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For the past 12 years, State Rep. Marjorie C. Decker’s campaign has reaped the rewards of extensive fundraising — nearly half of which came from registered lobbyists in 2023, the most recent year for which fully reviewed data was available.

And over nine of her 12 years in office, Decker — who represents the 25th Middlesex district, including much of Cambridge and the heart of Harvard’s campus — has spent more than $11,000 of her campaign’s money at University of Massachusetts Club. The private, members-only social club sits on the top floor of one of Boston’s tallest skyscrapers just a few blocks away from Beacon Hill — and is frequented by the state’s most powerful.

The social club is only one of the many places where Decker spends her campaign’s money. According to decades worth of public filings reviewed by The Crimson, Decker is a prolific fundraiser — she’s raised over $750,000 since 2013 — and has spent even more.

But even in the absence of serious opposition on the ballot for much of her career, Decker has spent her campaign funds liberally — from more than $11,000 at the UMass club and $4,600 on parking tickets, to thousands more on high-priced meals, gifts to colleagues, and even a wedding present.

Decker’s spending is not unique among legislators in Massachusetts, where campaign finance law allows lawmakers to tap into campaign coffers for anything deemed an “enhancement” of their “political future,” so long as it is not “primarily for personal use.”

Legislative leadership, including the Senate President and Speaker of the House, have been known to dip extensively into campaign accounts to finance anything from car expenses to a suite at TD Garden during the Beanpot Tournament, an investigation by The Boston Globe last July found.

But a Crimson analysis of more than a decade’s worth of public campaign finance reports by Decker — who chairs the Joint Committee on Public Health but has never served in top State House leadership — reveals that this phenomenon extends far beyond the upper echelons of Beacon Hill and right to the heart of Cambridge.

Decker also became increasingly reliant on donations by lobbyists as her spending continued to rise. Reports of contributions between 2019 and 2023, obtained by The Crimson through a series of public records requests, reveal that she has risen to become among the State House’s top recipients of donations from registered lobbyists.

And back home, Decker’s spending and fundraising efforts are an outlier: over much of her time in the Legislature, she has frequently outspent and outraised other members of Cambridge and Somerville’s delegations to the State House.

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Only House Majority Leader Michael J. Moran, whose Boston district also includes two Cambridge precincts, has consistently raised more.

In a statement to The Crimson on Tuesday afternoon, Decker defended her campaign’s fundraising and spending: “I host town halls, office hours, meet and greets throughout the year and provide food, drinks, and other refreshments to the constituents in attendance,” she wrote in an email. “I am proud to offer those courtesies and hospitality measures to my constituents, just as I am proud to provide jobs to young people from Cambridge.”

Presents and Parking Tickets

Though Decker got her start in politics when she joined the Cambridge City Council in 1999, her political fundraising didn’t kick into gear until more than a decade later, when she was elected without serious opposition to the State House in 2013.

Public filings with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, the independent agency that regulates campaign finance in Massachusetts, show that Decker’s spending began to pick up quickly after she entered Beacon Hill.

Decker reported spending less than $33,000 from her campaign account in 2013, her first year in the State House. Between 2014 and 2022, that number fluctuated between roughly $18,800 and more than $61,000; in 2023, she spent nearly $79,000. Decker did not have a serious challenger on the ballot at any point until 2024, and was unopposed entirely in 2020 and 2022.

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Much of this money supported expenditures typical of an incumbent politician, such as salaries for campaign staff, fees to print and mail campaign literature, advertisements, Little League sponsorships, and website maintenance, among others.

But many of Decker’s expenses have gone toward gifts and social gatherings — which, she said, have helped her build ties with constituents and show appreciation to her staff and legislative colleagues.

Nearly $11,000 of Decker’s campaign funds have gone to the UMass Club, where she has been a member since at least 2016. While Decker has spent more than $4,700 on membership fees, her campaign’s financial disclosures show she has spent an additional nearly $4,500 on meals and meetings at the club just since mid-2023.

“Members of the public are welcome to join the UMass Club,” Decker wrote in an emailed statement, adding that “associate memberships are available to the general public at extremely reasonable costs compared to most other meeting space options in the Beacon Hill area.”

