NH landlord donates late Clinton rent check to Obama campaign Michael Roston

Published: Thursday February 14, 2008



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Print This Email This When Hillary Clinton left New Hampshire in January as the big winner, a doctor and building owner says she forgot to leave something on her way out of the state: a rent check. After finally getting paid the money he was owed, the doctor says he'll donate the proceeds to the campaign of her rival, Senator Barack Obama. Thirty days went by, with no replies to phone calls, e-mails, no replies at all. Suddenly a newspaper article comes out. It was the worst publicity they could get. Three days go by and I get a check, said Terry Bennett of Rochester, NH says in a Wednesday article by Karen Dandurant in Seacoast Online, the website of the Portsmouth Herald. Bennett went to an area newspaper with his story after the Clinton campaign was late in paying him a $500 rent check. He had rented the space to Clinton's team for 5 days before the Jan. 8 primary, and it was used as a headquarters and dormitory. Bennett also said that the Clinton campaign left the space "trashed." "[T]here were fast food containers all over the place and lots of campaign signs left behind," Dandurrant reports Bennett saying. Bennett was eventually sent the rent check via express mail, but another landlord in Iowa where Clinton placed third in the Jan. 3 caucus told the paper that he had not yet received a $7,600 payment for space he had rented out to the campaign. I got a call on Sunday from the Clinton campaign who said they were putting the money in a two-day envelope, Richard Reese of Des Moines told the Portsmouth Herald. Today is Wednesday, and I already got the mail, but theres no check. The Clinton campaign has expressed regret on multiple occasions for not cleaning up some buildings it rented, but says most property owners it worked with were paid. "A spokeswoman for the New Hampshire Clinton campaign said not paying Dr. Bennett for the space rented by campaign workers was unintentional, and called it an 'isolated delay,'" Dandurrant wrote last week. Ultimately, Bennett seemed angered by the experience. "They have their tail in a vise, and I am holding a gas jet under it," Bennett told the paper.



