Christie campaign racks up debt over bridge scandal

As Gov. Christie's reelection campaign continues to respond to federal subpoenas in relation to the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal, it has racked up more than three-quarters of a million dollars in debt.

Under New Jersey law, the campaign may not have to repay all of it.

The Christie campaign owed more than $500,000 to the law firm Patton Boggs, which is handling its responses to subpoenas, as of its most recent filing with the state on Oct. 14.

The campaign also owed $260,000 to New York-based Stroz Friedberg L.L.C., a digital forensics and data recovery firm. A spokeswoman for the firm didn't respond to a request for comment.

The campaign had about $63,000 in its account. It raised $639 in the last quarter; its next quarterly report will be made public Jan. 22.

Typically, a campaign winds down after the election.

Last February, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission voted to authorize the Christie campaign to continue to raise money so it could cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office and a state legislative committee investigating the lane closures.

The federal investigation into the lane closures - which jammed traffic at the bridge from Sept. 9 to 13, 2013 - is ongoing. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the campaign had received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office seeking records in regard to allegations that the Christie administration had canceled meetings with Jersey City's Democratic mayor after he declined to endorse the governor's reelection campaign.

And on Friday, ABC News and other media reported that federal investigators interviewed Christie last month during a two-hour session at the Governor's Mansion in Princeton.

Two former allies of Christie, a Republican considering running for president in 2016, have been implicated in independent reviews of the incident. No one has been charged with a crime.

Even though the election panel voted in the Christie campaign's favor, limits on contributions still applied, so anyone who already had donated $3,800 to the campaign couldn't offer more.

Mark Sheridan, the Patton Boggs attorney who represents the campaign, said in an e-mail Friday that the debt owed to his firm is "for legal services in connection with the response to subpoenas."

"The campaign will need to fund-raise to pay off the debt," he said. There is no time limit on fund-raising.

Sheridan pointed to regulations that allow campaigns to effectively retire debt in certain cases.

A campaign may seek approval from the state election law commission to stop filing quarterly finance reports seven years after the date of an election. The regulations say the campaign must document efforts to retire outstanding obligations, certify that it expects no further contributions and show that it has liquidated its assets.

If the commission approves the application, the "campaign can discharge" the debt, Sheridan said.

Under the regulations, the debt for services rendered wouldn't count as donations.

The election commission said it couldn't comment on the process Friday.

Other campaigns have had trouble paying off debt.

After losing the 2001 election to Democrat Jim McGreevey, GOP nominee Bret Schundler's campaign continued to raise money for three years to try to retire its debt. By 2004, it still had about $180,000 in debt, according to the Schundler campaign's 2008 application to terminate its reporting requirements.

"There came a time, however, when the cost of the fund-raisers and the cost of the mailings exceeded the amount of the contributions received, as increasingly few potential contributors wanted to give to an unsuccessful campaign, ever more distantly past concluded," the campaign wrote.

The campaign noted that New Jersey's statute of limitations on a debt is six years, so creditors were no longer legally entitled to the money.

The election commission adopted new regulations in 2009, which allowed the Schundler campaign to consider its debt settled.

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@AndrewSeidman