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How Dirty Money-Honey Hillary Finessed the Lazio Pledge
Politics/Elections Breaking News News
Source: NewsMax.com
Published: 9/25/00 Author: Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
Posted on 09/25/2000 19:52:53 PDT by kattracks
There's a reason First Senate Candidate Hillary Clinton wanted her soft money agreement with Rick Lazio to be completely informal, with no pledges to sign -- or anything else in writing, for that matter -- and no independent entity to monitor compliance.
And the reason is, she wants to continue to use soft money to run her campaign.
Already the Queen of Dirty Money -- as the usually Hillary-friendly New York Daily News dubbed her last week -- is playing fast and loose with the truth.
On Monday her campaign charged that Lazio had violated the agreement by accepting a $1,000 donation from the Wylie brothers, the Texas twosome that poured millions into George W. Bush's New York primary campaign. But the Wylie's $1,000 was donated at a hard money event. And, as even Dirty Money-Honey Hillary must know, $1,000 is the legal hard money limit.
More troubling still are the limited terms under which Hillary has agreed to "ban" soft money from her own campaign.
In fact, she has consented only to stop spending soft spend money on campaign advertising. Dirty Money-Honey Hillary can still raise as much of the soft stuff as she likes, as long as she uses only hard money to pay for ads.
Reporters say the Hillary-Lazio soft money deal puts her at a tremendous disadvantage, since her campaign goes through so much more of that kind of cash.
But a breakdown of her expense records reveals that Hillary's campaign ads account for a relatively small percentage of her overhead.
"The Clinton campaign had spent $14.9 million as of Aug. 23, according to its most recent disclosure filing to federal regulators," reported the New York Times Friday.
"Only $4 million of that, or 27 percent, went to commercials, perhaps the most crucial item in a campaign budget. Several political consultants not involved in the New York Senate race said they were surprised that so little of her money had been used for commercials."
In fact, Mrs. Clinton's campaign is top heavy in salaries, travel expenses and direct mail costs, which accounts for 73 percent of her overall budget.
With the possible exception of direct mail expenses (depending on how Dirty Money-Honey Hillary wants to interpret her unsigned, unmonitored agreement), those costs can continue to be funded by soft money. Another way of looking at it is; the Hillary-Lazio soft money ban will impact just a little more than a quarter of Mrs. Clinton's overall campaign budget.
All Mrs. Clinton has to do is move the soft money out of her ad budget and continue to raise campaign cash the old fashioned way.
Don't look for those White House sleepovers to stop anytime soon.