A fundraising-obsessed Hillary Clinton netted an impressive $45 million during the first three months of her campaign — but her badly outgunned super PAC’s failure to keep pace is damping any celebration of the feat.

Many top Clinton supporters say it’s now time for the other powerhouse Clinton — Bill — to employ his own magic touch to rescue Priorities USA Action and, in the process, shove reluctant liberal donors into the big-money game Republicans are easily winning.


“I think President Clinton continues to be a great draw and an effective fundraiser and should be deployed in that capacity,” one Democratic donor close to the Clintons told POLITICO, echoing the near-universal sentiment of a dozen fundraisers interviewed for this article. “Many of us have known him since the 1980s and worked with him since then, so he has a tremendous reservoir of friendship and goodwill across the country to draw from.”

One problem with that: The former president, who raised tens of millions for his charitable foundation, has sat out the 2016 cash race so far and has told his friends and political allies he has no plans to help out the struggling group until the fall “at the earliest,” according to a senior Democrat close to Clinton.

Priorities, which has recently been taken over by a former top official from Clinton’s 2008 race, told allies that it had raised just $15.6 million in the first quarter, which will be dwarfed by the expected $100 million brought in by Right to Rise, Jeb Bush’s super PAC. That’s making Clinton insiders nervous about whether Priorities will have enough cash to fight back against Republican independent expenditure groups that seem to collect campaign money from a spigot.

“It’s a dilemma and a challenge,” said a veteran Democratic fundraiser with connections to Priorities. “Outside of Hillary herself, the president’s the biggest draw, and he’s the biggest draw with some of the bigger donors … [The Clintons] have made the decision that it’s too soon to get him involved. It’s their judgment that Priorities can wait. I’m not sure Priorities can wait, but that’s their judgment.”

Democrats have lagged badly in the no-limits, Koch Brothers-ruled world of electoral fundraising created by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Unlike conservatives, most wealthy liberals support stringent campaign finance laws, and most Democrats with bank accounts fat enough to write seven-figure checks are loath to do so — at least until the tail end of an election cycle.

The Clintons, less hostile to the notion of super PACs than the clean-hands team around President Barack Obama, were supposed to interrupt this self-defeating cycle. One top Democratic fundraiser was so convinced the 42nd president was the answer to the party’s squeamishness about big money that he recently labeled Clinton, in a burst of optimism, “the $200 Million Man.”

But Bill Clinton has been nowhere on the money scene — either for Hillary’s official campaign, or on the super PAC side.

Hillary has focused almost entirely on collecting $2,700 checks for her primary face-off against … Bernie Sanders. And Bill has made it clear to friends and contributors that while he’s supportive and might work for the group down the road, for now he’s too busy with his foundation work. His wife’s team, meanwhile, has been all too happy to keep the Big Dog on a leash, at least at this early stage of the campaign.

The upshot is that Priorities — rocked by a recent reshuffling that saw Clinton ally Guy Cecil replace a longtime Obama operative — trails its GOP counterparts badly in fundraising.

Republican candidates and their billionaire backers certainly won’t adhere to the Clintons’ leisurely super PAC timetable, dissenters from the current strategy point out. Priorities’ newly revamped leadership needs the couple to move faster if they are to counter the flood of positive ads Right to Rise is expected to run in battleground states, where Bush is looking to lower his negative ratings among skeptical voters.

Priorities, meanwhile, is still just getting organized. Board members are only now starting to casually pitch donors before the group puts together the kind of rigorous, analytical presentation that was key to its fundraising efforts in 2012. As a result, many potential Democratic donors are idling in neutral as Cecil’s team gets its bearings, sitting on their cash while the Republicans rack up nine-figure numbers. That $15.6 million total would have been many times larger had the Clintons made funding the group a top priority, people familiar with Priorities’ fundraising efforts say.

“Bill or Hillary makes a call to [Democratic donors like] Haim Saban or Susie Tompkins Buell and we get $30 million in a weekend,” said a Democratic operative close to Priorities.

The disappointing start has already caused Priorities to lower its overall goals for the 2016 cycle. The group had hoped to raise $300 million just to keep pace, but insiders now expect the total haul to be in the $150-million to $200-million range. Even so, Cecil will have to lean hard on his close relationship with the Clintons to lure strong Hillary supporters who haven’t given to Priorities in the past — while selling the former first family on the importance of selling their friends on Priorities.

That will be a challenge. GOP donors like the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson are far more willing to throw vast amounts at their favored candidates; Democratic donors, even the wealthiest ones, are more likely to fund an issue-advocacy campaign than to write a $1 million check to a group largely know for cutting negative ads.

“I think fundraising for Democrats is always slower and we’re always going to be outspent … There is just no way any of us can keep up with the Koch brothers,” said Amber Mostyn, who, along with her husband, gave $3 million to Priorities in 2012 when it raised about $80 million for Obama’s reelection effort.

