin chuckled when told about the sushi dinner, and said the expensive hotel charge paired with it “really does stand out.”
Glavin said campaigns typically defend luxury expenditures as “spending that money to raise money” and adopt a “spare no expense” mindset to court high-dollar donors. When it came to the $5,100 hotel disbursement, however: “There’s not a lot of defense for spending exorbitant amounts of money on the lodging,” he said.
FEC regulations say campaign money must be spent on a “political, legislative or governmental purpose,” for which fundraising qualifies. If the candidate wouldn’t have spent that money had they not been running for office, it’s considered a legitimate purpose. Big-ticket charges do not imply wrongdoing but instead can offer a valuable window into how and where politicians choose to spend their resources.
Bera’s campaign received a total of $43,500 from donors with Santa Barbara addresses, but there is no way of knowing whether those donors are connected to his campaign spending there.
The FEC does not often audit the validity of individual expenditures, Glavin said, and is more focused on whether campaigns reported the full venue name and address where they spent money. The only way to know exactly why that money was spent is talking to someone who was there.
This allows candidates more latitude for spending than “if there were more of a microscope on how the money was being spent,” Glavin said.
Spending thousands, while hundreds of miles away
From April 2025 to May 2026, Bera’s campaign spent more than $15,500 in Kentucky, primarily Louisville, more than 2,000 miles from the district he’s running in. The charges were at distilleries, a hotel, restaurants, a chartered transportation company and a golf club.
Bera’s campaign received roughly $14,300 from the political action committees of two alcoholic beverage giants based in Louisville, including $4,733 across four “in-kind” donations, meaning non-cash goods or services, that were mostly for event space rental from January 2025 to April 2026.
Bera is a founding member of the bipartisan White Oak Caucus, a legislative group dedicated to preserving white oak trees used to make barrels for the wine and spirit industries. It’s especially important for bourbon.
White oaks grow throughout most of the eastern United States, and the three other members of Congress who co-founded the caucus in 2022 are from Kentucky and Tennessee.
Glavin said industry-specific fundraising is common among politicians who are champions of or involved in certain sectors. Especially in lucrative industries like alcohol, if there’s money to be made, Glavin said “the idea you go there and build a fundraiser, I think, makes sense.”
The PAC for Louisville-based Brown-Forman Corporation, the maker of Woodford Reserve bourbon (and, perhaps more notably, Jack Daniel’s whiskey), reported $6,000 in cash contributions and $2,408 of in-kind goods or services in May 2025, for a total of $8,408.
Sazerac Company, a spirits company with its principal office in Louisville, had its PAC donate the equivalent of $5,910, including $2,325 in-kind, for event space rental and supplies in January and April 2025, and April 2026. Sazerac owns several bourbon brands — along with popular brands like BuzzBallz, Fireball and Kendall Jenner’s 818 tequila.
On the southern Oregon coast, Bera’s campaign reported four expenses totaling $16,281 at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. There was a $6,000 charge for fundraising event lodging in October 2025, a $4,500 charge for “Caucus retreat” was reported on Oct. 1, a $3,474 charge for fundraising event lodging and catering in August 2025 and a $2,307 charge for travel in August 2026.
The communications director at Bandon Dunes said he was unable to comment, citing that tens of thousands of people come through the resort every year and the resort has no way of knowing why someone is there.
Bera’s campaign received only one donation from Oregon, just $1,000, in June 2026 from the Pacific Seafood Processors Association PAC.
And in San Diego County, Bera spent $1,006 this August on event catering at The Lodge At Torrey Pines, a 5-star hotel next to a golf course.
We examined similar Democratic members of leadership in non-competitive races and found their spending this election cycle somewhat similar in comparison.
But Bera spent the most fundraising money away from his district and Washington, D.C., and he spent that money further from his district or D.C. than the other candidates.
Bera’s campaign spent $20,616 labeled specifically for fundraising or events in Kentucky, Oregon and Santa Barbara — that does not include the $5,177 hotel charge in Santa Barbara and hotel charges in Kentucky, since those were labeled for travel. He spent a total of $122,430 on fundraising and event expenses across all states.
Rep. Linda Sánchez spent a total of $204,706 on fundraising. She has represented southern Los Angeles and parts of Orange County in Congress since 2013 and, similar to Bera, switched districts to flip a remapped seat this election.
Sánchez’s campaign spent $14,530 for out-of-district, non-D.C. fundraising; the two venues are both 3-hour drives from Washington, D.C. on the Virginia coast. She also spent significant sums at the Staples Center stadium in Los Angeles that, while not in her district, is plausibly related to in-district fundraising.
