From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan and Domenico Montanaro
The Obama campaign is stepping up the rhetoric. Campaign Manager David Plouffe went so far as to call Hillary Clinton the "most secretive politician in America today."
The tough talk underscored not only the negative shift in tone of the Obama campaign in the past 24 hours, but just how contentious this fight for the nomination is becoming.
Part of what the Obama campaign would like the focus to be on is ethics -- something adviser David Axelrod said they would be glad to have a debate over. But the Obama campaign may be a victim of time, since an argument on ethics could be tough to steer with the ongoing Rezko trial.
"I think that you know Sen. Clinton has talked a lot about disclosure in the last few days,” Plouffe told reporters. “Sen. Clinton is the most secretive politician in America today. This has been a pattern throughout her career of the lack of disclosure.”
Echoing Axelrod, Plouffe said the campaign would be more than willing to tangle with the Clintons, appearing to suggest that if needed they would raise issues like Whitewater that plagued the Clintons in the 90s.
What's Hillary hiding?
Going negative worked for Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Texas and the Obama campaign knows it.
On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Obama's chief strategist David Alexrod acknowledged Clinton's
kitchen sink strategy and said, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." Get ready for an ugly six weeks until Pennsylvania, folks.
Axelrod started in on Clinton with the tax return issue. "The vetting of Hillary Clinton has yet to start. The hard questions haven't been asked," he said. "They've talked about change you can Xerox. You can Xerox a tax return. There's not a lot of preparation... it's important people understand what the sources of income are for the household that is going to be the next president."
This all followed on the heels of a memo from the campaign earlier this morning titled, "TAX RETURNS: What does Clinton have to hide?"
For the record, Clinton has said that she will release her tax returns on April 15. The Obama campaign contended today that 80 percent of Democrats will have voted by that time, and that the returns ought to be released immediately. Axelrod called Clinton a "habitual non-discloser," suggesting that the tax return issue was part of a larger problem. The only other thing Clinton hasn't disclosed, as far as anyone can tell, are her records from the White House, which are held at the Clinton library. The Clinton campaign claims that the Bush Administration is the reason for the delay on that issue. (More on that scandal from
Michael Isikoff.)
Axelrod spoke directly the press, saying, "We're asking you guys to do your jobs." It was a familiar line for the press on the call. It echoes a refrain from Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, who has insisted almost daily on Clinton conference calls that the press has been giving Obama a free ride.
more What does Hillary have to hide?
March 05, 2008
My colleague Ken Vogel has the scoop that the American Leadership Project -- despite Bob Bauer's best efforts to scare it to death -- has turned into a real 527, a vehicle for wealthy Clinton supporters to exceed campaign finance limits.
I reported earlier in the week that AFSCME had begun to use the group as an outlet for some of it's pro-Clinton spending, but that wasn't all:
A new pro-Hillary Clinton group spent $864,000 making and airing ads in Texas and Ohio in the run-up to her victory in the March 4 primaries. And the group has at least $200,000 in the bank toward an expected air war on her behalf in Pennsylvania and the subsequent states.
American Leadership Project raised a total of $1.2 million – $1 million of which came from AFSCME, which has endorsed Clinton – since Feb. 21, according to a report it filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, run by longtime Clinton allies, is registered only under section 527 of the IRS code, not as a political committee with the FEC. That allows it to raise the huge contributions barred by federal law, but also bars it from explicitly urging a vote for or against Clinton, a New York senator, or her opponent in the Democratic presidential primary, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
Instead, the group's ads in Texas – which it reported spending $800,000 to air – praised Clinton’s health care plan. The group spent another $31,000 in Ohio.
In addition to the AFSCME contribution, ALP got $50,000 from Jay Eisenhofer of New York City, $25,000 from Stephen Kennedy of Glenwood Springs, Colo., $20,000 from Michele Dunkerley of Mercer Island, Wash. and $10,000 each from the securities company Dain Rauscher, Inc. and longtime Clinton fundraiser William Titelman, who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom while Bill Clinton was president.
The group has some money in the bank, and high hopes of raising more, according a spokesman.
Unions, personal friends, what a mess! Lincoln Bedroom? Bring back the good old days?
