One week after losing a major fundraiser when fugitive financier Norman Hsu was arrested in Colorado, the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) today attempted to compensate for the loss of Hsu by reaching out to other fugitives.
"Say what you will about Norman, the dude raised $850,000 for us," said one Clinton aide. "It's not going to be easy filling Hsu's shoes."
As part of her new push to sign up fugitive financiers for her campaign, Sen. Clinton abruptly canceled campaign stops in Iowa today to attend a special town hall meeting in the Cayman Islands.
Speaking to an audience made up entirely of fugitive financiers, Sen. Clinton said, "I am running so that you don't have to."
Vying for his own share of the fugitive financiers' support, former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) sounded a similar theme during a campaign stop at a fortified compound in the Bahamas.
"I have often said that my father was a mill worker," Sen. Edwards told his audience, "but my mother was a fugitive financier."
Davis Logsdon, head of the political science department at the University of Minnesota, said that fugitive financiers could be a key voting bloc in the 2008 election: "I think they are going to be what soccer moms were in 2000."
But Mr. Logsdon warned that wooing this key demographic would not be without its challenges: "Direct mail campaigns don't work well with them, because most of them don't have an address."
Elsewhere, President Bush refuted Alan Greenspan's charge that he seemed "bored" by economics, telling reporters, "I'm much more bored by education, health care and the environment."
Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com. He appears with Arianna Huffington and Mo Rocca at the 92nd Street Y in NYC on Wednesday Nov 7 at 8 PM. For tickets go to 92y.org.
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The fugitive financier that Bill Clinton pardoned on the last day of his presidency.
He ought to be good for a few million off-shore dollars.
An island or other space the size of Ireland will be needed for the gathering. They will need an island or other space as large as Austrailia if they plan to let politicians from the portions of the world where politicians face elections & need campaign money.
Covering the sources of donations can be accomplished easily. The fugies & those who aid fugies can take care of that. Secrecy is essential for the candidates don't want to be caught in the act of touching fugies for money. The airlines who were used for extraordinary renditions could easily do the job for a reasonable price. The whole project is do-able.
You said: Direct mail campaigns don't work well with them because most of them don't have an address.
But their lobbyists do and they are most candidate's BFFs...and one informed source says they frequently text each other in code. One text was intercepted recently that read: Cd u arrange f-raiser with h-burton + b-water in grn zone? Source was scared to divulge author's name, citing recent taserings and ads in New York Times and screams of traitor and other anti-patriotic accusations.
Re. Elsewhere. Another timid source overheard W saying, "even...um...that there Iraq...er... something bores me to tears. I cry all the time."