Data from Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE), reviewed by news outlet g1 on Wednesday (26), show that 1,768 candidates have so far declared donations to their own campaigns ahead of this year's elections. Two of them exceeded the legal limit on self-financing: Joaquim Passarinho, of the Liberal Party (PL) in Pará, who is running for reelection to the lower house of Congress, and José Eduardo Botelho, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) in Mato Grosso, seeking reelection to the state legislature.
Brazilian electoral law allows candidates to fund their own campaigns, but caps that contribution at 10% of the total spending ceiling the TSE sets for each office. Passarinho declared 500,000 reais (about 90,000 dollars) in personal funds. Since the federal deputy spending ceiling is 3,176,572.53 reais, his self-financing limit would have been 317,600 reais, meaning he exceeded it by 182,300 reais. Contacted by g1, Passarinho said he was unaware of the limit and will return the excess amount. The PL's Pará chapter did not respond to a request for comment.
Botelho declared 200,000 reais in personal funds. Mato Grosso's spending ceiling for state deputy candidates is 1,270,629.01 reais, putting his self-financing limit at 127,000 reais, an excess of 72,900 reais. Neither Botelho nor the MDB responded to g1's requests for comment before publication. Both men are the largest individual donors to their own campaigns: Passarinho's personal contribution covered 89% of everything his campaign raised, and Botelho's covered 90%.
What the law says
According to g1, exceeding the self-financing cap can trigger a fine of up to 100% of the excess amount and lead to the rejection of a campaign's accounts, but it does not automatically strip a candidate of their registration or trigger ineligibility. Those consequences require separate legal proceedings before Brazil's electoral courts. In a precedent cited by g1, a state legislature candidate in Pará who exceeded the limit by 318% after the 2022 election had his accounts rejected and was fined the full excess amount.
Experts consulted by g1 caution that breaking the self-financing rule does not, on its own, amount to abuse of economic power, a distinct legal concept under Brazilian electoral law. Electoral lawyer Michel Bertoni Soares said the analysis should weigh the excess against the campaign's total fundraising. "One benchmark would be whether the irregularity corresponds to more than 20% of everything the campaign raised," he said. By that measure, Passarinho's excess equals 32.62% of the 559,000 reais his campaign raised, while Botelho's equals 33.15% of the 220,000 reais his campaign raised.
Electoral lawyer Emma Roberta Bueno said abuse of economic power would only be established if the self-financing let a candidate run a more expensive campaign than the legal ceiling allows, distorting the race. She said the two candidates' accounts "should be rejected," but the law does not mandate registration cancellation or ineligibility as an automatic penalty in these cases, only repayment of misused funds. Lawyer Gabriela Rollemberg, of the Brazilian Academy of Electoral and Political Law, noted that regulators still need to check whether the declared personal funds include payments for legal or accounting services, which fall outside the self-financing cap. "Legally, it is not possible to confirm a violation without first auditing the accounts," she said. The number of candidates who have self-funded, currently 1,768, is expected to keep rising through the campaign period as new donations are logged in the TSE's system. Final review of the campaign accounts, which will confirm or dismiss any irregularities, falls to Brazil's electoral courts after the vote.