Guests Gave $624,000 to Benefit
Hillary’s Senate CampaignLIST WHITE HOUSE GUESTS / CONTRIBUTIONSWASHINGTON, DC, Sept 22, 2000 – Preliminary analysis of the guest list released Friday by the White House indicates that some 98 of the 361 guests who stayed either at the White House or Camp David contributed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign. Those guests gave a combined $108,000 directly to the Hillary Clinton Senate Committee, and an additional $516,000 to one of the several affiliated committees operating on her behalf.
About 40% of the guests – some 146 in all – have been active contributors this election cycle. They gave a combined $5.5 million in campaign contributions, of which 98% went to the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates. Some $122,000 went to Republicans.
The biggest single recipient was the Democratic National Committee, which got $2.5 million from the guests. Democratic Party committees as a whole got $4.5 million. Al Gore’s campaign collected $142,750 from the guests.
The data was analyzed by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, based on computerized records from the Federal Election Commission as well as non-computerized records filed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The
1996 data is also still available.
Use the link above to look up how much
Vin Gupta donated to the Clintons:
There's the Nebraska data processing company InfoUSA, whose CEO, Vin Gupta, used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal, and campaign trips, gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract, and is now being
investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly diverting company money to his own personal uses.
<...>
Obama, who released his 2006 tax returns last April, stepped up his pressure on Clinton to release her documents early last month after it was revealed the New York senator loaned her campaign $5 million.
"I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from," he said. "I've disclosed my income tax returns. I think we set the bar in terms of transparency and disclosure that has been a consistent theme of my campaign and my career in politics.”
The New York senator did file a Senate disclosure form last May that revealed the Clinton's income for the previous year was upwards of $12 million. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, a tax return would present a more comprehensive account of the Clinton's income, and include revenue sources that aren't required on Senate disclosure forms."Though her campaign has tried to kick the issue down the road, Democratic voters deserve to know, right now, why it is she is hiding the information in her tax returns from last year," the Obama memo stated. "The Clinton campaign has said that they have released copious amounts of financial information but there are many questions about their private dealings that could be answered in their tax returns but not in the information that is currently available.
What's Hillary hiding?
by Peter Overby
<...>
But most intriguing of all was the renter of the Clinton list: a list brokerage company that is a subsidiary of one of the data-collection industry titans, Info U.S.A.
Info U.S.A.'s CEO is Vinod Gupta, a close ally of both Clintons. Gupta's empire also includes the Opinion Research Corporation, which conducts the political polling for the television network CNN.Vin Gupta has a long history of giving and raising campaign money for the Clintons, and gave $1 million for the 2000 Millennium Celebration, a New Year's Party thrown by the Clintons.
When he was president, Bill Clinton named Gupta to the Kennedy Center board of directors. Gupta also got to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. He gave another million to the Clinton Presidential Library.
The library is run by the National Archives, but Bill Clinton raised the money for its construction and always refused to identify his major donors.
Last fall, ABC News reported that the library rented out a portion of its donor list to a list broker — the same one that rented Hillary Clinton's campaign lists.
Gupta spent $900,000 of corporate money flying the Clintons to various destinations. The Clinton campaign said in May that Info U.S.A. had been reimbursed to comply with federal campaigning and ethics rules.
After the Clintons left the White House, Gupta hired Bill Clinton as a consultant. It's one of two continuing business relationships he has had since leaving office, and it has been worth $3.3 million, in addition to the options on 100,000 shares of stock.
When challenged about that outlay of cash to the former president, Gupta has said Clinton is worth $40 million to the company.
Kevin Starke is a stock analyst in Connecticut who follows Gupta's company.
"If it were me, and I had hired Bill Clinton to the tune of $3 million, I think I would try to make a fairly distinct case for why that was money well spent, and I'm not entirely clear on why he hasn't done so," Starke said.
The corporate spending on behalf of the Clintons helped fuel a shareholder lawsuit against Gupta and 10 corporate directors.
There are plenty of other allegations in the suit about homes, cars, and a yacht for Gupta. A Delaware chancery court judge dismissed some of the allegations involving the Clintons. But the case is still proceeding. It has led to an informal inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is also asking if Gupta misspent corporate funds.
morePolling for CNN? May explain the weird poll they put up on Obama's patriotism over the lapel pin.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
