(UPDATE: The latest flap is that Hillary hasn’t paid her staff’s health care premium to the tune of $292K. FEC filings show unpaid bills to provider Aetna for at least two months. Good lord, this PR problem is beyond the pale. Here is Clinton’s FEC filing, and Obama’s.)
The Clinton campaign is trying to keep its financial operation afloat as it hits the next slew of primaries, but this is bad PR any way you look at it. You can’t sell yourself as a president ready to give hope and help to working families when you stiff small vendors who have made you look good on the road. Even worse, when vendors have contacted the campaign to see when they might be paid, no one responds. (The Politico):
Event production is important to big-time presidential campaigns. It shapes how candidates look and sound, not just to the thousands of people who turn out to campaign speeches and rallies but also to the millions who catch snippets of them on television.More below the fold.And word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.
…The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter.
And these aren’t Obama supporters with an axe to grind; both the 42 employee and Phillips voted for Clinton - something they now both regret. What’s unclear is how the campaign decides who gets paid and who doesn’t (and how it’s tied to campaign cash flow), as the Politico article cites vendors who received their payments in a timely manner.Forty Two also has done events for Obama’s campaign, which has paid its bills promptly, according to the employee. FEC records show Obama’s campaign paid the company $18,500. Show Tyme Exhibits, another Youngstown event production company, has produced political events for years and had never had problems getting paid before Clinton, according to owner Jim Phillips.
He said he’s still waiting for a payment for setting up the sound system and stage for Clinton’s February tour of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
That said, the bottom line in this story is that it shows the tap is running dry for Clinton. Remember that $5 million that she loaned her campaign? If she hadn’t done that, given the burn rate, in February she would have been $3 million in the tank because of all the outstanding debt.
I have no patience for deadbeats; I was stiffed by a client when I was doing freelance magazine production several years ago. In two cases he simply wrote bad checks as payment after a long period of non-payment and my polite requests to receive payment. Perhaps a $200 or $500 billable doesn’t mean much to the Clintonistas, but to do that to small vendors is unconscionable. It’s fine if Mark Penn wants to defer payment to his shop, but the caterers, office cleaners and landlords left stiffed in the wake of a campaign that was publicly living the high life on the road to coronation is a terrible thing to do.
Vendors offering services to the Clinton campaign in any states with primaries coming up better ask for cash up front is unless they want to take a bath on the project.
30 Responses to “Hillary, please pay your small vendors.”
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They’re too busy fear-mongering and race-baiting to pay bills … It’s starting to look like money might be the campaign killer for HRC.
Interesting. After all we’ve been hearing about “old boy” endorsements of Obama in the comments here at Pandagon, it is interesting to see how little Clinton’s machine thinks of the everypeople that keep it on the road.
Does she have BushCo running her campaign finances or something?
Oy vey. This is not good.
This’ll be used against us: “how can you trust Democrats to run our government if they can’t even pay their own bills?”, “Democrats don’t really care about working stiffs or about health care, otherwise HRC would have paid for the health care of the stiffs working for her”, etc.
Of course, if a GOoPer did this, it’d never get traction. And this isn’t an IOKIYAR unfair double-standard. We Democrats claim that well-run government can help everyday people. Thus we have an affirmative case to make that we can run such a government. The GOP has no such case to make as they don’t claim there is a such thing as competency in holders of high office.
If the Democratic party wants to do well in the long term in elections, they need to make the case that they can run a good, clean government for the benefit of all Americans, especially the working stiffs. And stiffing the stiffs doesn’t make that case but rather makes the opposite case, don’t it?
And a lot of HRC hatin’ comes from HRC’s amazing ability to make the GOP’s case for it. We have enough Dems. who do that on “even the liberal NPR” … the last thing we need to do is have such a person running for President on the Dem. ticket (it was bad enough to have such a person as a VP candidate).
This’ll be used against us: “how can you trust Democrats to run our government if they can’t even pay their own bills?”,
Obama has a serious cash surplus right now. He’s used some of the same vendors and paid them promptly.
McCain isn’t stiffing vendors, but he has run in the red here and there throughout his campaign. He’s pretty much break-even.
When it comes to effective, parsimonious spending, Obama has the lead and the Rethugs can’t say much for that reason.
Youngstown is a place where almost everyone is scraping by…it’s the kind of place where McCain could do better than any Republican has done in years if he ran against Clinton and point out this stuff, despite his own admission of economic ineptitude.
I hope Obama doesn’t have too many long-outstanding bills.
One interesting note about Hillary’s campaign.
The campaign has imploded to about “the campaign” instead of talking about issues and what she will do.
eg. “vow to stay”, the who is who in hillary campaign, super delegates/primary mechanism, campaign’s account, “chill out”, general strategy, etc.
The campaign is now campaigning about the viability of the campaign itself. It has imploded in term of message. I don’t know how effective a campaign can be if it is about defending the campaign itself.
