Newt Gingrich's $4.3 million campaign debt

By Richard K. Barry

Yahoo! News is reporting that Newt Gingrich will end his failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination with a $4.3 million debt.

While it's par for the course for candidates to wrack up debt, Newt, it seems, was particularly irresponsible. According to Craig Holman, a public affairs lobbyist for the watchdog group Citizen Union, "[h]e was wreckless in running up these bills, especially in the last month or so of the campaign when it was quite clear Romney would be the nominee."

Now a bunch of very nervous creditors are wondering when they are going to get paid. What makes it worse for Gingrich is that it's always harder to raise money when you have no elected office from which to help donors or influence policy, no quid pro quo.

I'm not going to pick on Newt for running up a debt; that's politics. But running up a debt with limited options to pay it back? That's hardly prudent fiscal management, the very thing you Republicans tell us you bring to the table. Guess not so much.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)