Opinion: Debts paid, Hillary Clinton builds $3+ million campaign fund for ...?

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With all of the immense numbers coming out of Washington these days, former senator, ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt is chump change. Make that, ‘was.’

Here’s the news: There is no more Hillary Clinton campaign debt.

In fact, there’s a campaign fund surplus.

And, in fact, while the current secretary of State officially left politics on being sworn into the Obama administration’s top diplomatic post and says future political office ‘is not anything that is at all on my radar screen,’ she’s still got eight campaign workers on staff. She’s also said, ‘I’m out of politics.’

Hmmm. Note the present tense in that statement.

Of course, she’s out of politics now. Also of course, who knows what the situation will be in 2012? Who’d have guessed three years ago she’d be showing her management skills by running the huge Department of State? For a president named Barack Obama?

Or what about 2016? She’d be 69 then. Her good friend, John McCain, wasn’t too old to run at 72. Too old to win, but not too old to run.

As the N.Y. Daily News reports, Clinton’s $22 million in campaign debts (a good chunk of it owed to herself), has somehow now turned into some $3+ million in cash on hand and still growing, some in her old Senate fund and some in her defunct presidential campaign warchest.

Obama appealed to his supporters to help her pay off the millions she spent unsuccessfully running him down in the spring of 2008 before giving up her $250 million effort that June. Clinton appealed for money. Also hubby Bill appealed. Chelsea. All kinds of folks and contests. It worked.

fact, it’s still working; her campaign site is still accepting donations, presumably from those Democratic voters who helped make 18 million cracks in the ultimate glass ceiling. She didn’t get to pay herself back. But Clinton doesn’t owe fired consultant Mark Penn any more millions.

The old campaign, which spent $100,000 on staff last quarter, says it’s winding down and will soon drop from eight staffers down to five. Clinton’s former New York senatorial colleague, Chuck Schumer, has to run a campaign next year. He’s only got three fulltimers.

One other thing: There’s probably no connection. So many things have changed. But as The Ticket reported here 54 weeks ago, business friends of Hillary Rodham Clinton have purchased the web domain name HRC2012.

Hmmm.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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