Political fundraising in the US keeps growing in scale and complexity, and the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections is accelerating that trend.
Candidates, party committees and political action committees are raising money earlier and spending harder, especially in tightly contested races, according to StarCompliance.
Every company and individual must comply with strict campaign finance rules under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), alongside state-level legislation. These rules are designed to stop straw donor and reimbursement schemes, as well as the reputational fallout that can follow.
For firms that work with government bodies or bid for public contracts, the stakes are higher. They must track, pre-clear and report employee donations, because a single contribution can trigger “pay-to-play” restrictions.
The consequences range from penalties to outright bans on contracting with affected government entities, while unusually large aggregate donations may draw scrutiny as potential bribery. With conflicts of interest and disclosure duties spanning federal, state and local jurisdictions, supervising donations is both difficult and prone to error.
Recent cycles have seen billions of dollars raised and spent on political and judicial races at county, state and federal level. As volumes climb, so does the chance that staff will take part, and not only senior leaders.
Employees in any function may donate without realising their role or client relationships could create a regulatory problem. Those in public sector business development or client coverage are particularly exposed. Without consistent oversight, firms often lack visibility into who is giving and where, with gaps surfacing only when remediation is harder.
Many organisations still depend on self-reporting and spreadsheet reviews, which struggle at scale. Employees may be unaware of jurisdiction-specific rules or forget to report altogether.
Compliance teams must then cross-check disclosures against multiple public data sources with differing formats and reporting delays. Reviewers may interpret rules inconsistently, while typos and misspelled names make accurate aggregation of exposure almost impossible, weakening the audit trail over time.
Automation offers a remedy. Pre-clearance workflows let staff submit requests before donating, so compliance can approve or deny in advance. Rules engines assess requests by jurisdiction, contribution limits, pay-to-play restrictions and employee role, applying the same logic organisation-wide.
Centralised recordkeeping, combined with reconciliation of federal, state and local data, creates a consistent audit trail. Many firms are partnering with RegTech providers to bring pre-clearance, rules evaluation, data aggregation and reporting into one system, scaling without extra manual overhead.
Technology, however, does not replace clear policies and practical training. Staff need to know when pre-clearance applies and why some roles face extra restrictions. Onboarding should capture prior contributions that may trigger look-back obligations, and processes must be simple enough that employees actually follow them.
StarCompliance urges firms to ask whether they have a clear multi-jurisdictional policy, accessible contribution limits and pay-to-play rules, mandatory pre-clearance, close monitoring of government-facing staff, independent contribution data, and onboarding reviews that capture past donations. Firms acting now will be better placed as activity builds towards the midterms and beyond.
Read the full StarCompliance post here.
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