In yet another major scandal for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who is currently running in the California gubernatorial election, campaign finance watchers are sounding off the massive amount of money he has spent on what appears to be a clearly “inherently personal” expense, and thus one on which it is illegal for him to spend campaign cash: childcare.
As background, Swalwell has been in Congress since 2013. He tried running for president in 2019, an attempt that ended in his utter humiliation given how quickly he failed, and he is now trying to become the governor of California. While he has been involved with a slew of campaigns, the main scandal pertains to his use of congressional campaign cash.
According to a report on his expenditures conducted by Fox News Digital, the congressman spent a whopping $200,000 for childcare-related costs over the course of just 2019 to 2025, as can be gleaned from the Federal Election Commission filings into the matter. In fact, a massive $22,000 was spent by the congressman on three months of childcare costs covering October to December 2025.
It gets worse. The congressman’s gubernatorial campaign was apparently involved in the childcare spending scandal too, and in an even worse way: spending data from it, again as revealed by the FED, reveals that his gubernatorial campaign made out three payments totaling over $6,000 to his wife, Brittany Swalwell.
Fox News Digital, when reviewing the filings, found that the Swalwell campaign has paid one individual named Amanda Barbosa a massive $102,000. She opened her private childcare practice in September of 2021, about a month before the first payment from the Swalwell campaign. She apparently has close ties to the family, as she was pictured with them in Disney World in June of 2025.
She wasn’t the only one. A “Spanish immersion” daycare in DC named Bambini Play & Learn Child Development Center was paid, Fox News Digital reported, a massive $57,324.40 by the Swalwell campaign. The tuition costs for the “immersion center” are thousands of dollars a month.
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It doesn’t end there. In addition to reimbursing Swalwell for his childcare expenses, the campaign even reimbursed him nearly $10,000 for for reimbursement for payroll tax for campaign childcare. Yet further, the campaign spent another $1,943.35 for “childcare for campaign event” and hundreds of dollars more on more various miscellaneous expenses related to childcare.
The legality of that reimbursement is unclear. Under federal law, the use of campaign funds for “personal expenses” is forbidden. However, since 2018, the FEC has allowed the use of campaign funds to pay childcare expenses that are caused by campaign activity, as those are not deemed to be personal use. It is unclear how months of daycare, as Swalwell’s campaign paid for, were all related to campaign activity.
Commenting to Fox News Digital on the matter, the Heritage Foundation’s Allen Mendenhall said, “It’s an expense that candidates with young children will incur regardless of whether they’re in a campaign. I have childcare costs. Many people have childcare costs, and we can’t just use this other money to subsidize our things.” He added, “The danger here is creating a special class of politicians who are insulated from normal constraints, ordinary constraints that everybody else has to deal with.”
Watch Swalwell get roasted during a disaster of a town hall appearance: