- www.counterpunch.org - http://www.counterpunch.org - ;
How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties
Posted By Margot Kidder On April 1, 2016 @ 2:15 am In articles 2015,Leading
Article,Top Stories | Comments Disabled
a katz | Shutterstock.com
"It's worse than wicked, my dear, it's vulgar"
Punch Almanac, 1876
Collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC allowed Hillary Clinton
to buy the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties last summer. Montana was
one of those states. It sold itself for $64,100.
The Super Delegates now defying democracy with their insistent refusal to
change their votes to Sanders in spite of a handful of overwhelming Clinton
primary losses in their own states, were arguably part of that deal.
In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33
democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a
joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed
many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the
maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary
Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington.
The idea was to increase how much one could personally donate to Hillary by
taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling 2014, McCutcheon v FEC, that
knocked down a cap on aggregate limits as to how much a donor could give to
a federal campaign in a year. It thus eliminated the ceiling on amounts
spent by a single donor to a presidential candidate.
In other words, a single donor, by giving 10,000 dollars a year to each
signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to
the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual
legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and
2016. And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal
amount were also donated in their spouse's name.
From these large amounts of money being transferred from state coffers to
the Hillary Victory Fund in Washington, the Clinton campaign got the first
$2,700, the DNC was to get the next $33,400, and the remainder was to be
split among the 33 signatory states. With this scheme, the Hillary Victory
Fund raised over $26 million for the Clinton Campaign by the end of 2015.
The money was either transferred to the Hillary for America or Forward
Hillary PACs and spent directly on the Hillary Clinton Campaign, often
paying the salaries and expenses within those groups, or it was moved into
the DNC or another Clinton PAC. Some of it was spent towards managing the
Hillary merchandise store, where you can buy Hillary T shirts and hats and
buttons.
The fund is administered by treasurer Elizabeth Jones, the Clinton
Campaign's chief operating officer. Ms. Jones has the exclusive right to
decide when transfers of money to and from the Hillary Victory Fund would be
made to the state parties.
One could reasonably infer that the tacit agreement between the signatories
was that the state parties and the Hillary Clinton Campaign would act in
unity and mutual support. And that the super-delegates of these various
partner states would either pledge loyalty to Clinton, or, at the least, not
endorse Senator Sanders. Not only did Hillary's multi-millionaire and
billionaire supporters get to bypass individual campaign donation limits to
state parties by using several state parties apparatus, but the Clinton
campaign got the added bonus of buying that state's super-delegates with the
promise of contributions to that Democratic organization's re-election fund.
If a presidential campaign from either party can convince various state
parties to partner with it in such a way as to route around any existing
rules on personal donor limits and at the same time promise money to that
state's potential candidates, then the deal can be sold as a way of making
large monetary promises to candidates and Super-delegates respectable.
The leadership of a very broke Montana Democratic Party decided in August of
2015 that this was a seductive deal they were willing to make. And by the
end of that year scores of 10,000 donations came in from out of state.
Montana's list of out of state donors to the state campaign reads like a
Who's Who of the Democratic financial elites. The names vary little from the
list of high donors to the other 32 states that signed on to the Hillary
Victory Fund.
What do billionaires like Esprit Founder Susie Buell of California, and
businessman Imaad Zuberi of California, and media mogul Fred Eychaner of
Chicago, and Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York and Chicago real
estate mogul J.B Pritzker, and gay activist Jon Stryker of NY, and NRA and
Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban all have
in common?
They all appear to be brilliant business people who have all given millions
to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and to her various PACS. And they
all gave the Montana State Democratic Party $10,000 each in 2015. It is
doubtful that many of them have any interest in Montana politics, or that
they have even bothered to visit.
None of these are awful people; they are simply awfully rich. And they like
their friend Hillary and want her to be the president. And if some of their
millions will buy her way into the White House then so be it. None of this
is illegal. But it makes a mockery of Ms. Clinton's pledge to further the
cause of campaign finance reform.
And the Hillary Victory Fund's marriage of convenience with the Montana
party negates Governor Steve Bullock's eloquent insistence that he will do
anything necessary to overturn Citizen's United. And the coldness of the
deal's intention of doing anything it can to further Hillary Clinton's
chances for becoming President brings Senator Jon Tester's stated neutrality
in the Democratic primary into a sharp and unflatteringly hypocritical
focus.
