Where Did All the Money Donated to Hillary's Campaign Go?

Posted by Pam Spaulding, Pam's House Blend at 12:13 PM on February 22, 2008.

Apparently not where it could have been more effective. How'd you like to pull down this kind of scratch for giving your client bad advice: Clinton spent $3.8 million on strategists in single month.

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters are vexed over her latest campaign finance reports, which reveals she spent $100,000 on party platters and groceries for the Iowa caucuses and $3.8 million in a single month on a strategist's firm. Obama, however, has spent more overall -- and $1.8 million on campaign buttons alone.

According to the filing, detailed in the New York Times, Clinton paid strategist Mark Penn and his company $3.8 million for "fees and expenses" in January alone. In sum, the firm has billed $10 million in total, which included expenditures on direct mail.

The Times said other Democratic strategists called this sum "stunning."

"Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly," the paper's reporters wrote. "Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising."

Does this represent a good ROI for those who donated to Clinton's historic campaign (the article notes that Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs, in comparison, earns $144,000 a year)? Out here in the real world $3.8 million can buy a hell of a lot.

Too many of these high-ticket "strategists," "experts" and "consultants" haven't proven to be worth a flaming pile of crap in this election cycle. This year we have two Dem candidates and motivated voters that have caused polling to be way off, and predictions and assumptions blown away. Yet, it's all the same group of insiders leeching on the corrupt system, win or lose; it's too bad pay isn't tied directly to performance.

Are these big ticket DC consultants really earning their keep? I'm serious. Someone with common sense please explain it to me.

More drain on the coffers, via The Politico:

Last month's payments marked a spike in fees collected by those professionals, all working as outside consultants rather than staffers.

The January payments to Penn's polling firm brought its total haul from the campaign to $8 million. That doesn't include the $2 million the campaign owed the company at the end of January or the $125,000 it paid to the fundraising consultancy run by Penn's wife, Nancy Jacobson.

Mandy Grunwald, Clinton's ad maker, pulled down $762,000 in January, bringing to $2.3 million her total from the campaign, not including the $240,000 she's owed.

The firm that places the campaign's ads on the air, Denver-based Media Strategies & Research, run by former Clinton Senate campaign staffer Jon Hutchens, in January was paid $10 million, bringing its tally for the campaign to $22 million. Much of that money likely went to television stations to buy air time, but the firm got a cut too.

Tagged as: clinton, fundraising, penn, democratic consultants

Pam Spaulding blogs at Pam's House Blend.