Hillary's latest campaign finance report reveals her political and management failings, and her poor judgment

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,” said a prominent New York donor. “So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late.”

The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

Howard Wolfson, the communications director and a senior member of the advertising team, earned nearly $267,000 in January. His total, including the campaign’s debt to him, tops $730,000.

The advertising firm owned by Mandy Grunwald, the longtime media strategist for both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton, the former president, has collected $2.3 million in fees and expenses, and is still owed another $240,000.

...

Mrs. Clinton came into January with a cash advantage over Mr. Obama, with about $19 million available for the primary, compared with about $13 million for him. She wound up spending at roughly the same rate as Mr. Obama, about a million dollars a day, but because she performed dismally compared to him in raising money, she ended the month essentially in the red and was forced to lend her campaign $5 million, while he had $19 million for the coming contests.

...

In other notable expenditures during the lean month of January, Mrs. Clinton paid $275,000 to Sunrise Communications, a South Carolina firm that was supposed to turn out black voters for her and collected nearly $800,000 in total. She lost that state to Mr. Obama by a wide margin. Even small expenses piled up in January: the campaign spent more than $11,000 on pizza and $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts runs.

...

Joe Trippi, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards’s presidential campaign, said he believed that the Clinton team had made two fundamental errors.

First, he argued, Mrs. Clinton built a top-down fund-raising operation that relied on a core group of donors to write checks early on for the maximum amount, $4,600 for the primary and the general election, which left few of them to go back to when money became tight. Mr. Obama, by contrast, focused on building a network of small donors whose continued ability to give has been essential to his success this winter.

And second, Mr. Trippi said, the Clinton campaign spent money as though the race were going to be over after a handful of states had voted and was not prepared for a contest that would stretch for months.

...

As part of their get-out-the-vote effort in Iowa, the campaign came up with a plan to have a local supermarket deliver sandwich platters to pre-caucus parties. It spent more than $95,384 on Jan. 1 at Hy-Vee Inc., a local grocery chain in West Des Moines, Iowa, in addition to buying loads of snow shovels to clear the walks for caucusgoers. Mrs. Clinton came in third in the Jan. 3 caucus. It did not snow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/us/politics/22clinton.html

[GaryC 7]

This is what she will do with our tax money if she were elected. She looks at us as her own personal piggy bank.

[PlatyPius 5]

Psssst.....

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...p;#entry1603108

[britbird 4]

If you notice the rest of the article: just about all the candidates spend money in the same sort of way. The only difference for Hillary is that she isn't getting the results she wants, therefore the linkage is easily made (yet not so easily defended). Obama has the 'big mo' right now, and on the basis of the debate last night I can understand why. It's a personality contest at present (Obama and Clinton don't really disagree on much), and Hillary isn't as compelling on that score as Obama. Clinton should have revamped her campaign staff a while back (compare with McCain who did exactly that and is now the frontrunner.)

To make the general statement that Democrats spend more than Republicans is pretty much incorrect. Check out the Federal Deficit as it stands right now - it's ridiculously high. One can be fiscally conservative and still be a Democrat, in the same way that one can be fiscally liberal and still be a Republican.

[Chica Yeyé 41]

Just a thought.... I wonder how many of the candidates -if ANY- are putting their money where their huge mouths are and donating some of their campaign money to the causes they so vehemently are pushing for (i.e. education, health, yada yada yada)... does anyone know?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Just a thought.... I wonder how many of the candidates -if ANY- are putting their money where their huge mouths are and donating some of their campaign money to the causes they so vehemently are pushing for (i.e. education, health, yada yada yada)... does anyone know?

Well, I do know this - Hillary loaned her campaign $5m of her own money AND is charging the campaign an interest rate of 1.26% on it. Mitt Romney lent his campaign a few mill while he was running, but his loan was interest free.

[Dan J 277]

If you notice the rest of the article: just about all the candidates spend money in the same sort of way. The only difference for Hillary is that she isn't getting the results she wants, therefore the linkage is easily made (yet not so easily defended). Obama has the 'big mo' right now, and on the basis of the debate last night I can understand why. It's a personality contest at present (Obama and Clinton don't really disagree on much), and Hillary isn't as compelling on that score as Obama. Clinton should have revamped her campaign staff a while back (compare with McCain who did exactly that and is now the frontrunner.)

To make the general statement that Democrats spend more than Republicans is pretty much incorrect. Check out the Federal Deficit as it stands right now - it's ridiculously high. One can be fiscally conservative and still be a Democrat, in the same way that one can be fiscally liberal and still be a Republican.

If you look at the past 20 years or so, it only went down a bit when Bill Clinton was in office. Otherwise since Reagan, its gone up and hasn't stopped going up.

[Jaseball 0]

It's the same with all government and bureaucratic organizations. Overpay consultants, entourage, and managers. Spend the expense account like you are a celebrity. Let the accountants and managers worry about the details as they bleed you blind. Don't hold the people you paid who failed accountable.

[Chica Yeyé 41]

Just a thought.... I wonder how many of the candidates -if ANY- are putting their money where their huge mouths are and donating some of their campaign money to the causes they so vehemently are pushing for (i.e. education, health, yada yada yada)... does anyone know?

Well, I do know this - Hillary loaned her campaign $5m of her own money AND is charging the campaign an interest rate of 1.26% on it. Mitt Romney lent his campaign a few mill while he was running, but his loan was interest free.

Master Troll, thee is wise