One doubts that most of these one percenters adore fly fishing. Or care much
about mountain climbing, or skiing, or collecting morel mushrooms along the
edges of the Yellowstone river in the fall. We can safely assume that they
will not be raising buffalo for meat in the near future, or buying an
organic farm next to Senator Jon Tester's. In fact we can probably assume
that most of them have never been to Montana.
And one doubts if many of them care or not if Governor Steve Bullock will
get re-elected or will be replaced with a creationist businessman named Greg
Gianforte whose family gave $1.5 million to a creationist museum in
Glendive, Montana that proudly displays a man riding a dinosaur as if it
were a rodeo horse.
That outsiders could make their votes count for more than our own in our
Presidential primary by supporting a system that is rigged in favour of the
wishes of lobbyists and billionaires running their money through our state
democratic party coffers is a concept that most Montanans would be repulsed
by.
Yet it is inconceivable that not only did the state's chairperson, Nancy
Keenan, approve the deal, but that both Governor Steve Bullock and
Democratic senator Jon Tester approved it as well. It directly affects the
funding of both of their campaigns, now and in 2018.
I have yet to hear back from any Montana democratic office holders that they
have even heard of the Hillary Victory Fund. Monica Lindeen, the State
Auditor, has never heard of it. A couple of county Chair persons have never
heard of it. Jean Dahlman, a feisty independent thinker and a ranch woman
who is on the executive committee of the state party has never heard of it.
And when I wrote Jonathan Motl, the man in charge of the Office of Political
Practices and a demon for making sure our state laws about contributions are
enforced, he did not get back to me. So I am assuming he has never heard of
it either. Who was in on this? No one seems willing to tell.
In Montana, a state where one third of voters identify as independents, and
where it is imperative that Democratic candidates for public office win some
votes from both Republicans and Independents in order to get elected, it
seems peculiar that the Montana State Democratic Party would make a deal
with the Hillary Clinton campaign months before the national primaries were
underway, given that there is a very real and proud tradition of political
independence in Montana. Being told who to vote for in a primary by your
party's big wigs is not part of that tradition. Any collusion by a Montana
national candidate with the Hillary Clinton campaign before a primary was
held, and the votes counted, could potentially be politically suicidal.
The agreement with the Hillary Victory Fund and the DNC could solve some of
the Montana State Democratic Party's financial problems while simultaneously
funding several state and federal candidates. But the scheme would only make
sense as a benefit to the parties involved if the money raised actually
stayed in the states that received the initial checks. This did not happen.
The Alaska Democratic party, in its end of the year filing with the FEC,
said it raised $43,500 from the Hillary Victory Fund with 10,000.00 dollar
donations from Clinton friends and billionaires, including hedge fund manage
S Donald Sussman, and Hyatt Hotel heir JB Pritzker. ( two of the several
$10,000 donors to the Montana State Democratic Party) . But in the same
report it said it transferred the same amount of money, $43,500 back to the
DNC - . a technically legal move that effectively obliterates federal
limits on donations to the national committee.
"It just becomes a way to funnel more to the DNC to support the Clinton
Campaign", said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign
Legal Centre, which advocates for campaign finance reform. "It's effectively
Hillary Clinton's team soliciting Hillary Clinton's supporters for much
bigger checks than they can give to the campaign."
The same thing happened with the Maine State Democratic Party with many of
the same billionaire donors. Maine attracted many of Clinton's biggest
donors. But the contributions didn't stay in Maine either, or in any of the
other state democratic parties to which Hillary Victory Fund donations have
been funneled. In October and November two transfers totaling 39,000 from
the Hillary Victory Fund to the Maine Democratic party sat for less than 48
hours before the same amounts were transferred to the DNC in Washington.
The Montana State Democratic party received $43,500 dollars from the Hillary
Victory Fund on November 2, 2015. Yet on that same day it transferred
$43,500 back to the Democratic National Committee in Washington. And on
December 1, 2015 it received another $20,600 from the Hillary Victory fund.
And on the same day the Montana State Democratic Party sent that exact same
amount, $20,600, back to the DNC in Washington as well, an entity that has
not bothered to disguise its preference for a Hillary Clinton candidacy over
that of a Bernie Sanders one.