The campaign is now campaigning about the viability of the campaign itself. It has imploded in term of message. I don’t know how effective a campaign can be if it is about defending the campaign itself. - squash
Having the campaign be the message, so to speak, can be very effective if the campaign itself is a well-oiled machine demonstrating what it is you want to demonstrate. Indeed, sometimes, to use a cliche from writing courses, it’s better to demonstrate “how” you’ll lead by way of how your campaign runs than to simply say “what” you are going to do.
Part of Rove’s political acumen was that Bush’s campaigns demonstrated very well to people how Bush would run things — if he was a bully on the campaign trail and fought dirty, all that meant is that he would bully our enemies (which is why, in spite of all the evidence of how bad his policies were, people still voted for him for national security reasons — they simply felt safer with a bully, however wrong-headed he may be, in charge than with even someone with the right ideas but who might come accross as weak).
People bash Obama for being “all talk and no walk”, but Obama’s campaign really has been able to organize, which says something about his skills as a manager, which is important considering he’s running to be the Chief Executive Officer of our government (that’s really what the President is according to our constitution — nothing more, nothing less … although the President does have the bully pulpit — so having a good public speaker in office is a good idea — and the President makes judicial appointments — so having a liberal in office is an absolute must!).
OTOH, what does HRC’s campaign say about her? I loved a lot of what Edwards had to say (addressing the third rail of class, etc.) — and I think he would make a good VP (who actually is the interface between the executive branch and Congress … as a winning litigator, he should be able to convince people to vote for the Dem. agenda) … but various things about his campaign indicated he would not make a good CEO of America, Inc.
And I do tend (in addition to my concerns about HRC as a public speaker and her being able to be the voice of the Democratic party as well as of the US government) to have the same, in fact greater, concerns about HRC.
Of course, the Pres, IMHO, cannot be a GOoPer, so I’d vote for her in the general, but I’m not so sure she’d be our best choice.
This situation has helped Obama before. Perhaps we can encourage the other people Clinton has stiffed to do the same?
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080214/NEWS/802140403
Not being a campaign finance expert, how does effect her ability to compete financially in the general election in the 0.0001% chance she gets the nomination?
Hillary, if you happen to be reading: Good job. Nothing impresses voters more than pissing all over small businesspersons. Perhaps you should follow this up by refusing to tip waitstaff on your campaign stops - I mean, who isn’t sick and tired of all those smartass “wah wah, I’m paid $3/hr, please subisidize my career choice” servers, with their attitude of entitlement toward the funds of their hardworking clientele? Make a stand, Hill.
Oh, and I’m glad to see that you’re taking direct action on the healthcare issue. Your platform and statements make you out to be in the pocket of the health care industry, but stiffing Aetna? I’m enough of a wimp to pay Aetna on time, even though I don’t believe they would exist in a rational and just society. Apparently you secretly agree with me so much that you’re taking direct action to reduce their profitability.
***
Hey, superdelegates. Can you please put an end to this nonsense already? I find it hard to believe that any more than a small minority of y’all are still actually undecided.
It’s not just the AETNA debt, it appears she also owes CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield $62,744.52 for Employee Benefits, which is clearly health care.
I usually don’t comment about politics but this is beyond the freaking pale. If anyone has any doubt that Obama is by far the best candidate, this should set them straight. I’m so mad, because I actually wanted Hillary to win. But I remember the past and how she was being paid off by HMOs to not talk about healthcare and I could see an inkling of what we’re in for now. She has no moral authority. She should just leave the race, seriously.
Also, I can barely make out those little anti-spam letters on this site. That’s kinda ridiculous when they get that small. Seriously, is it a ‘3′ or a ‘5′. Squinting.
I’m not an expert on presidential campaigns (or senatorial) but I believe I’ve heard that many campaigns often end up stiffing vendors, especially the ones that lose.
I have some vague memory that Ohio’s senator John Glenn ended up paying some vendors something like $.20 cents on the dollar after his failed presidential run. In fact I vaguely recall this being an issue in the early 90s because much was made of the fact that John Glenn was *personally* rich.
I thought I’ve been told that “smart” vendors always ask for payment or a downpayment up front from campaigns because failure to pay (or waiting FOREVER for payment) is quite common for candidates.
This is really laughable. Remember back in 1993, when there were complaints about how small businesses were going to pay for the Clinton health care plan, and Mrs Clinton famously said that she couldn’t be responsible for every undercapitalized business in America? Now it seems that the undercapitalized business for which she can’t be responsible is her own campaign!
Assuming for the sake of argument that Mrs Clinton actually becomes president, and pushes through her health care proposals, do you think that she is going to have any sympathy for the small businessman who goes over two months in arrears in paying the health insurance she mandates?
Talk about really bad karma!
My brother worked events forever — campaigns are notorious for not paying the event people. During the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago they actually stopped work until the party coughed up a check. The Dems tried to pull the “but you can’t take your tents and go home, we’ll be on TV” and the president of the company said “Fine. Then you won’t have tents.” All my friends who still work there hate Hillary — they say the only one more unpleasant to work for was Barbara Bush. (Oh, and btw. if you’re putting up a tent at the White House and can’t find the porta-potty, don’t pull it out to whiz in the bushes. Men with machine guns will appear on zip wires to stop you. Just saying.)
