She needs to pay off her debts before she can legally close the books on her campaign. Clinton still owes Penn $329K

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign ended in the summer of 2008, but in the first three months of the year, her still operational campaign committee raised $63,000 – primarily by renting its email list to allies – and paid off $75,000 in debt to its pollster Mark Penn.

According to a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission, Clinton’s campaign committee ended the first quarter with $329,000 in debt – all to Penn’s firm, to which the Clinton campaign once owed nearly $5.3 million.


Clinton – the secretary of state who, as a New York senator, fought a long and grueling race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination before conceding to eventual winner Barack Obama – has said she intends to step down as the U.S.’s top diplomat after one term, and has no intention of running for president again.

And, though she’s barred from fundraising while serving as secretary of state, Clinton needs to pay off her committee’s debts to Penn before she can legally close the books on her campaign.

That’s left her campaign committee largely dependent on income it gets by charging other groups fees to send fundraising appeals to the list of supporter emails Clinton assembled during the 2008 campaign, estimated to include as many as 2.5 million email addresses.

In the first quarter of the year, the Clinton campaign collected nearly $55,000 in list rental income, mostly from two nonprofit groups linked to Clinton allies, compared to only $5,000 in contributions (including $1,000 from the political action committee of a defense contractor under federal investigation).

National Popular Vote – a group backed by Clinton donor Tom Golisano that hopes to circumvent the Electoral College through state pledges to back the popular winner in presidential elections – paid $28,000 in the first three months of the year to rent Clinton’s list.

And No Limits, founded by former Clinton adviser Ann Lewis to burnish Clinton’s legacy, paid $20,000 last month to fundraise from the list. That brings the total list rental payments by No Limits to the Clinton campaign to $437,000 since 2009.

In all, Clinton’s campaign committee has reaped $4 million since 2009 by renting its list, according to FEC filings, with some of the biggest payments coming from Clinton’s now-shuttered leadership political action committee ($822,000), Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation ($349,000), President Obama’s inaugural committee ($274,000) and Media Matters ($198,000).

This article tagged under: Hillary Clinton

Mark Penn