Clinton top recipient of money from 27 industries

Will Byrne
Published: Monday October 2, 2006

In the world of American political campaign finance, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is a maverick.

Since her first run for the Senate in 2000, Clinton has raised more than $45 million dollars from donors, a figure never before attained by a Congressional candidate. This extraordinary fundraising by the junior senator from New York takes on greater import given her widely speculated-on presidential hopes.

“No Senate candidate has ever raised more money from other people than Senator Clinton has,” says Massie Ritsch, speaking for the campaign finance watchdog Center for Responsive Politics. “By our count she is the #1 recipient of money from 27 different industries, from accountants to Hollywood.”

In donations accrued during the 2006 Senatorial election cycle alone, the 58 year-old incumbent has already topped $35 million, more than eight times the receipts of all of her challengers combined.

Despite continuing insistence from Clinton’s campaign team that her only focus is the Senate, her extensive pursuit of donors nationwide – along with her staggering success in wooing them – has solidified expectations of a presidential run in 2008. Any funds left over from her senatorial campaign, which Time recently estimated might exceed $20 million, could be used to seed a presidential run.

Even considering the prospect of a 2008 campaign for the White House, Clinton’s receipts are remarkable. According to Massie Ritsch, no presidential aspirant has ever raised so much this far in advance of an election.

Fundraising Sources

Why the altruistic outpouring? Analysts point to the senator’s unique national prominence, stemming from her period as First Lady, and the generous nature of her present constituency in New York. The state ranks second only to California in money channeled to federal politics.

But while these factors have surely enhanced her fund-raising prowess, the bulk of her success stems from the amount of effort that she and her campaign team have dedicated to generating capital. The Clinton campaign operates an extremely organized and efficient fund-raising apparatus, comprised of three committees: Friends of Hillary, her Senate campaign fund; a “leadership committee” called HILLPAC; and a third organization aimed at buttressing Democratic representatives in New York.

The senator has also zeroed in on extending her national network of giving to include more unlikely participants. Friends of Hillary has funneled the majority of its approximately $20 million in spending over the past five years into a direct-mail fundraising effort, one which has galvanized support among a surprisingly blue collar crowd.

Of the almost 50,000 individuals that gave to Clinton in the first quarter of this year, 95 percent gave $200 or less. A RAW STORY examination of Clinton’s latest financial disclosure forms found that nearly half of the Senator’s donations came from retirees, a majority of whom gave less than $30 at a time.

Also striking in the senator’s financial base is its lack of overlap with the vast network of donors constructed by her husband for his successful presidential race in 1996.

“Only one of every 11 contributors to [Mrs. Clinton’s] Senate campaign in 2005 and early 2006 were donors to Bill Clinton's 1996 presidential race,” noted a recent article in the Poughkeepsie (NY) Journal.

This is not to say, however, that the onetime Arkansas lawyer has overlooked the importance of more traditional forces in campaign finance. Clinton’s most potent backing stems from the same industries upon which Democrats typically depend: lawyers and law firms, the investment and insurance sectors, and labor unions.

President Clinton’s Role

The senator has also enlisted her husband in pursuit of the largest benefactors of her party. President Clinton recently held a strategic meeting with many of the leaders of the senator’s fund-raising arms, focused upon maximizing Democratic giving.

The former president has not merely shared his knowledge of bigwig donors, he’s also transformed himself into the senator’s most productive promoter. Mr. Clinton has held numerous high-profile fund-raising events for his wife over recent months, using his celebrity and connections to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the senator.

“When you get into the [presidential] primary campaign – perhaps the most important resource is a candidate’s time,” says Senate Majority Project founder Mike Gehrke, who runs an organization aimed at Senate accountability. “If you have someone else who can share that with you, you are a step ahead. In this light, she has a huge resource in Bill – if just the simple fact that he’s a draw on his own to raise money. If she’s off campaigning in Iowa, he can stay in New York City and raise a lot of money for her.”

Gehrke says accusations that the senator is too reliant on her husband to tap donors is unjustified. Much of Mr. Clinton’s circuitry of financial support, he notes, was built through Sen. Clinton’s own solicitation.

“I disagree that his donor network needs to be seen as different from hers,” he adds. “Back in 1992, she was the one who was getting corporate support for him. It’s not fair to her to be seen as bootstrapping on him, as they’ve been an effective team all along.”

Senator Clinton’s Long-Term Strategy

Some political strategists see Sen. Clinton’s intensive early pursuit of prominent Democratic patrons as a move to undercut the prospects of would-be presidential challengers within her own party. By securing the heavyweights of the liberal donor field so far in advance of a national campaign, they suggest, the Clinton team is effectively suffocating the hopes of other potential Democratic contenders.

In March, Democratic operative Chris Lehane, who has been a staffer on multiple presidential campaigns, likened this exclusionist fund-raising strategy to that undertaken by George W. Bush during the presidential campaign of 2000.

“He put together a financial infrastructure that laid the foundation for a presidential run and locked down the Who's Who of the Republican fund-raising community,” Lehane said. “Hillary Clinton's ability to lock up fund-raisers is not only a positive for her, but also takes away those potential assets for others."

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the efficacy of Clinton’s fundraising lies in her wooing of industries whose interests conflict with her own positions. The telecommunications industry is a case in point. Despite Clinton’s recent championing of Net Neutrality – a policy that would bar companies like Comcast and Verizon from controlling the speed at which various kinds of data is delivered from the Internet – the sector continues to pour more money into her campaign than that of any other political candidate.

The prime example, however, lies in Mrs. Clinton’s warming relationship with the healthcare industry. Once a bitter adversary of her First Lady-era push for a heightened federal role in health services, the sector has emerged as a deeply lucrative financial ally. The junior New York senator is the second-leading legislator in receipts from the industry, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from medical workers nationwide. Some believe their increased generosity is a result of Clinton’s newly tempered position, allowing for a more incremental process of federalization of healthcare, though her pursuit of a governmental role remains unchanged.

Whatever the reasons, these newly affable relations reflect a broader trend of escalating corporate investment in her cause and evidence the ever-growing seriousness with which professional America views the senator’s possible drive for the Oval Office. The surprising breadth and intensity of Clinton’s donations provide powerful evidence of a broadening belief that she can be elected president.

Reflecting on the golden rule of presidential giving, Gehrke conveys these implications best. “At the presidential level, what drives investment in a race is the chances of winning,” he says. “People jump on board a presidential bandwagon because they think they are going to win.”

Correction: Senator Clinton first ran for Senate in 2000, not 2002.