“We are very frustrated because we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to say that the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us. For example, they say you couldn’t stop me from spending all the money I’ve saved over the last five years on Hillary’s campaign if I wanted to, even though it would clearly violate the spirit of campaign finance reform.”
So said Bill Clinton only a little over a month ago. But, as per the norm with the Clinton campaign, things have now changed: Word leaks out that Senator Clinton is not only planning to self-finance her candidacy with personal “loans” (a la Mitt Romney), but that she already gave her campaign $5 million out-of-pocket last month. (Indeed, money’s gotten so tight around the Clinton camp that, according to Time‘s Mark Halperin, senior staff are now going without pay.)
Meanwhile, Sen. Obama is on pace for another $30 million month and has room to grow, mainly because he’s relying on a wider pool of small donors rather than (as per Senator Clinton) a smaller pool of maxed-out donors and an army of lobbyists. (Which reminds me, Senator Obama accepts donations here.)
I for one doubt Sen. Clinton’s campaign will really run out of cheddar. If anything, the campaign probably put the story out there so as to encourage their supporters to donate in the same fashion as Obama’s have. Still, this Clinton cash crunch further indicates how much of their election strategy was predicated on a Super Tuesday knockout punch. Having swung and missed, the Clinton camp is now nearing broke, and seriously hurting.
More to the point, even notwithstanding the inherent shadiness of self-financing, which no less than Bill Clinton attested to above, this move puts President Clinton’s penchant for troubling deals — such as his recent venture in Kazakhstan — right in the thick of things. Hard to ignore in any event, now this story comes front and center. If the Clintons are breaking into their private stash to get Senator Clinton elected, where did the money come from?
For the Clintons, $5 million is not much to “loan”; after all, it’s only about four times the Obamas’ net worth. See Money magazine from December–
Clinton, Obama
Obama has raised over $6 million since polls closed on Super Tuesday:
Yep, I’ve been watching the counter. Pretty staggering…
Hey, what if it’s like 1912? Obama is TR and Clinton is Taft; the bosses (superdelegates) block the insurgent, so he and his supporters bolt. I bet we could come up with a good name for a new party…
If it’s a ploy to get more donations, it seems pretty risky — it looks bad, like they’re losing support and they’re desperate.
I would agree, Liam, except it seems to have worked. The Clinton campaign raised $4 million yesterday. (Of course, Obama raised over $7.5 million in the same period, but the point stands — she needed to rally her non-maxed-out troops to start donating.)
One hopes her staff gets paid now…