The campaign to beat a recall attempt against State Sen. Jeff Denham hasn’t decided how it will spend any leftover funds from the election.

Kevin Spillane, a spokesman for the anti-recall effort, said officials will first concentrate on paying off campaign expenses with money from the fund created to beat the recall, Friends of Jeff Denham Against the Recall.

“We’ve got some overhead that’s still being taken care of,” Spillane said. He expected all outstanding debts to be resolved in about a month.

“Then we’ll take a look at whatever’s left and decide on it,” Spillane said.

Denham (R-Atwater) successfully beat the recall in the June 3 election. By California state elections law, any account created in a recall campaign must disperse its remaining funds within 30 days after the election.

Any leftover funds can be spent as contributions to a campaign committee for non-partisan use,  to a ballot initiative or to non-state legislative races, among other options.

According to state law, they cannot be spent on anything that would benefit an officer of the fund, such as Denham or Dave Bauer, who is listed as the fund’s treasurer.

As of last Thursday, the fund still had about $190,000 left over, with two groups donating a total of $20,000 that day.

Carmen Balber, a consumer advocate with a California group that monitors campaign finance, said there’s a good reason recall campaign funds can’t be diverted to regular campaign accounts.

“There are no campaign contribution limits because they’re essentially ballot measures,” said Balber, with Consumer Watchdog.  Once a recall election is over, she said, there’s no legitimate reason to keep a recall campaign fund going.

Denham is termed out of running for another term in his 12th State Senate District seat in 2010. As of Tuesday, no one had filed to run for that seat to replace him, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.