Nuclear Hypocrisy from the Hillary Camp?

By Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Posted February 14, 2008.

Even as Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was blasting Sen. Barack Obama for his ties to the Exelon Corporation, the firm of Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very same nuclear energy giant.

This past week, Burson Marsteller, Penn's powerhouse consulting agency, was paid more than $230,000 by Exelon to help renew a nuclear energy license in New Jersey, the Huffington Post has learned. The payment was for work that took place over several months, and Burson is still employed by the company.

"They did some work for us in New Jersey between June and November," said Craig Nesbit, vice president of communications for Exelon Generation, a subsidiary. "That bill was invoiced on December 12 and it just took that long to pay these things… We still are paying them a little bit but it is ramping down."

It has been public knowledge that Exelon is a client of Burson. But news of the recent payment comes less than two weeks after the Clinton campaign, and Penn himself, took Obama to task for what they implied was preferential treatment for the company.

On February 3, 2008, the New York Times reported that Obama had backed away from criticism of Exelon following revelation that the company had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants. The Illinois Senator, the paper noted, chose to push legislation that offered guidance, rather than mandates, for prompt reporting of leaks. Moreover, the Times added, Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod worked as a consultant to Exelon, and "since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama's campaigns for the United States Senate and for president."

Following the article's publication, the Clinton campaign pressed the notion that Obama had succumbed to pressure from his donors, even though Clinton had supported the bill. In a radio ad before the Nevada primary, the campaign used Obama's Exelon ties to cast doubt about his opposition to Yucca Mountain, a proposed nuclear waste depository. And in a memo to "interested parties," Penn himself highlighted the Times story, arguing that what Obama says is often contradicted by what journalists find "when they dig into the facts."

Nine days later, Penn's firm, Burson Marsteller, received $230,627.05 from Exelon -- roughly $3,000 more than the sum of Obama's campaign donations from Exelon employees -- for work deemed "Public Affairs."

Representatives from Burson confirmed the payment. While Howard Wolfson, a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign, said there were no political ties between Sen. Clinton and the company: "I dont recall Exelon sitting in Senator Clinton's office watering down legislation designed to protect people from nuclear leaks," he said.

See more stories tagged with: barack obama, hillary clinton, mark penn, exelon

Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C. Previously he has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity.

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