By November 2015, 22 of the state parties linked to the Hillary Victory Fund
have received $938,500 from the fund and sent the same amount back to the
DNC. There is no limit to amounts of money transferred between state and
national parties and PACS or Funds.
(Obama had a similar fund in 2008, but not until he had already won enough
delegates to be sure he would be the nominee.)
The Democratic spokespeople for the17 states that refused to go along with
the Clinton campaign's plan, even though many of them were as broke as the
Montana State Democratic Party was (Nebraska springs to mind), were clear
that it seemed less than democratic to be choosing sides in a primary that
hadn't happened yet. That the very purpose of a primary was to let the
people choose which candidate they wanted to represent them and to not let
the party establishment load the dice in their own favour. They made it
obvious that they were choosing democracy over kick-backs.
"A joint fundraising committee linking Hillary Clinton to the national
Democratic Party and 33 state parties is routing money through those state
parties and back into the coffers of the Clinton campaign and all its PACS
and Funds" "It is a highly unusual arraignment if only because presidential
candidates do not normally enter into fundraising agreements with their
party's committees until after they actually win the nomination. And second,
Clinton's fundraising committee is the first since the Supreme Court's 2014
McCutcheon v FEC decision eliminated aggregate contribution limits and
congress increased party contribution limits in the 2014 omnibus budget
bill" said Paul Blumenthal, a writer for The Huffington Post.
A loud article in the NYT in March proclaiming that elected officials in 22
states would not support Bernie Sanders conveniently left out that those 22
states had signed agreements with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the
Hillary Victory Fund.
What it really does is seriously handicap the Democratic Primary Race. Every
one of the states charging electoral interference by the Clinton campaign is
a state that made a deal with the Hillary Victory Fund. Insinuations of
conspiracies are unprovable in these cases. But the perception of fraud
and corruption is glaring and damaging.
What the Clinton campaign appears to be in stunning denial about is that
most of us "regular folks" (a revolting term used with growing frequency
these days) are not burdened with an inability to confuse morality with
legality. Corruption is corruption is corruption no matter how many laws
there are allowing it. Very few brilliant business people give presidential
candidates upwards of six million dollars without expecting something in
return. There is a reason they are brilliant business people. Throwing away
millions of dollars for nothing is not one of them
Most state democratic parties don't want Campaign Finance Reform. They feel
they can't afford it. Many local politicians become terrified of voicing
support for alternative candidates out of fear of being cut off the
Democratic Party gravy train.
The psychological damage of the Hillary Victory Fund, the inference by its
very existence that every vote is not equal, has had a dampening effect on
older Democrats. The perception that most Democrats support Hillary, and
that she is the most reliable candidate to defeat a Trump or a Cruz in the
fall is felt by every journalist, every newspaper opinion writer and every
television current affairs show, and is absorbed by the consumers of that
news. When you have lobbyists for the big media giants, such as Fyeed
Eychancer of Newsweb, or Viacom lawyer and lobbyist Steve Forbes, giving
money to the Hillary Victory Fund through the state of Montana, the rot in
the system is laid bare.
Here in Montana, a politically vibrant state with a heady mix of Republicans
and Democrats and Independents and Libertarians, not one single Democratic
official up for election will openly support Bernie Sanders in the
Democratic primary. They all say exactly the same thing: "I'm not going to
endorse anyone until after the primary." Which has as much meaning as
saying you are not going to vote until after the election.
This is the state that brought the entire American union movement to the
West, back when Butte was a thriving mining town and corrupt copper barons
ran the state. It's a state in which miners fought and died for the right
to have unions. It's a state in which we had, until Citizen's United, the
first and only state law that expressly forbade corporate expenditures on
elections.
You can't win an election as a Democrat in Montana without the Native
American vote. You have to win Butte, a mighty monument to the working man
and Democratic to its very core. You have to win the artsy types and the
students in Missoula, the writers in Livingston and the oilmen in Billings
and the ranchers in the east. You can't be all things to all men, so you
have to be real. You have to be honest because word spreads fast in a small
but tight population like Montana and if your word is no good, neither are
you.
But most importantly, you can't win an election in Montana if you don't
acknowledge and respect the pride Montanans have in their ability to think
independently. Their courage to not follow the herd. Independence is a
proud master.
