Debt Relief & Management

Posts Tagged ‘vice’

Is Bill Clinton withholding his endorsement and sulking until Barack Obama repays Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt?
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Though Hillary Rodham Clinton racked up more than $30 million in debt during her Democratic primary campaign, she could emerge from her loss with a bundle of campaign cash to either play kingmaker or mount another campaign of her own.

At her disposal are a handful of accounting maneuvers — some never before tried in presidential politics — that would render her political debt practically insignificant, while at the same time freeing up $24 million in currently off-limits cash, according to interviews with her lawyer and outside campaign finance experts.

Enhancing her flexibility is that all but $1 million of her $9.5 million in unpaid bills at the end of April was owed to allies and political firms unlikely to cause her legal or political headaches by demanding prompt payment.

In fact, their umed — but unspoken — cooperation is a key part of the New York senator’s most likely path to robust campaign finances.

That financial path would go something like this: Reclassify as a contribution most of the $11.4 million or more she loaned her campaign, which would be a personal financial hit because she wouldn’t be able to recoup much of it. Ask her donors to redirect $23.7 million they gave for her presidential general election campaign to her Senate campaign committee.

Meanwhile, try to raise some fast cash — possibly with istance from her vanquisher, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama — to pay off vendors who might sue her presidential campaign, leaving “friendly” debt to be paid down gradually as she raises money from her Senate perch.

A riskier route would be to ask her general election donors to redirect — or “redesignate,” in campaign finance parlance — their general election contributions to Obama’s presidential campaign as part of a deal under which the Illinois senator would ask his donors to give to Clinton to help her pay down her debt.

The most aggressive approach would be to redesignate the general election contributions to her Senate committee, transfer her debt to the same account, and then use the general election contributions to pay off the debt.

There’s a budding debate in the campaign finance bar about the legality of such of a maneuver. Some contend it would amount to illegally “laundering” general election contributions to pay off primary election bills. But others ert a 30-year-old Federal Election Commission decision regarding “surplus” campaign cash allows flexibility in the brave new world of privately financed presidential campaigns.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11020.html

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