Decker wrote that she uses her membership to “host constituents, advocates, staff, interns, and colleagues for lunch” and defended her spending as a means of “funding public education” for UMass students. During the pandemic, she wrote, “I continued to pay my dues to help save jobs” at the club from layoffs.

Transportation was another large expense for Decker’s campaign — and more than $4,600 of her transportation spending was on “parking tickets” during the first six years of her term, filings show.

The costs “resulted from expiring meters in Cambridge during work events,” Decker wrote in a statement, adding that she stopped paying tickets using campaign funds after OCPF regulations shifted to bar the practice several years ago.

“Parking in Cambridge has always been challenging,” she wrote. “I would rather pay a ticket than leave a meeting with a constituent early.”

She added that she had “paid parking tickets for campaign volunteers and staff.”

Since entering the State House, Decker has spent more than $3,400 at Toscano’s, a high-priced Italian restaurant in Harvard Square.

Nearly $3,000 of Decker’s spending at the restaurant was reported between July 2022 and September 2024, including over $1,300 just last year. Much of her spending at the restaurant is labeled as lunches with her legislative or campaign staff — though a November 2023 filing saw Decker spend $210 on a “Colleague Lunch re: Healthcare.”

Decker wrote “I am always very happy to spend money in my district and to celebrate the hard work of my staff and the people I work with,” including local advocates and campaign staff.

Decker has also spent more than $4,400 from her campaign account on gifts to colleagues since 2015, records show, including more than $2,500 since 2020. Campaign filings do not disclose what the gifts are, but simply list the amount and a brief explanation of their purpose.

She also spent $500 in Nov. 2023 on a wedding gift — the largest amount ever reported by a member of the Legislature on a wedding gift funded by campaign dollars, according to more than two decades of wedding-related political expenditures reviewed by The Crimson.

Decker reimbursed the wedding gift to her campaign on May 31, six months after the initial expenditure, after “it was brought to my attention that this was not an allowable use of campaign funds,” she wrote.

Campaign finance law in Massachusetts is notoriously permissive, giving legislators enormous latitude in how they spend their donations.

Other states have much stricter rules. In Washington, for instance, candidates are prohibited from spending campaign funds on anything “not directly related to the candidate’s election campaign,” such as social club fees, subscriptions to newspapers, or gifts to constituents, according to state regulations.

Decker’s spending, though legal, is still “remarkable,” said Scotia M. Hilles, the executive director of pro-transparency group Act on Mass.

“Just because it’s legal by letter of the law in Massachusetts doesn’t make it a good sign of a healthy democracy, that someone would be able to use campaign accounts for something like this,” Hilles said.

States such as Florida and Colorado have also adopted laws requiring elected officials to disclose information about their meetings with other lawmakers, such as who attended or what was discussed.

But when legislators in Massachusetts use campaign funds to pay for meals or meetings, the law does not require them to reveal who they met with or what they talked about.

Lobbyist Contributions

As Decker continued to spend, records show that she began to rely more and more on contributions from registered lobbyists — who are capped at spending $200 per year per candidate.

Though Decker reported raising just more than $9,000 from registered lobbyists in 2019, she raised more than $21,000 from lobbyists just four years later. In 2023, the latest year for which data is available, nearly half of Decker’s fundraising came from registered lobbyists.

Lobbyists spend heavily across the Legislature and are subject to strict contribution limits, but Decker’s reliance on them still makes her stand out among others in the House.

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A Crimson analysis of contributions by lobbyists for every sitting representative found that, from 2021 onwards, Decker has consistently been among the lawmakers who received the most individual lobbyist contributions. (In a statement in response, Decker wrote that her overall fundraising has not been much higher or lower than that of others in the Legislature.)

In 2021, when Decker received 162 donations from registered lobbyists amounting to more than $25,000, only two House members — Franklin Democrat Jeffrey N. Roy (D-Mass.) and House Budget Chair Aaron Michlewitz (D-Mass.), representing the North End and other parts of Boston — took in more contributions.

Decker tied for third in the number of lobbyist contributions the following year, taking in the most individual contributions, at 100, from lobbyists of any lawmaker not in House leadership. Only Michlewitz and Speaker of the House Ronald J. Mariano (D-Mass.) reported more, while North Shore Democrat Ann-Margaret Ferrante (D-Mass.) tied with Decker.

