Clinton Won Easily, but Bankroll Shows the TollBy ANNE E. KORNBLUT and JEFF ZELENY
Published: November 21, 2006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — She had only token opposition, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton still spent more on her re-election — upward of $30 million — than any other candidate for Senate this year. So where did all the money go?
It helped Mrs. Clinton win a margin of victory of more than 30 points. It helped her build a new set of campaign contributors. And it allowed her to begin assembling the nuts and bolts needed to run a presidential campaign.
But that was not all. Mrs. Clinton also bought more than $13,000 worth of flowers, mostly for fund-raising events and as thank-yous for donors. She laid out $27,000 for valet parking, paid as much as $800 in a single month in credit card interest and — above all — paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to an assortment of consultants and aides.
Throw in $17 million in advertising and fund-raising mailings, and what had been one of the most formidable war chests in politics was depleted to a level that leaves Mrs. Clinton with little financial advantage over her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination — and perhaps even trailing some of them.
The campaign’s financial record has fueled some criticism among Democratic activists and prompted concern among Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, including complaints from some of her fund-raisers that her top aides exercised a lack of discipline.
As of mid-October, when her campaign last filed a disclosure statement with the Federal Election Commission, the senator had about $14 million on hand. That figure did not take into account spending or fund-raising in the final three weeks of the campaign, although the final tally is not expected to change much.
The Democratic Daily, a liberal Web site, accused Mrs. Clinton of “blowing a shameful $36 million” on a shoo-in campaign. The only other Senate candidate to come close to her spending level was Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, who spent about $24 million unsuccessfully defending his seat.
Mrs. Clinton’s cash on hand is certainly less than the $20 million to $30 million some of her advisers early this year predicted she would have in the bank as she moved from her Senate re-election toward a decision about a presidential campaign. She is now in the same ballpark as two fellow Democrats, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had $13.8 million in his account as of Sept. 30, according to election commission records, and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who had $10.6 million. The law allows money left in a Senate campaign fund to be transferred to a presidential campaign.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she was not available for comment. Asked whether she was satisfied with the way the money had been spent, and whether the campaign’s expenditures were within the norms of politics today, the executive director of her campaign organization, Patti Solis Doyle, replied in an e-mailed statement: “We’re very pleased with the outcome of this election: the bottom line is victory with 67 percent of the vote, a substantial increase among independents and Republicans, and a list of several hundred thousand donors, beneficial in this and future campaigns.”
Yet the way she spent the money troubled some of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, many of whom have been called on repeatedly over the years to raise and give money for Bill Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, his legal expenses, his library, his global antipoverty and AIDS-fighting program and now his wife’s political career. One Clinton supporter said it would become harder to tap repeat donors if it appeared that the money was not being well spent.
Nonetheless, the senator is among the most formidable fund-raisers in her party and could raise a large amount of money quickly if needed.
Since 2001, when she took office, Mrs. Clinton has spent at least $36 million on her re-election. For 2005 and 2006 through Oct. 18, she spent $29.5 million; a final tally will not be available until next month.
At that level, she spent nearly twice as much as Senator Charles E. Schumer, her Democratic colleague from New York, did in his 2004 re-election campaign, when he spent $15.5 million and won 71 percent of the vote, four points more than Mrs. Clinton won this year.
For her money, Mrs. Clinton also won a slightly smaller percentage of the vote in New York this year than did Eliot Spitzer in his successful race for governor. Mr. Spitzer, who raised nearly $41 million for his campaign, won 69 percent of the vote.
Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s pollster and longtime adviser, received at least $1.1 million. Mandy Grunwald, her longtime communications strategist, received more than $930,000. Hudson Media Partners, an offshoot of the Glover Park Group consulting firm where two prominent Clinton advisers, Howard Wolfson and Gigi Georges, work, received nearly $200,000.
Campaign aides said much of the consulting work went toward building a donor list that would be vital in a presidential race. But they did not specify the work done by each of the consultants or say exactly how much of the money they received went to preparing for a presidential run rather than Mrs. Clinton’s Senate re-election. And the figures have raised eyebrows among the people who raise money for her.
“We’re not in this business to make consultants rich,” said one fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the direction of the campaign.
“The wasting of money — it drives everybody crazy,” the fund-raiser said. “She’d better get a handle on this if she is going to run for president.”
Beyond the level of spending, there is also some concern within the Clinton camp about the adequacy of the controls on what is being spent.
A close friend of Mrs. Clinton, Maggie Williams, received a $37,500 consulting fee, paid to her firm, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management, at the end of July.
Asked what the payment was for, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides checked and subsequently responded that the payment had been a mistake. They said it should have been for less than $5,000 to reimburse Ms. Williams, who served as chief of staff to Mrs. Clinton in the White House, for travel costs. They said Ms. Williams would return the extra money. Ms. Williams, who was said by Mrs. Clinton’s aides to be traveling, did not return a call to her office.
“Donors, like voters, increasingly expect candidates to exercise fiscal discipline,” said Mark McKinnon, an adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a possible presidential candidate, and a veteran of President Bush’s two penny-pinching campaigns for the White House.
Political campaigns are expensive affairs for any candidate, especially those running in a state as big as New York. Some of Mrs. Clinton’s expenditures, including the more than $10 million for direct mail fund-raising solicitations, will pay off if she runs for president by giving her an expanded list of individual donors around the nation.
She has now amassed a database that includes several hundred thousand new donors, 90 percent of whom contributed $100 or less, her advisers said. Under the new campaign finance law, such small donors are considered crucial to raising the large sums of money needed for a presidential campaign.
Other types of expenses are seen by campaigns as necessary good-will gestures toward donors and other supporters; Mrs. Clinton’s campaign cited this in justifying the roughly $51,000 she spent on professional photographers to provide pictures of her with guests. The candidate also sought to generate good will among her fellow Democratic candidates by giving more than $2.5 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other party groups.
Candidates routinely use campaign money for all types of expenses. Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, spent $24,000 of her campaign money this year on flowers; her campaign said she sent them to the families of constituents who died. Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California, spent $17,250 on balloons for a single event in July.
Mrs. Clinton’s aides offered varying explanations for her spending record. Some, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are barred from discussing Mrs. Clinton’s intentions for 2008, said much of the spending amounted to an investment in voter and fund-raising databases that could form the basis of a presidential campaign. Others said the money went to ensuring as convincing a victory as possible.
“We in fact did what we said we would do, which was raise it for a campaign in 2006,” said Ann Lewis, the communications director for her campaign.
The most expensive components of any political campaign are often direct mail solicitations and television advertising, and Mrs. Clinton paid Media Strategies Research, a Democratic firm in Denver, $1.58 million in the third quarter of the year alone. She spent at least $7 million on advertising over all.
Yet Mrs. Clinton has also continued to travel and entertain in style. Around $160,000 was spent on private jet travel for her and her advisers in 2006. Her catering and entertaining bill was at least $746,450, with tabs ranging from a $124,155 bill at the New York Hilton to a $2,500 bill for a backroom fund-raiser at Ben’s Chili Bowl, the famous Washington hot dog shop.
Suevon Lee contributed reporting.
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