CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 21, 2008 – 4:29 p.m.
Clinton Appointment Would Bar Her From Fundraising
By Alex Knott and Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
The fundraising may slow down, but it won’t completely stop if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the next secretary of state. Her 2008 presidential committee can still continue raising money to help retire her campaign debt, she just can’t be involved personally in any fundraising.
The New York Democrat still owes nearly $20.7 million, according to her latest financial disclosure report to the Federal Election Commission.
The report shows $774,000 in total receipts, including $644,000 from individuals, raised during the month of October.
Her debt includes $13.2 million she loaned herself. She’ll likely have to absorb most of that loss because federal campaign laws prohibit the use of more than $250,000 raised after the election to pay back personal loans from the candidates themselves. The remaining $7.5 million is owed to her political strategist Mark Penn and various vendors.
Among the notable contributors for October to Clinton’s presidential campaign fund: comedian Eddie Izzard, ex-Pittsburg Steelers great Franco Harris, former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter Lynda Robb, and former California comptroller and 2006 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly.
The campaign has continued to send out e-mail appeals for donations since Clinton conceded the Democratic primary race to President-elect Obama in June. The last e-mail appeal on Thursday offered a DVD of her speech at the Democratic National Convention and other campaign footage in return for a contribution of $50 or more.
Clinton’s signature now appears on most solicitations from her presidential fund. That will stop, though, if she ends up running the State Department for President-elect Obama because the Hatch Act generally prohibits federal employees, including Cabinet officials, from directly soliciting or receiving political contributions.
Comments
What a wonderful irony that Hillary Clinton's fund-raising will be curtailed. In the past her fund-raising was so strong that many of her Democratic colleagues were the beneficiaries of her generosity. Considering how the Democratic leadership abused her and continued to do so after the election, I am most gratified that she will no longer be able to finance these bloodsuckers. She requested that Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid enable her to head a subcommittee on health care reform, and both of them turned her down. The hell with them, I say. Hillary Clinton is a Methodist to her toenails. She believes strongly in the Methodist mission to do good in this world. I'm sure she believes that her opportunity to do good for her country and the world is better as Secretary of State than in the Senate where too many of her colleagues are only too anxious to diminish her effectiveness. I have every confidence that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both understand their opportunity to accomplish historic good together, and that both understand fully that Obama is the head of his government and that Hillary Clinton will be his loyal cabinet officer.
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