WASHINGTON — Senator Clinton may have to spend the summer months going hat in hand to refill her own bank account.

The former first lady has loaned her presidential campaign more than $11.4 million to date, and she has only a few months to pay herself back, while her campaign will have much longer to deal with the nearly $9.5 million it owes vendors and political consultants.

Under a provision of the 2002 campaign finance law spearheaded by senators McCain and Feingold, candidates for federal office must repay their personal loans by the date of the election or forfeit all but $250,000. The date of election in the presidential primary campaign is considered the date when the party officially chooses its nominee, which for Democrats will be at the national convention during the final week of August.

For the Clinton campaign, the result could be an unusual and potentially awkward scenario: a candidate who, along with her husband, has earned $108 million in the last eight years soliciting donations that will effectively go straight into her pocket.

Historically, recouping a personal loan has been a difficult task, campaign finance experts say, and few candidates have lent themselves as much money as Mrs. Clinton with the intention of getting it back. “Most candidates who lend themselves money are really just giving themselves money,” said Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions.

Being on the losing side of an election doesn’t help. “It’s a lot harder to repay loans to yourself if you lose than if you win,” Mr. Ritsch said.

Politicians without a public office have less to offer donors seeking access or influence. The prospect could be easier for Mrs. Clinton, a senator from New York who is likely to remain a powerful force in the Democratic Party if she exits the presidential race.

A professor of political science at Fordham University, Costas Panagopoulos, said potential donors may take Mrs. Clinton’s wealth into consideration, but they would recognize that she did not intend to bankroll her entire campaign, unlike, say, New York’s current mayor. “Hillary Clinton is no Michael Bloomberg,” he said. “Americans don’t necessarily expect political candidates to finance their own campaigns.”

The Clinton campaign has not said definitively whether the candidate would seek to repay herself for the loans, and spokesmen did not return repeated requests for an answer to that question in recent days. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers have said the loans illustrate her commitment to the race. “I did it because I believe strongly in the campaign,” she told reporters in February after the disclosure of her first personal check, for $5 million.

After the first loan, Mrs. Clinton lent her campaign another $5 million in April and just over $1.4 million in May, aides have said. As of late last week, she had not made additional loans, although she is open to investing more, her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said in television interviews.

The disclosure of the first loan led to a flood of new donations, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s considerable base of supporters would be willing to help her going forward.

Mrs. Clinton’s situation differs from that of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who poured $42.3 million of his personal fortune into his bid for the Republican nomination this year. Although Mr. Romney’s investments were listed as loans in filings with the Federal Election Commission, they were rarely characterized as such, and the candidate appeared to have few illusions about seeing the money again.

“The thinking at the time was that it was likely to end up as a personal contribution, but the loan option was always there should we secure the nomination and the finance structure changed,” a Republican strategist who served as press secretary for Mr. Romney’s campaign, Kevin Madden, said. The loans are likely to show up as contributions in future FEC filings, he said, “since there is no plan to recoup that money.”

Senator Obama has indicated that he is open to helping Mrs. Clinton retire her campaign debt if he becomes the nominee, but officials for both campaigns have said no discussions have taken place. Senator McCain’s campaign has asked its donors to help pay off debts incurred by a former Republican rival, Mayor Giuliani, who endorsed him immediately after dropping his own presidential bid.

Two top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton said yesterday that they expected her ask donors for help in paying off her debt to consultants and vendors, along with the personal loan. “I have no doubt there will be a concerted effort to take care of that debt in due course,” a former Democratic Party chairman raising funds for Mrs. Clinton, Steven Grossman, said in an interview, noting that he was not familiar with all the rules governing the repayment of debt and loans. He said he did not know of specific fund-raising plans to pay off either the commercial or personal debt.

A Democratic National Committee member and Clinton fund-raiser, Robert Zimmerman, said he hoped Mrs. Clinton would ask her supporters for help. “I will very proudly help to raise to retire that debt and pay back the loan,” he said in an interview.

Adding that Mrs. Clinton had “vindicated herself” with the determination and resilience she has shown through the campaign, Mr. Zimmerman said other supporters would step up and that the candidate’s personal wealth would not be an obstacle to obtaining donations to repay the loan. “I do not believe it will be a heavy lift,” he said.

The provision of the 2002 law governing personal loans does not apply to debts to commercial vendors, which in some cases can be transferred to other federal campaign committees, such as one set for a Senate re-election bid.