Hillary Becomes A Player
Hillary Rodham Clinton may be downplaying her potential presidential ambitions, but since being elected to the Senate, she's been cultivating party connections not typical of your average first-year senator.
Take Sen. Clinton's political action committee, HILLPAC, which she uses as a political base. She raised $662,325 for the PAC from January through June, according to records filed last week with the Federal Election Commission.
"A garden variety junior senator, newly elected, would have some real trouble raising that kind of money," election lawyer Kenneth Gross said.
Many other senators have their own PACs and compared to those, she's already in the top tier of fund-raisers. During the same period, for example, the Senate's top Democrat, Tom Daschle, raised about $1.3 million for his PAC, and Calfornia Sen. Barbara Boxer raised $450,000. Both Daschle and Boxer historically have been at the top of the Democratic PAC fund-raising list.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, veteran Sens. Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid and John Breaux all pulled in less than $200,000 each so far this year.
|
"If she was any other freshman, that figure would be phenomenal," political analyst Charlie Cook told CBSNews.com.
Two thirds of the money HILLPAC raised has already been spent, with large chunks going to her fellow Democrats. Each of the party's campaign committees received $20,000; $10,000 went to the legal defense fund of Sen. Robert Torricelli, whose campaign fund-raising activities are under investigation; and donations were made to 17 House and Senate candidates running in 2002, including fellow Sens. Tom Harkin, Carl Levin, Richard Durbin and Paul Wellstone.
With these disbursements, the former first lady may be thanking a number of her colleagues for their assistance during last year's campaign. She received plenty of fund-raising help from the Democratic National Committee as well as from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Torricelli headed from 1999 through 2000. In fact, Torricelli, as chair of the DSCC, worked overtime in recruiting Clinton to run for the Senate.
Then during the campaign, the two raise money together for New York Senate 2000 fund-raising committee, which benefited both Sen. Clinton's campaign and the DSCC. The committee wound up pulling in $9.6 million in soft money, according to the watchdog group Democracy 21, most of which eventually made its way to the New York State Democratic Committee to help Clinton's campaign.
HILLPAC's initial outlay of cash this year eases any concerns Clinton's fellow Democratic senators may have had about her pushing her way around the Senate, said Cook.
"She's becoming a team player," he said. "It's in her best interest to be seen as a team player."
Since joining the Senate, Clinton has become a member of three committees: Budget, Environment and Public Works, and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Her voting record, not surprisingly, is consistently liberal – and uncontroversial within her party. She's voted with party leader Daschle on all major bills this year including the Patients' Bill of Rights, campaign finance reform and the budget resolution, which included President Bush's tax cut (both Daschle and Clinton voted against it).
Not only has Clinton established herself with her Senate Democratic colleagues, but she has also forged some other big-time links within the party.
Thanks to her eight years in the White House, she has a huge head start over such Democratic freshmen senators as Jean Carnahan, Jon Corzine and Mark Dayton in developing relationships with key Washington players.
For instance, Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton family ally, who claims to have raised almost $300 million for former President Clinton over the years, is now in charge of the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe helped Sen. Clinton raise money last year as well.
In addition, two influential Clinton Senate campaign staffers are firmly entrenched at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democratic House members.
Howard Wolfson, her campaign's communications director, is now the DCCC's executive director; while Glen Weiner, who served as the campaign's chief researcher, is now the DCCC's director of strategic planning.
It remains to be seen what all of this means for Sen. Clinton's future. The topic came up last week when she was asked at a luncheon if she was going to run for president in 2004.
"I have said I am not running. I'm having a great time being pres ... being a senator from New York," Clinton stumbled. As the audience erupted in laughter, she joked, "You're going to get me in an awful lot of trouble."
Regardless of her future plans, for now at least, she seems to be making a place for herself within the top tiers of the Democratic Party.
And, says Cook, her stature is likely only to grow: "Se is and will become a bigger player."
©MMI CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report