There are many ways to pay off campaign debts — cajoling phone calls, begging letters — but Bill Clinton believes that he has come up with a better method to wipe out the financial obligations outstanding from his wife’s failed presidential bid.
He is raffling himself. In an e-mail sent to millions of people who supported Hillary Clinton’s White House campaign, the former President asks: “How would you like the chance to come up to New York and spend the day with me?” For those who would like the One-Day-With-Bill prize, an online donation of as little as $5 (£3) will buy them the chance.
By 2007, seven years after leaving the White House, the Clintons had earned a combined $109 million (£73 million) through speaking engagements and bestselling memoirs. Even so, apparently they would prefer American voters to settle Mrs Clinton’s remaining $771,000 debt rather than paying it themselves.
“Hillary’s campaign still has a few vestiges of debt that I know she would like to see paid in full. Will you reach out today to help Hillary this one last time?” Mr Clinton asks. In her marathon battle against Barack Obama Mrs Clinton’s debts peaked at $25.2 million. More than $13 million of that she lent to her own campaign — a huge sum that she will never recoup.
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This is the second time in a year that Mr Clinton has offered himself as a lottery prize to whittle down his wife’s debt, something that makes some of their supporters cringe. As Secretary of State she is barred from raising money herself to pay it off.
What further angers some of Mrs Clinton’s backers from her failed Democratic primary campaign is the name of the creditor to whom she owes all the money: Mark Penn, her former pollster and chief strategist.
Mr Penn, a longtime Clinton pollster from the former First Couple’s White House days, followed what is standard practice for political strategists in US campaigns: he took a cut of the money paid by Mrs Clinton’s campaign to his firm to carry out polling and send mailshots to voters..
A total of $24 million from her campaign was paid to Mr Penn’s firm, Penn Schoen Berland, during her failed presidential bid. Much of that was to cover the cost of the company’s services but there is no doubt that the advice and strategy Mr Penn gave — advice that many Democrats believe doomed her campaign — made him millions.
He is blamed, for example, for failing effectively to gauge the public’s desire for change, and for sending out 20 million pieces of direct mail in a campaign in which the internet was so crucial. By the end of 2008, Mrs Clinton’s campaign still owed Mr Penn’s firm $5.4 million. That is now down to $771,000, although the campaign also has nearly $624,000 in the bank.
There are some Clinton supporters who believe that Mr Penn, a divisive figure, should not be paid. The money is not owed to him personally but to his firm, which is a subsidiary of the London-based WPP Group.
Mrs Clinton’s campaign relied heavily on big-money donors, most of whom gave the maximum amount allowed, hence the mass appeal to the small-donor base.
