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Shame on you Senator Clinton
Quoting an article in the NYTimes:
She had only token opposition, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton still spent more on her re-election — upward of $30 million — than any other candidate for Senate this year.
A lot of money spent for what I think is no good reason. Where did she spend it?
Mrs. Clinton also bought more than $13,000 worth of flowers, mostly for fund-raising events and as thank-yous for donors. She laid out $27,000 for valet parking, paid as much as $800 in a single month in credit card interest and — above all — paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to an assortment of consultants and aides.Throw in $17 million in advertising and fund-raising mailings, and what had been one of the most formidable war chests in politics was depleted
We flipped one, count 'em ONE, NY state senate seat this cycle. The Republicans furiously hunkered down and raised between two and three times as much as us for their Senate candidates. Part of being a Democratic leader is to help build your party locally. She could have spread some of her wealth around so that our candidates would be on par with the Republicans. I believe the total the Republicans raised was 7.6 million.
Between her and Eliot Spitzer I think they could have more than made up for that. Flipping the NY State Senate should have been a priority for Spitzer and Clinton considering they had no real opposition, were shoe-ins for election, and had huge warchests.
Moreover, no time was better than this past cycle with the Republicans self-destructing as they did.
Woulda... Coulda... Shoulda, I suppose.
Comments
Well, you might be shocked, Morningstar, but I think that your comments are basically on point. There is the technical snafu that Hillary's federal campaign fund is prevented by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law from contributing directly to the campaign funds of candidacies for non-federal office; but that can easily be overcome by establishing a separate political action committee, as so many Democratic House Members have done, in order to contribute to candidates for State or City office. So, yeah, with a little imaginative redirection of some of those gazillions in contributions, our Junior Senator could easily have done a lot more to help win seats in the State Senate. And you're right that we should have struck while the anvil was hot, too. This was, simply put, a huge missed opportunity. Sigh.
Posted by: Read the Tea Leaves at November 22, 2006 02:09 PM
One of the great accomplishments of 2006, which SDNYC was a part of, was the great gains NY State Democrats made in electing more people from our party to both Federal and State office.
Federal elections along with statewide races such as governor bring more people to the polls than State Assembly or City Council races. A Senate and NY Goverors race would normally stimulate voter participation. However Both Clinton and Spitzer were so far ahead of their opposition their election was pretty much a done deal. This hurt Democratic House candidates along with those for the state legislature as Democratic leaning voters didn't feel as compelled to come out.
Though Clinton can't directly spend money on State4 Assembly and State Senate races, she can help her party out through a massive GOTV effort through her campaign. Every Hillary supporter she turned out in Westchester voted for John Hall over Sue Kelly. Every Clinton supporter in Oenida voted for Mike Acuri.
I'm glad that someone as well known and well liked across the state as Hillary Clinton turned out her supporters. It helped a lot of lesser known Democrats win in the less glamourous races. Good for our party, good for the LGBT community.
Jon Winkleman
Posted by: Jon Winkleman at November 28, 2006 11:50 PM
The Clintons care only for themselves and reinforcing the notion that Democrats can only win by jettisoning our core values.
President Clinton was the second best Republican president we've ever had, right behind Lincoln.
Posted by: anon at December 7, 2006 06:06 PM
