Clinton lends her struggling campaign $6.4 million

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lent her presidential campaign $6.4 million over the past month, her campaign said Wednesday, underscoring the financial advantage held by her rival, Barack Obama.

The money more than doubled Clinton's personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year.

A campaign aide said Clinton gave her campaign another $5 million on April 11, more than a week before the Pennsylvania primary. She then again dipped into her personal wealth for $1 million last week and $425,000 on Monday, one day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

Clinton's campaign reported raising $10 million online after her Pennsylvania victory on April 22. Evidently, the money was not enough and her fundraising was unable to keep up with her expenses heading into Tuesday's contests.

Moreover, Obama has routinely outspent her in primary after primary and has shown little difficulty tapping his vast network of donors. He spent more than $7 million on advertising head of Tuesday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana to her nearly $4 million.

According to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Obama began the month of April with $42 million in the bank for the primary to Clinton's $9.3 million.

But Clinton had debts of $10.3 million at the start of the month, much of it money owed to her main polling, phone banking and advertising consultants.

Comments

[gregjones]

Blacks4Barack Launches:

The HILLARY
"STEP DOWN
WITH GRACE"
CAMPAIGN

Following N. Carolina and Indiana, it has become obvious that there is absolutely no way Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic nomination. With 6 primaries remaining it is impossible for her to catch Obama in the delegate count, number of states won or even the popular vote, so the bottom line is she must face the fact that OBAMA HAS WON ! Hillary's staying in the race is extremely harmful to the Democratic Party.....­therefore.­...
Contact the DNC to let
Howard Dean know that we
feel that Hillary should step
down in a respectful manner
since she is obvously not going
to win the nomination (without cheating....which will not be tolerated)

This would be the right gesture for her political future as well as the right gesture for the Democratic Party. Just Call The DNC at
[phone]
.....respectfully request
the DNC to ask Hillary to step-down NOW ! Then it will be time to concentrate
on The Re-Birth Of America !

http://www.Blacks4Barack.org
A Multi-Racial Org...Dedicated To Truth !

[Obinna]

Before Iowa, most people thought that Clinton had a seriously vast war chest with which to pursue this nomination process. I just don't understand the degree of financial recklessness that could have made it even possible for Clinton to begin to lend herself money!

When you cannot even raise the sort of money needed to make you competitive, and you've lost by every reasonable metric to a relative newcomer like Clinton has, do you really need anyone to tell you it is time to fold the campaign?

Ok... she is hanging in there to recoup her losses. I guess, for Clinton, this must feel like a weekend in a Las Vegas Casino.

[polystyleneman]

How can anyone let Hillary get away with calling Obama "elite" when she can casually "lend" her campaign a total of 11.4 million dollars?

For shame.

[butterworth]

How can she get away with these repeated lies? Raising $10 million in 24 hours from tens of thousands of donors via the interent was obviously a lie, just like the Bosnian sniper fire. Some posters here at HuffPo pointed out that HRC's website did not even have enough traffic to the "donate now" page to support these claims.

[ReportThis]

Anyone who DID contribute via the internet should dispute the payment when their credit card invoice arrives.

[ldsrapha]

hmmm, I am SURPRISED she doesn't have any money left from her 100,000 fictional donors the night following PA. Oh yeah, they NEVER donated, she was just pandering again.

[JenIA]

Any event planners in upcoming states have got to be cringing... They know she has no money so they can't even ask for money upfront. They then are forced to do the catering, rent facilities, etc. and not no if they'll even get their bills paid. Bill and Hillary need to pay off the old debts across the country out of their own pocketbook already, not to mention pay for the bills they will be incurring as the race presses on. In the meantime, HRC continues to plead for money from the "regular" folks that she identifies with--"I'm one of you!" she says... Only if you happen to have $100 million to your name!

[richardgordon]

Well, she's committed 10 million of her own money! On the one hand you have to admire her she is willing to risk an awful lot of HER OWN MONEY. On the other hand you have to ask if she is completely crazy. Mathematically its impossible for her to win, so what gives? Has she totally bought into her own infallibility? Is she going through the same kind of delusion a gambler goes through after she's lost so much money, but has to come back to the tables for one last shot to "get her money back"? It really is a strange situation.

[kendra]

Astounding isn't it? What's wrong with these her lower-income supporters, who are either left in the dark or prefer to remain ignorant re. her vast wealth.. ?

[butterworth]

What really gets me is how she wants to get these loans to herself paid back with interest. She acts like she & Bill couldn't make ends meet if they had to make due with only the remainder of their millions.

Talk about elitist!

[HanSolomente]

I enjoy seeing how Hillary has been saying she is just like us regular folk. Now she lends her campaign $6.4 million on top of the $5 million she has already lent herself. You know like the regular folk would do. She wont raise money like that elitist Obama.

[ducksawce]

Don't worry/ She"ll just write a "rags to riches" biography and cash in on her simple roots.

[olivia]

I find it highly irresponsible of Hillary to keep spending money campaigning.

Unless she and Bill plan to foot the bill personally.

This talk about Hillary expecting Obama to pay her bills is disturbing. I didn't give money to Obama to support Hillary's fiscal irresponsibility.

[inspectormerlot]

You don't have to worry about that. He's not allowed to give money he's raised for the primary to her. The suggestion that he should help her pay off her debt is predicated on the idea that he would go out and ask his supporters to donate some money to her for that purpose. So relax. No way is your money going to her unless you donate some to do so.

[Fitzy]

I sure hope you are correct on this issue!

[richardgordon]

l

[ldsrapha]

Me either, but he will NEVER do it. This is crap she throwing out from NOWHERE!!

[AbrakadaBarak]

Did Billary Clinton lie about the $10 million that´they received after the Penn win? What's going on? $16.4 down the drain in ? weeks. That's really sloppy for a President wanna be.

[jungpatawan]

She must have read my column on this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-collis/sleight-of-hand-the-legen_b_100222.html

JP

[maymok]

Her phony gaz tax proposal certainly shows a pattern about someone who is totally irresponsible about managing money.

[going2ireland]

If you are against the presumptive proposal that Senator Obama should pay off Hillary's debt for her to get out of the race, please send your comments to Senator Obama at this link.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2

YOu will probably have to copy and paste into your address bar, as oft times clicking on the links simply leads you to another HuffPo page that basically says no such thing.

[shotgunjohnny]

I wonder if that 10 Million in 24 hours included her personal donation?!

[NoahVail]

Can't she go back to some of her donors with deep pockets?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Paul

[ymazyck]

Well she needs to pay her tap here in York PA. Here is a link to what the citizens of york have to do to get her out of debt here.

http://www.inyork.com/ci_9176098?source=most_viewed