Decker ranked seventh in 2023, with 129 reported contributions from lobbyists.

“I am proud to have the support of key nonprofit leaders and policy professionals who work on issues that support the public good,” Decker wrote in an emailed response to a summary of The Crimson’s findings.

“The fact that some of their work on these issues requires them to disclose their advocacy activity does not legally or morally disqualify them from backing candidates who are effective on issues that support the public good,” she added.

Some of the lobbyists are registered on behalf of interest groups or nonprofits such as the Project Bread or the Massachusetts Nurses Association, many come from firms that represent a broad range of clients.

Decker denied ever being influenced by lobbyist contributions, writing that she has “stayed entirely consistent” over her time in the Legislature.

A Well-Funded War Chest

Decker has raised money at a breakneck pace throughout her career in the State House — where she has largely remained unchallenged.

Decker had faced three primary opponents before 2024, though none ever formed a serious threat to her incumbency. She has never dipped below 83 percent of the vote, and from 2020 until 2024, faced no opposition at all.

“I take everyone seriously,” Decker wrote in a statement.

For years, her spending has vastly exceeded that of other state representatives from Cambridge and Somerville.

The two cities are primarily represented by four Democratic members of the State House beyond Decker: Erika Uyterhoeven and Christine P. Barber of Somerville; Mike L. Connolly of Cambridge and Somerville; and Steven C. Owens, whose district straddles Cambridge and Watertown.

Decker has outspent them all individually since 2021. In 2023, when she wasn’t on the ballot, Decker spent more than two and a half times what Uyterhoeven, Barber, Connolly, and Owens did combined.

OCPF filings from 2015 disclose that Decker raised over $27,500 that year while spending more than $24,000. By 2019 — a year where she was not on the ballot at all — Decker reported raising more than $68,000 and spent more than $43,000. Her fundraising dipped in 2020, then fluctuated between $45,000 and nearly $174,000 over the next four years.

Decker was able to build up a war chest of cash, fundraising aggressively while continuing to spend. By December 2023, when Evan C. MacKay ’19 — a former Harvard labor leader who lost last summer’s Democratic primary to Decker by a mere 41 votes — first launched their campaign for State Representative, Decker sat on nearly $112,000 in the bank.

For a longtime incumbent to maintain an extensive pile of cash is far from unique, and often may be a deliberate strategy to ward off competition.

“It’s an advantage of incumbency. You have more name recognition, and you’re raising money always for the next election,” said John Portz, a political science professor at Northeastern University who studies state and local politics.

“If you raise money, it’s going to discourage other people to run against you,” Portz added.

Though Decker’s war chest may have helped her stay functionally uncontested for years, that advantage eventually gave way. Even as Decker raised more than $170,000 in 2024 — vastly outspending MacKay for the duration of their Democratic primary campaign — she eked out a razor-thin win.

“War chests can ward off competition, that’s for sure — that said, successful challengers don’t need to match dollar-for-dollar what the incumbents have,” David C. King, a Harvard Kennedy School professor, said. “They just need to be able to have a viable campaign, which is actually relatively inexpensive in a primary, to get some traction.”

Decker entered August 2024, the final month of her primary campaign, with more than $107,000 on hand — but rapid spending reduced that figure to just above $65,000 by election day in early September.

Another local incumbent — Uyterhoeven, a representative from Somerville — raised less than a third as much money as Decker that year, even as she faced a heated primary.

Decker’s race against MacKay required “meaningful fundraising and spending,” she wrote in an email.

But as she moves past the closest-fought win of her career, Decker’s cash pile has shrunk considerably.

“I have not made an effort in the past few months since the election to raise money,” she wrote in a statement. “I have used this time to file legislation, meet with advocates and constituents, and catch up on work that was postponed due to the elections.”

From September 2024 to January 2025, Decker raised slightly more than $13,000 — all while blowing through nearly $73,000 in the same period. Her campaign’s latest financial report revealed less than $6,000 on hand by the end of January, and over the last two months, Decker has raised less than $750.

She has spent more than $10,000.

—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached matan.josephy@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.