As you may recall, despite late-breaking polls showing him up by 5 points, New York Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman narrowly lost the recent high-profile special election in NY-23.

… It now appears Hoffman may have allowed his Democratic opponent to win, by failing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars readily at his campaign’s disposal.

The FEC report covering October 15-November 23, 2009 shows the Hoffman campaign ended that period with $291,627.57 cash on hand. Hoffman’s campaign raised a grand total of almost $1.5 million, so Hoffman’s campaign left almost 20 percent of the amount he raised sitting on the table.

(Note: While some of the money came in after Election Day, according to the FEC report, the vast majority of the money left over was received well before Election Day.  It is also fair to note that although Hoffman raised $1.5 million, outside groups also spent tens of thousands of dollars on his election).

There are two possible explanations for why Hoffman’s campaign failed to spend hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars…

First, Hoffman personally loaned his campaign $102,000, which his campaign promptly repaid prior to the November 23 report.  It very well could be that Hoffman was confident he would win the election any way, and wanted to be sure there would be enough money remaining in the campaign coffers to reimburse himself immediately.

Second, it is entirely possible that the Hoffman campaign could not logistically handle the amount of money that poured into their campaign during the month of October (much of it as a result of Sarah Palin’s endorsement).  It is also possible that they were not prepared to process the credit card donations.  Regardless of why this happened, it is clear that Doug Hoffman’s campaign left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table — dollars that might have helped him win the NY-23 Special Election had the money been spent wisely in targeted areas.

Many campaigns facing close contests pull out all the stops and go into debt, knowing they can always retire the debt later (a task made much easier if the candidate wins).  Hoffman’s campaign, conversely, appears to have been more interested in ending the campaign with money in the bank.

Update: A source confirms to me that the 2nd theory explains why the money was left over.  According to the source, the campaign could not logistically handle the influx of money that poured in late in the campaign.  Processing checks, while remaining FEC compliant, was too big a job for the amount of staff allocated.  Moreover, a major credit card processing glitch further complicated matters.