Our state party leadership signed a deal with a woman who out here, on our
turf, possibly wouldn't last a week. They signed away our unobstructed right
to choose which Democratic candidate we supported for President. Given that
we have 15 pledged delegates and seven superdelegates, we have lost our
absolute right to have superdelegate endorsements proportional to the wishes
of the primary voters
For what? Sixty four thousand and one hundred dollars? Which we had to
give back? That's a pretty poor excuse for selling out our right to our own
choice.
Look, we know the deck is stacked, that Hillary and the DNC get all the face
cards and that you're dealing from the bottom of the deck. But just give us
an ace from time to time, or maybe even a small straight. Don't rub our
hopelessness in our faces as if we are too dumb to know. You will pay for
your contempt. If not this year, then the next.
Beneficiaries
Recipient Party Type** Office Sought Total
Clinton, Hillary D C Pres $4,440,000
DNC Services Corp D P $2,263,436
Democratic Party of Wisconsin D P $207,278
Democratic Party of Oklahoma D P $140,000
Democratic Party of New Hampshire D P $74,700
Democratic Party of Pennsylvania D P $70,500
Democratic Party of Texas D P $69,100
Democratic Executive Cmte of Florida D P $66,200
Democratic Party of Nevada D P $66,200
Democratic Party of Colorado D P $66,000
Democratic Party of Ohio D P $66,000
Democratic Cmte of Utah D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Alaska D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Mississippi D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Montana D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Oregon D P $64,100
Democratic Party of South Carolina D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Tennessee D P $64,100
Democratic State Cmte of Massachusetts D P $64,100
Georgia Federal Elections Cmte D P $64,100
Idaho State Democratic Party D P $64,100
Michigan Democratic State Central Cmte D P $64,100
Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party D P $64,100
Missouri Democratic State Cmte D P $64,100
Rhode Island Democratic State Cmte D P $64,100
West Virginia State Democratic Exec Cmte D P $64,100
Wyoming State Democratic Central Cmte D P $64,100
Democratic Party of North Carolina D P $64,000
Democratic State Central Cmte/Louisiana D P $64,000
Indiana Democratic Congressional Victory Cmte D P $64,000
Democratic Party of Arkansas D P $63,000
Maine Democratic State Cmte D P $59,800
Democratic Party of Virginia D P $43,500
Source: FEC
- www.counterpunch.org - http://www.counterpunch.org - ;
How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties
Posted By Margot Kidder On April 1, 2016 @ 2:15 am In articles 2015,Leading
Article,Top Stories | Comments Disabled
a katz | Shutterstock.com
"It's worse than wicked, my dear, it's vulgar"
Punch Almanac, 1876
Collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC allowed Hillary Clinton
to buy the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties last summer. Montana was
one of those states. It sold itself for $64,100.
The Super Delegates now defying democracy with their insistent refusal to
change their votes to Sanders in spite of a handful of overwhelming Clinton
primary losses in their own states, were arguably part of that deal.
In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33
democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a
joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed
many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the
maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary
Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington.
The idea was to increase how much one could personally donate to Hillary by
taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling 2014, McCutcheon v FEC, that
knocked down a cap on aggregate limits as to how much a donor could give to
a federal campaign in a year. It thus eliminated the ceiling on amounts
spent by a single donor to a presidential candidate.
In other words, a single donor, by giving 10,000 dollars a year to each
signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to
the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual legal
cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016.
And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount
were also donated in their spouse's name.
From these large amounts of money being transferred from state coffers to
the Hillary Victory Fund in Washington, the Clinton campaign got the first
$2,700, the DNC was to get the next $33,400, and the remainder was to be
split among the 33 signatory states. With this scheme, the Hillary Victory
Fund raised over $26 million for the Clinton Campaign by the end of 2015.
The money was either transferred to the Hillary for America or Forward
Hillary PACs and spent directly on the Hillary Clinton Campaign, often
paying the salaries and expenses within those groups, or it was moved into
the DNC or another Clinton PAC. Some of it was spent towards managing the
Hillary merchandise store, where you can buy Hillary T shirts and hats and
buttons.
The fund is administered by treasurer Elizabeth Jones, the Clinton
Campaign's chief operating officer. Ms. Jones has the exclusive right to
decide when transfers of money to and from the Hillary Victory Fund would be
made to the state parties.
