Hillary Clinton has made much of her fundraising for the party and Dems in general. Rachel Maddow has criticized Bernie Sanders for not doing more to raise money for down ballot Dems, but it appears that Clinton is actually funneling much of the money back into her own campaign.
Hillary Clinton committee raised $33 million in first quarter
Joint committee helps state parties, but spends most of its cash boosting Clinton.
Hillary Clinton in the first three months of the year raised $33 million into a joint account her campaign formed with Democratic Party committees, according to a report filed Friday night with the Federal Election Commission.
The report shows that the joint account, called the Hillary Victory Fund, spent heavily trying to develop a small donor base for Clinton’s presidential campaign, but also took advantage of its unique structure to raise nearly $5 million from just 14 mega-rich donors, including entertainment titans Barry Diller, James Cameron and Haim Saban.
The fund comprises Clinton’s presidential campaign committee, as well as the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. As a result, it can accept checks as large as $358,000 per person — a total determined by the maximum donation to each of its component committees ($5,400 to the Clinton campaign, $33,400 to the DNC and $10,000 to each of the state parties).
The idea is that the committee will help the state parties raise money for their general election efforts, an area where Clinton’s allies argue that her insurgent rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Bernie Sanders has done little. Sanders has a joint fundraising committee, as well, but it has been relatively inactive.
Yet, during the first three months of the year, the $2 million transferred by the Hillary Victory Fund to various state party committees paled in comparison to the $9.5 million it transferred to Clinton’s campaign committee or the $3.5 million it transferred to the DNC.
And the Hillary Victory Fund also spent $6.7 million on online ads that mostly looked like Clinton campaign ads, as well as $5.5 million on direct marketing. Both expenses seem intended at least in part to help Clinton build a small donor base, an area in which Sanders has far outpaced her.
Seems fair to me! Let everyone else live off of crumbs! But what about those crumbs!?
From the Washington Post
So far, the state parties have served only as a pass-through for their share of the funds. Campaign finance records show that nearly $2 million in donations to the fund initially routed last year to individual state party accounts was immediately transferred to the DNC, which is laboring to pay off millions of dollars in debt.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Lawrence Noble, a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who is now with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “Joint victory funds are not intended to be separate operating committees that just support a single candidate. But they appear to be turning the traditional notion of a joint committee into a Hillary fundraising committee.”
I’ll give this to you, she does know how to play the game. I guess sometimes it is convenient to be a Democrat.
You can read more about it here.
This information was first brought to my attention by following @billmon1.