The Mostyns have had a few conversations with Paul Begala, who raises cash for the group, and Priorities chairwoman former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm after David Brock, a close Clinton ally, resigned from the board following a critical New York Times story about the fundraising practices of other Brock-linked groups. Mostyn said they plan to give again, but they just don’t feel the urgency to give yet — in part because Clinton’s path to the nomination looks relatively unobstructed, Sanders notwithstanding.

Andy Spahn, a California-based Democratic fundraiser with close ties to the Clintons, thinks Bill Clinton’s involvement could goad donors like the Mostyns to move more quickly. Under federal law, both Clintons are technically “agents” of the 2016 campaign, and therefore barred from soliciting super PAC contributions in excess of $5,000. But there are few constraints preventing either from headlining events for Priorities, touting the group’s effectiveness or romancing donors in person and over the phone.

Bill Clinton’s personal charisma could be especially crucial: As important as operatives like Begala and John Podesta are for wooing donors, the former president is expected to be the closer in small group settings, even if it he can’t overtly embrace that role for fear of violating the law. He also can draw from his foundation network — donors that are used to cutting multimillion-dollar checks.

The one Priorities donor meeting in the Bay Area Hillary Clinton attended, held in early May, illustrated the awkwardness of the Clinton super PAC pitch: She opened her remarks with a hold-your-nose pose, acknowledging that she would prefer not to raise money for her own super PAC and saying, “It’s a sad reality, but we have to play by the rules.” Then she took questions, mostly about policy, and made no other direct pitch other than speaking kindly about the group in general terms, according to a person in attendance. Bush, by contrast, in April hosted a lavish, two-day retreat for more than 300 of his top benefactors at a posh Miami hotel, where he told them they were making history.

Hillary Clinton has, however, moved aggressively to raise money for her own campaign. So far, she’s focused on raising relatively small amounts of hard money — $2,700 a pop, or $27,000 in a bundle — for the primary, but she will soon shift into a second phase of big-money donor bundling coupled with a ramped-up online fundraising operation modeled after Obama’s. That leaves Bill Clinton, along with daughter, Chelsea, and Podesta, as the most likely regular surrogates for Priorities.

That’s why one of Cecil’s main objectives over the next few months is to sell the former president — and his friend Tina Flournoy, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff — on giving potential super PAC donors the kind of face-time he’s given to foundation and campaign donors. “Guy has to acclimate him to the idea that the super PAC is as important as anything else,” said a longtime Clinton associate.

People cheer after Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stands on stage with her husband former president Bill Clinton after her official kickoff rally at the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan on June 13, 2015. | Getty

But Bill Clinton has his reasons for remaining on the bench, at least through the end of the year. His first priority, friends say, is raising enough cash to endow his foundation, and burnishing its reputation in the wake of stories revealing the tapping of foreign donors with pending State Department business and other questionable practices. Clinton’s recent schedule has been notably packed with foundation events: After barnstorming for Democrats in 2014, his only 2015 political fundraiser was a February appearance on behalf of Alvin Brown, who made a failed bid to be the mayor of Jacksonville, Florida.

Hillary Clinton’s political team in Brooklyn has its own motives for keeping the former president on the sidelines for a while. In part, it’s to manage its least manageable surrogate; in part, it’s because securing multi-million dollar donations undercuts the campaign’s narrative of raising small amounts from “everyday American” donors instead of Wall Street zillionaires.

This is a campaign that avidly pushes tales about staffers so cheap they’ll ride the BoltBus between Washington and Brooklyn. They are none too eager to read stories about Bill Clinton “wining and dining somebody for a million-dollar check … that will give Bernie Sanders a big thrill,” according to one aide — especially after repeated accounts of Bill Clinton’s aggressive fundraising on behalf of his foundation.

But to some extent, Priorities’ struggles simply reflect the Democratic Party’s chronic unease in the unlimited-money environment. Some big Clinton donors are reluctant to give on ideological grounds because they abhor super PACs and the massive amounts of money they inject into the political system. And heavyweights like Saban, Fred Eychaner and James Simons haven’t stepped forward to write the kind of $5 million-plus contributions that would make an immediate difference — though billionaire financier George Soros has come forward to bankroll other Clinton-linked super PAC efforts.

It might take a crisis to wake donors — and perhaps the Clintons — out of their super PAC stupor. Priorities struggled to raise money for Obama in 2012 until he whiffed the first debate against Mitt Romney. Money poured in once Democratic donors believed his reelection was no longer inevitable, according to multiple sources close to the Priorities.

Several donors interviewed by POLITICO suggested that Cecil and the new regime are hoping Priorities’ relatively small haul, which will be officially reported later this month, will serve as a wake-up call; Democratic donors will be stunned to see how much cash Right to Rise raised by comparison and race to open their wallets. Potential contributors contacted by Priorities staff and board members in recent days told POLITICO they felt little pressure to write checks before the filing deadline, perhaps to underscore the organization’s cash crisis.

“I think on some level we may suffer from the unintended consequences of Hillary being such a strong candidate,” Amber Mostyn said.