One could reasonably infer that the tacit agreement between the signatories
was that the state parties and the Hillary Clinton Campaign would act in
unity and mutual support. And that the super-delegates of these various
partner states would either pledge loyalty to Clinton, or, at the least, not
endorse Senator Sanders. Not only did Hillary's multi-millionaire and
billionaire supporters get to bypass individual campaign donation limits to
state parties by using several state parties apparatus, but the Clinton
campaign got the added bonus of buying that state's super-delegates with the
promise of contributions to that Democratic organization's re-election fund.
If a presidential campaign from either party can convince various state
parties to partner with it in such a way as to route around any existing
rules on personal donor limits and at the same time promise money to that
state's potential candidates, then the deal can be sold as a way of making
large monetary promises to candidates and Super-delegates respectable.
The leadership of a very broke Montana Democratic Party decided in August of
2015 that this was a seductive deal they were willing to make. And by the
end of that year scores of 10,000 donations came in from out of state.
Montana's list of out of state donors to the state campaign reads like a
Who's Who of the Democratic financial elites. The names vary little from the
list of high donors to the other 32 states that signed on to the Hillary
Victory Fund.
What do billionaires like Esprit Founder Susie Buell of California, and
businessman Imaad Zuberi of California, and media mogul Fred Eychaner of
Chicago, and Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York and Chicago real
estate mogul J.B Pritzker, and gay activist Jon Stryker of NY, and NRA and
Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban all have
in common?
They all appear to be brilliant business people who have all given millions
to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and to her various PACS. And they
all gave the Montana State Democratic Party $10,000 each in 2015. It is
doubtful that many of them have any interest in Montana politics, or that
they have even bothered to visit.
None of these are awful people; they are simply awfully rich. And they like
their friend Hillary and want her to be the president. And if some of their
millions will buy her way into the White House then so be it. None of this
is illegal. But it makes a mockery of Ms. Clinton's pledge to further the
cause of campaign finance reform.
And the Hillary Victory Fund's marriage of convenience with the Montana
party negates Governor Steve Bullock's eloquent insistence that he will do
anything necessary to overturn Citizen's United. And the coldness of the
deal's intention of doing anything it can to further Hillary Clinton's
chances for becoming President brings Senator Jon Tester's stated neutrality
in the Democratic primary into a sharp and unflatteringly hypocritical
focus.
One doubts that most of these one percenters adore fly fishing. Or care much
about mountain climbing, or skiing, or collecting morel mushrooms along the
edges of the Yellowstone river in the fall. We can safely assume that they
will not be raising buffalo for meat in the near future, or buying an
organic farm next to Senator Jon Tester's. In fact we can probably assume
that most of them have never been to Montana.
And one doubts if many of them care or not if Governor Steve Bullock will
get re-elected or will be replaced with a creationist businessman named Greg
Gianforte whose family gave $1.5 million to a creationist museum in
Glendive, Montana that proudly displays a man riding a dinosaur as if it
were a rodeo horse.
That outsiders could make their votes count for more than our own in our
Presidential primary by supporting a system that is rigged in favour of the
wishes of lobbyists and billionaires running their money through our state
democratic party coffers is a concept that most Montanans would be repulsed
by.
Yet it is inconceivable that not only did the state's chairperson, Nancy
Keenan, approve the deal, but that both Governor Steve Bullock and
Democratic senator Jon Tester approved it as well. It directly affects the
funding of both of their campaigns, now and in 2018.
I have yet to hear back from any Montana democratic office holders that they
have even heard of the Hillary Victory Fund. Monica Lindeen, the State
Auditor, has never heard of it. A couple of county Chair persons have never
heard of it. Jean Dahlman, a feisty independent thinker and a ranch woman
who is on the executive committee of the state party has never heard of it.
And when I wrote Jonathan Motl, the man in charge of the Office of Political
Practices and a demon for making sure our state laws about contributions are
enforced, he did not get back to me. So I am assuming he has never heard of
it either. Who was in on this? No one seems willing to tell.
In Montana, a state where one third of voters identify as independents, and
where it is imperative that Democratic candidates for public office win some
votes from both Republicans and Independents in order to get elected, it
seems peculiar that the Montana State Democratic Party would make a deal
with the Hillary Clinton campaign months before the national primaries were
underway, given that there is a very real and proud tradition of political
independence in Montana. Being told who to vote for in a primary by your
party's big wigs is not part of that tradition. Any collusion by a Montana
national candidate with the Hillary Clinton campaign before a primary was
held, and the votes counted, could potentially be politically suicidal.
