LaTimes: Hsu Thrived in "Bundling" System

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Hsu thrived in 'bundling' system

Campaign finance changes helped create the environment in which a fugitive could be welcomed by Kennedys and Clintons.

By Tom Hamburger, Dan Morain and Robin Fields
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

September 14, 2007

WASHINGTON — When Bill Clinton received an award at a gala dinner honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy last year, the former president expressed his thanks before an audience that included a Nobel Prize winner and a glittering array of show business celebrities and Wall Street titans. Yet the second sentence of his remarks expressed special gratitude to a man almost no one there had heard of: "our friend Norman Hsu."

The story of Hsu, the major Democratic fundraiser who turned out to be a fugitive from justice, is a tangled one that stretches back more than 15 years. But more recent developments in the world of campaign finance helped create the environment in which a man like Hsu could be welcomed into the company of people like the Kennedys and Clintons.

Hsu is what is known in political parlance as a "bundler," a specialized and increasingly important kind of fundraiser for today's campaign finance managers.

Federal law limits the amount any one individual can contribute to a candidate or party. But there is no limit on how much an individual can round up in smaller contributions from friends and associates, and then deliver to a favored politician or party as a "bundle."

That twist in the law has made bundlers indispensable, especially for presidential candidates and others who must raise record amounts of money to run campaigns without public financing.

The intensified money chase has created incentives for candidates not to look too closely into the backgrounds of individuals who can deliver big-time bundles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-hsu14sep14,0,2903108.story?coll=la-home-center