Don’t forget the campaign fund is the politician’s retirement benefit. They get to keep everything that has not been used during the campaign. If a politician gets LOTS of donations and has little competition, he does not have to use much from his campaign chest so he gets to pocket quite a bit of money when he is ready to leave public office. My US representative retired with $4 million. I’ll bet that someone in Perry’s position to help his donors will be retiring with a lot more than that.
Your understanding is at best only partially correct.
“While the F.E.C. clearly says campaign committee cash can’t be tapped for personal use, there are no such stipulations for certain political action committees, most controversially “leadership PACs” that elected officials can use to support various political causes other than their own.”
So the first question is whether the money is in an actual campaign account, or if it is in a PAC.
PAC money can be kept, although they keep talking about changing the rules.