The agreement with the Hillary Victory Fund and the DNC could solve some of
the Montana State Democratic Party's financial problems while simultaneously
funding several state and federal candidates. But the scheme would only make
sense as a benefit to the parties involved if the money raised actually
stayed in the states that received the initial checks. This did not happen.
The Alaska Democratic party, in its end of the year filing with the FEC,
said it raised $43,500 from the Hillary Victory Fund with 10,000.00 dollar
donations from Clinton friends and billionaires, including hedge fund manage
S Donald Sussman, and Hyatt Hotel heir JB Pritzker. ( two of the several
$10,000 donors to the Montana State Democratic Party) . But in the same
report it said it transferred the same amount of money, $43,500 back to the
DNC - . a technically legal move that effectively obliterates federal limits
on donations to the national committee.
"It just becomes a way to funnel more to the DNC to support the Clinton
Campaign", said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign
Legal Centre, which advocates for campaign finance reform. "It's effectively
Hillary Clinton's team soliciting Hillary Clinton's supporters for much
bigger checks than they can give to the campaign."
The same thing happened with the Maine State Democratic Party with many of
the same billionaire donors. Maine attracted many of Clinton's biggest
donors. But the contributions didn't stay in Maine either, or in any of the
other state democratic parties to which Hillary Victory Fund donations have
been funneled. In October and November two transfers totaling 39,000 from
the Hillary Victory Fund to the Maine Democratic party sat for less than 48
hours before the same amounts were transferred to the DNC in Washington.
The Montana State Democratic party received $43,500 dollars from the Hillary
Victory Fund on November 2, 2015. Yet on that same day it transferred
$43,500 back to the Democratic National Committee in Washington. And on
December 1, 2015 it received another $20,600 from the Hillary Victory fund.
And on the same day the Montana State Democratic Party sent that exact same
amount, $20,600, back to the DNC in Washington as well, an entity that has
not bothered to disguise its preference for a Hillary Clinton candidacy over
that of a Bernie Sanders one.
By November 2015, 22 of the state parties linked to the Hillary Victory Fund
have received $938,500 from the fund and sent the same amount back to the
DNC. There is no limit to amounts of money transferred between state and
national parties and PACS or Funds.
(Obama had a similar fund in 2008, but not until he had already won enough
delegates to be sure he would be the nominee.)
The Democratic spokespeople for the17 states that refused to go along with
the Clinton campaign's plan, even though many of them were as broke as the
Montana State Democratic Party was (Nebraska springs to mind), were clear
that it seemed less than democratic to be choosing sides in a primary that
hadn't happened yet. That the very purpose of a primary was to let the
people choose which candidate they wanted to represent them and to not let
the party establishment load the dice in their own favour. They made it
obvious that they were choosing democracy over kick-backs.
"A joint fundraising committee linking Hillary Clinton to the national
Democratic Party and 33 state parties is routing money through those state
parties and back into the coffers of the Clinton campaign and all its PACS
and Funds" "It is a highly unusual arraignment if only because presidential
candidates do not normally enter into fundraising agreements with their
party's committees until after they actually win the nomination. And second,
Clinton's fundraising committee is the first since the Supreme Court's 2014
McCutcheon v FEC decision eliminated aggregate contribution limits and
congress increased party contribution limits in the 2014 omnibus budget
bill" said Paul Blumenthal, a writer for The Huffington Post.
A loud article in the NYT in March proclaiming that elected officials in 22
states would not support Bernie Sanders conveniently left out that those 22
states had signed agreements with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the
Hillary Victory Fund.
What it really does is seriously handicap the Democratic Primary Race. Every
one of the states charging electoral interference by the Clinton campaign is
a state that made a deal with the Hillary Victory Fund. Insinuations of
conspiracies are unprovable in these cases. But the perception of fraud and
corruption is glaring and damaging.
What the Clinton campaign appears to be in stunning denial about is that
most of us "regular folks" (a revolting term used with growing frequency
these days) are not burdened with an inability to confuse morality with
legality. Corruption is corruption is corruption no matter how many laws
there are allowing it. Very few brilliant business people give presidential
candidates upwards of six million dollars without expecting something in
return. There is a reason they are brilliant business people. Throwing away
millions of dollars for nothing is not one of them
Most state democratic parties don't want Campaign Finance Reform. They feel
they can't afford it. Many local politicians become terrified of voicing
support for alternative candidates out of fear of being cut off the
Democratic Party gravy train.
