Posted on 08/30/2007 3:48:26 PM PDT by JewishRighter
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's decision to return thousands of dollars from a top fundraiser wanted as a fugitive in California illustrates the perils of the pell-mell rush for political money — your friends can be your worst enemies.
Just ask Clinton and her rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards.
All three have experience putting out brushfires caused by former rainmakers.
Earlier this year, Clinton divested her political action committee, HillPac, of tainted contributions received from a Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting illegal donations. Obama donated to charity money he received in past campaigns from a Chicago developer caught in an Illinois corruption scandal. And just last week, the lawyer who represented assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian was indicted on charges of conspiring to make more than $125,000 in illegal contributions to Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign.
Money is the life blood of a political organization and campaigns have come to rely on an ever expanding roster of men and women with far-flung contacts to compete for precious cash.
"We have a system where we try to make everyone a volunteer fundraiser by setting targets and thresholds that can give an individual status as they are met," said Anthony Corrado, an expert on political money at Colby College in Maine. Inevitably, Corrado said, some fundraisers may turn out to be "politically problematic."
For Clinton, this week's revelations that one of her top fundraisers, Norman Hsu, had skipped his sentencing on a 1991 grand theft charge distracted her campaign just as it prepared to ramp up for the intense post-Labor Day stretch.
The campaign announced Wednesday that it would return $23,000 in contributions that Hsu made to her presidential and senatorial campaigns and to HillPac.
"It's fair to say we were all very surprised by this," Clinton said Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Hsu also appeared to be raising unusually large contributions from at least one working class family. Hsu's lawyer said Hsu had done nothing improper and Clinton's campaign said there were no plans to shed further donations.
She's just in the same unfortunate surprising situation as Obama and Edwards, not that she and the Clinton machine have a long, long record of crooked fundraising. And these are "brushfires". It's all their friends fault, don't you see? Hillary was so surprised! The word should be shocked, she's just so shocked. Who would have ever thought?
Sickening.
They keep repeating “$ 23,000” - it’s more like $800,000 from Mr Hsu (fact check >> doug from upland )
So you already know this “non story” is on the “spiked” list.
She's surprised she got caught, nothing more.
She’s surprised that the MSM would even mention this, did they forget she is a democrat, is what she’s thinking.
Well, AP writer, is this a story?
Peter Paul has renewed his demand to Hillary —— GIVE HIM BACK THE MONEY —— http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1888596/posts
And do you know anything about Clinton's building a home in the Dominican Republic? Liz Smith of all people, reported it months ago, and I haven't been able to find any stories verifying it.
If we had an unbiased press or if the object of the story were a Republican, the story headlines EVERY DAY for several weeks would be “Investigation Into Senator Clinton’s Illegal Fundraising Continues to Reveal Full Extent of Her Corruption” or something to that effect.
Try the freep search - peterpaul or peter paul
I did many articles called PETER PAUL AND HILLARY
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.