Rep. Ted Lieu, representing west Los Angeles, spent just over $5,511 for out-of-district, non-D.C. fundraising out of $83,334 fundraising and event dollars total. Lieu’s campaign spent $74,267 on “Food & beverage expenses,” but it is not marked as for events or fundraisers. Lieu’s far away spending was primarily on theater tickets in San Francisco, New York and Santa Fe.
And Rep. Jared Huffman, representing Marin County to the Oregon border, didn’t spend any fundraising money outside his district and D.C. of the $89,013 he spent on fundraising and events.
Bera’s opponent in the general election, Republican Robb Tucker, raised $304,654 for the 2026 election cycle up to Oct. 14, significantly less than Bera in the same time. Of that money, $205,000 came from a loan he gave his campaign.
While Tucker’s campaign spent $36,137 on fundraising consulting (Bera spent $119,000 on consulting), his filings show no expenses related to fundraising events.
Bera’s district is safe. Why does he keep fundraising?
Bera is running as a congressional incumbent (though not a district incumbent) in a district remapped for Democrat success. Democrats are favored by 6 percentage points in California’s 3rd district, according to a nonpartisan analysis.
Even in a safe district, though, there are still plenty of reasons to “keep the money flowing in,” Glavin said.
“If you want to move up into a leadership role, then you need to establish your bona fides as a fundraiser, and you need to share the wealth of your fundraising with your colleagues,” Glavin said.
That’s what Bera’s done.
On Feb. 28, 2025, Bera’s campaign announced he was appointed Frontline Co-Chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2026 cycle, a group focused on flipping competitive seats and protecting vulnerable Democrats.
Four days prior, his campaign donated $25,000 to the DCCC — his first of seven significant contributions to the DCCC between then and August 2026, totaling $330,000.
In the 2026 election cycle, his campaign donated $4,000 to the Democratic Doctors PAC, $3,500 to the federal Harry S. Truman Club, $2,500 to the Equality PAC and $1,300 to Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee. He gave between $400 to $800 to local and state Democrat groups and $100 to the Carmichael Elks Lodge.
He also gave $1,000 each to the campaigns of Rep. Adam Gray in Merced County and State Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains in Bakersfield, who lost in the June primary in the race for California’s remapped 22nd district.
But Glavin pointed out another potential reason that could motivate his fundraising.
In the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, Bera loaned his campaign $400,000. This cycle, he paid himself back $132,800. Glavin called the repayment “quite a windfall for him.”
This wasn’t always standard practice. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Senator Ted Cruz, allowing candidates to use money raised after an election to repay large loans the candidates had given their campaigns. Previously, only $250,000 could be repaid to candidates, unless it was repaid within 20 days of the election.
Bera’s campaign had repaid him a total of $222,200 in chunks since the 2012 cycle. After the ruling, he repaid $115,000 in the 2024 cycle and now $132,800. The total repayment now equals $470,000.
It is unclear why this number is greater than the original loan amounts.
Ultimately, most candidates like to keep a healthy amount of money in the bank, regardless of how competitive their race is.
“A lot of times you see that with safe incumbents you have a big war chest, then that’s something that you know is going to scare off potential [opposition],” Glavin said.
In October 2025, Bera’s campaign posted a press release announcing it had $2 million in cash-on-hand entering the fourth quarter of 2025. The announcement said his financials were a “strong display of strength that underscores his readiness to win and help Democrats reclaim the House majority in 2026.”
Bera stopped by Tahoe, too
In the Tahoe-Truckee region, Bera spent $11,022 total on event catering, event space, travel meals and meeting food and beverage from January to October this year.
On Oct. 1, his campaign reported spending $2,500 for event catering at Riva Grill, $1,744 for event space rental at Round Hill Pines Beach Resort in Zephyr Cove and $988 at Discover Lake Tahoe Tours, listed under travel.
Bera’s campaign also reported spending $2,556 to rent event space at Fifty Fifty Brewing in Truckee on Aug. 24 and $1,904 at The Landing for fundraising event catering on May 5.
Also, Bera’s campaign paid for travel meals at MacDuff’s Pub and Riva Grill for $201 and $306, respectively. And he purchased “Meeting food and beverage” twice at Margaritaville for $349 and $263, and once at Bar of America in Truckee for $211.
After winning the June primary, Bera said he would travel across Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Nevada counties to meet voters and hear their concerns. Since that statement, his campaign has reported $6,776 in fundraising expenses within his district, including the three expenditures in the Tahoe area on Oct. 1.
None of the fundraising events mentioned in this article were publicized. His social media accounts don’t show him in any of the out of district locations discussed.
Private fundraisers can be difficult to track, Glavin said, because knowledge of the events may be limited to “a very select group of people.”
This leaves a gap. The filings show where Bera’s campaign reported spending money, but offer little detail about who attended the events, what took place or how the expenditures served their stated purpose.