The psychological damage of the Hillary Victory Fund, the inference by its
very existence that every vote is not equal, has had a dampening effect on
older Democrats. The perception that most Democrats support Hillary, and
that she is the most reliable candidate to defeat a Trump or a Cruz in the
fall is felt by every journalist, every newspaper opinion writer and every
television current affairs show, and is absorbed by the consumers of that
news. When you have lobbyists for the big media giants, such as Fyeed
Eychancer of Newsweb, or Viacom lawyer and lobbyist Steve Forbes, giving
money to the Hillary Victory Fund through the state of Montana, the rot in
the system is laid bare.
Here in Montana, a politically vibrant state with a heady mix of Republicans
and Democrats and Independents and Libertarians, not one single Democratic
official up for election will openly support Bernie Sanders in the
Democratic primary. They all say exactly the same thing: "I'm not going to
endorse anyone until after the primary." Which has as much meaning as saying
you are not going to vote until after the election.
This is the state that brought the entire American union movement to the
West, back when Butte was a thriving mining town and corrupt copper barons
ran the state. It's a state in which miners fought and died for the right to
have unions. It's a state in which we had, until Citizen's United, the first
and only state law that expressly forbade corporate expenditures on
elections.
You can't win an election as a Democrat in Montana without the Native
American vote. You have to win Butte, a mighty monument to the working man
and Democratic to its very core. You have to win the artsy types and the
students in Missoula, the writers in Livingston and the oilmen in Billings
and the ranchers in the east. You can't be all things to all men, so you
have to be real. You have to be honest because word spreads fast in a small
but tight population like Montana and if your word is no good, neither are
you.
But most importantly, you can't win an election in Montana if you don't
acknowledge and respect the pride Montanans have in their ability to think
independently. Their courage to not follow the herd. Independence is a proud
master.
Our state party leadership signed a deal with a woman who out here, on our
turf, possibly wouldn't last a week. They signed away our unobstructed right
to choose which Democratic candidate we supported for President. Given that
we have 15 pledged delegates and seven superdelegates, we have lost our
absolute right to have superdelegate endorsements proportional to the wishes
of the primary voters
For what? Sixty four thousand and one hundred dollars? Which we had to give
back? That's a pretty poor excuse for selling out our right to our own
choice.
Look, we know the deck is stacked, that Hillary and the DNC get all the face
cards and that you're dealing from the bottom of the deck. But just give us
an ace from time to time, or maybe even a small straight. Don't rub our
hopelessness in our faces as if we are too dumb to know. You will pay for
your contempt. If not this year, then the next.
Beneficiaries
Recipient Party Type** Office Sought Total
Clinton, Hillary D C Pres $4,440,000
DNC Services Corp D P $2,263,436
Democratic Party of Wisconsin D P $207,278
Democratic Party of Oklahoma D P $140,000
Democratic Party of New Hampshire D P $74,700
Democratic Party of Pennsylvania D P $70,500
Democratic Party of Texas D P $69,100
Democratic Executive Cmte of Florida D P $66,200
Democratic Party of Nevada D P $66,200
Democratic Party of Colorado D P $66,000
Democratic Party of Ohio D P $66,000
Democratic Cmte of Utah D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Alaska D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Mississippi D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Montana D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Oregon D P $64,100
Democratic Party of South Carolina D P $64,100
Democratic Party of Tennessee D P $64,100
Democratic State Cmte of Massachusetts D P $64,100
Georgia Federal Elections Cmte D P $64,100
Idaho State Democratic Party D P $64,100
Michigan Democratic State Central Cmte D P $64,100
Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party D P $64,100
Missouri Democratic State Cmte D P $64,100
Rhode Island Democratic State Cmte D P $64,100
West Virginia State Democratic Exec Cmte D P $64,100
Wyoming State Democratic Central Cmte D P $64,100
Democratic Party of North Carolina D P $64,000
Democratic State Central Cmte/Louisiana D P $64,000
Indiana Democratic Congressional Victory Cmte D P $64,000
Democratic Party of Arkansas D P $63,000
Maine Democratic State Cmte D P $59,800
Democratic Party of Virginia D P $43,500
Source: FEC
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