Hillary's Presidential Campaign No Longer Broke
Bonnie Goldstein
Woman Up Editor
Posted:
07/16/09
Only a year ago, the unsuccessful and prohibitively expensive Clinton presidential campaign was in debt for roughly $25 million to vendors, employees, and for personal loans the candidate had made to the campaign.
How does a busy secretary of state wipe out that kind of balance? To be sure, she got a little help from her friends. One of the first acts her winning opponent made as the presumptive nominee was to consider "reaching out" to the Hillary campaign. In addition to help from the Obama campaign, the Democratic National Committee solicited contributions, and the Hillary campaign emailed pleas, selling $5 raffle tickets to win "a day with Bill Clinton; two tickets to the season finale of the 'American Idol'" or an opportunity to talk politics with James Carville.
Although she was forced to write off $13.2 million in personal loans, every little bit helped. In one lucrative revenue stream, (more than $400,000 in the last three months), the former candidate rents her donor lists to other Democrats running for reelection, presumably for supporters to be hit up again.
The combined effort seems to have worked. In the latest report filed with the Federal Election Commission, for the quarter ending June 30, aside from $1.5 million outstanding to Mark Penn, Clinton's campaign manager, every vendor has been paid.