I wonder what would have happened if one of Mrs Clinton’s paid staffers, one with health care coverage through the campaign, had been diagnosed with some expensive disease — and was told by AETNA (or whomever), “Sorry, you aren’t covered, because your employer didn’t pay their premiums?
And this raises another question; if the Clinton campaign was like most companies, the employees pay a percentage of their health insurance, usually something like 20%. If the Clinton campaign health insurance program was structured that way, if the campaign withheld health insurance premiums from employee paychecks and then didn’t pay the insurance promptly, that might be a criminal act.
knowing this and hearing HIllary talk about the nation’s finances and budget on the campaign trail is really, really, funny
and yes if she were to get the nod it will be used against her “Hillary cares so much for the little people she stiffs them”
I’ve heard Republicans use this before when referring to the Clintons
(Rolls eyes.)
I wonder whether or not Clinton actually looks in mirror and tries to reconcile her core belief in her own electability with the fact that every week she seems to do something that REALLY pisses people off.
The Senator seems to be doing her best to break the electorate down into thirds: trying to be loved those who wouldn’t vote for her even if she could cure cancer and convert rust into gold with her touch (paging Mr. Scaife et al.); those who would vote for her (or just defend her) even if she ran over puppies with a van; and those who might vote for her — and may even deeply want to — but wake up every morning with a fresh Hillary-provided reason to run like hell from her.
*Sigh.* This is what I was telling my fellow conventioners this weekend. I like Clinton herself, but I think she doesn’t do a very good job of surrounding herself with good, competent people. Which is bad, because as we’ve seen with this presidency, the people that work with the President are every bit as important as the President his/herself.
So much for her credibility on balancing the budget and Health Care.
Should you guys really be talking about this? What about the outside chance that she might get the nomination? Wouldn’t you then have been doing the Republicans’ dirty work for them?
Wait, so nobody is allowed to say anything negative about anybody left of George Will lest they eventually become Democratic candidate?
Hillary has a donut’s chance in a police precinct of being the Democratic nominee. The sooner everyone realizes the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, the sooner we can move forward and fight the Republicans.
And even if Hillary were to win, what, do you think we shouldn’t be prepared for this? The more dirty laundry that gets aired now, the less is there for the Republicans to dig up.
LOL .. so you don’t think they would have already figure this out and added to their box-o-crap on HIllary that they’ve been collecting for 16 years?
If so, you don’t really understand how much the Republicans hate Hillary.
Better to have it come out now while there’s still a chance it can be fixed and explained away before the election than to have it come after the nomination.
What would happen to the Clinton campaign if they ran into the insurance co. cutting them off for non-payment and then got penalized thanks to her *healthcare mandates*? Oh, right. Clinton is magic.
PS: can there be a “one diary on Hillary, one diary on McCain” rule?
Serena, we’re not allowed to have diaries on McCain. He is all good, all consistent, a total studly repudiation of wafflers, pansies and wishy-washy talkers everywhere. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for questioning him! He never makes mistakes! He…
(Hang on. Wait a minute. This isn’t the McCain press bus! )
Sorry. As you were.
When I took a bus to Columbus, OH with a bunch of people from DC for Obama last month, we all got up and shared why we support Obama. One person had an excellent point which I have used in a lot of conversations with undecided voters: all three candidates are senators, so none have a lot of executive experience, except for running their campaigns. And of the three campaigns, Obama’s is the only campaign that has not gone bankrupt. Who do you want managing the federal budget?
The issue here is the wealth transfer.
We all know that political campaigns essentially take most of their donations, countersign the checks, and send them to local network affiliates and cable companies to pay for TV ads. But it’s nice to think that the stuff not feeding mass media monopolies on a bi-annual basis goes to local small businesses.
Hillary isn’t just stiffing her staff and small vendors; she’s stiffing them in order to pay large media corporations for ads. Those corps get paid on time. They’re not stiffable.
(And she’s maxed out lots of her donors, meaning that a fair amount of money banked so far is ring-fenced for the general election campaign.)
I thought this is a hilarious comment:
++
the amount that the two campaigns owed for telephone service at the end of February:
Hillary Clinton:
AT&T: $8,022.65
Camden Co. Dem. Cmte.: $618.53
Cox Communications: $1,960.22
Embarq: $5,328.32
Frontier Commuications: $2.634.95
Qwest: $33,390.98
Soundpath Conferencing: $87,141.07
Verizon: $4,777.27
TOTAL: $143,875.99
Barack Obama:
AT&T: $2,266.10
Embarq: $5,380.21
Frontier Communication: $789.74
Qwest: $2,661.17
TOTAL: $11,097.22
If Hillary becomes President, maybe that 3am phone call is met by a recorded message saying, “The number you are calling has been disconnected.” Is Hillary’s the first campaign in history that will end not in a bang, or a whimper, but a fast busy signal?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/2/83634/73248/403/488768