Hillary Clinton Loaned Her Campaign $5 Million
UPDATE: Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson confirms that Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million dollars:
Late last month Senator Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million.The loan illustrates Sen. Clinton's commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation. We have had one of our best fundraising efforts ever on the web stoday and our Super Tuesday victories will only help in bringing more support for her candidacy.
The AP reported earlier:
Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, lagging far behind Barack Obama's fundraising this year, expects to be outspent by Obama in upcoming Democratic nominating contests just as it was in Feb. 5 states, her strategists conceded Wednesday.Officials with both campaigns have said Obama raised $32 million in January and that Clinton raised $13.5 million, a significant gap between the two that allowed Obama to place ads in virtually every Super Tuesday state and to get a head start on advertising in primaries and caucuses over the next week.
In a teleconference with reporters, Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn said Clinton was having a "record day" raising money over the Internet on Wednesday.
"We will have funds to compete," he said, "but we're likely to be outspent again."
Asked whether Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had decided to dip into their own wealth to finance the campaign, Penn said, "I'm not aware that they have." Campaign communications director Howard Wolfson said he would inquire. The Clinton's financial disclosures, which reveal only broad ranges of assets, place their wealth between $10 million to $50 million.
Clinton's name recognition and lead in polls in some of the bigger upcoming states give her an advantage and Obama's higher spending rate did not translate into victories in several states Tuesday.
But the terrain ahead features contests in the short term that are favorable to Obama. On Saturday, Obama and Clinton will compete in contests in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington. On Tuesday, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia hold primaries.
The Clinton camp is counting on March 4 matchups in Ohio and Texas and an April 22 primary in Pennsylvania. All three are expensive states in which to campaign.
Obama's camp signaled that he was ready to invest money in those states as well. "We think we're in strong financial position so if we choose to do so in the later states we'll have the ability to do that," campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Wednesday.
Clinton spent $15 million in December going into the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Her campaign spent at least $9 million in the last two weeks of January advertising in Super Tuesday states. Obama spent about $11 million in Super Tuesday advertising.
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| February 6, 2008 at 03:16 PM