Originally posted by Mobius:
What is Hilary's superior experience?
It sure isn't managing a campaign:
The New York Times - February 22, 2008
Donors Worried by Clinton Campaign Spending
By MICHAEL LUO, JO BECKER and PATRICK HEALY
Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton??s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton??s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
??We didn??t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,? said a prominent New York donor. ??So much about her campaign needs to change ?? but it may be too late.?
The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.
The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton??s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.
Howard Wolfson, the communications director and a senior member of the advertising team, earned nearly $267,000 in January. His total, including the campaign??s debt to him, tops $730,000.
The advertising firm owned by Mandy Grunwald, the longtime media strategist for both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton, the former president, has collected $2.3 million in fees and expenses, and is still owed another $240,000.
??Fees and payments are in line with industry standards,? Mr. Wolfson said. ??Spending priorities have been consistent with overall strategic goals.?
But some Democrats are now asking if the money spent on a campaign that appears to be sputtering ?? $106 million so far ?? was worth it.
Joe Trippi, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards??s presidential campaign, said he believed that the Clinton team had made two fundamental errors.
First, he argued, Mrs. Clinton built a top-down fund-raising operation that relied on a core group of donors to write checks early on for the maximum amount, $4,600 for the primary and the general election, which left few of them to go back to when money became tight. Mr. Obama, by contrast, focused on building a network of small donors whose continued ability to give has been essential to his success this winter.
And second, Mr. Trippi said, the Clinton campaign spent money as though the race were going to be over after a handful of states had voted and was not prepared for a contest that would stretch for months.
??The problem is she ran a campaign like they were staying at the Ritz-Carlton,? Mr. Trippi said. ??Everything was the best. The most expensive draping at events. The biggest charter. It was like, ??We??re going to show you how presidential we are by making our events look presidential.?? ?
For instance, during the week before the Jan. 19 caucuses in Nevada, the Clinton campaign spent more than $25,000 for rooms at the Bellagio in Las Vegas; nearly $5,000 was spent at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas that week. Some staff members also stayed at Planet Hollywood nearby.
From the start of the campaign, some donors had concerns about the Clinton team??s ability to manage money.
Patti Solis Doyle, Mrs. Clinton??s presidential campaign manager until she was replaced on Feb. 10, also ran her Senate re-election bid in 2006. That campaign spent about $30 million even though Mrs. Clinton faced only token Democratic and Republican opposition.
??The Senate race spending in 2006 was an omen for a lot of us inside the campaign, but Hillary assured us that her presidential bid would be the best run in history,? said one major Clinton fund-raiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations within the campaign.
Yet the Clinton campaign at times found itself spending money on items that were not ultimately helpful. As part of their get-out-the-vote effort in Iowa, the campaign came up with a plan to have a local supermarket deliver sandwich platters to pre-caucus parties. It spent more than $95,384 on Jan. 1 at Hy-Vee Inc., a local grocery chain in West Des Moines, Iowa, in addition to buying loads of snow shovels to clear the walks for caucusgoers. Mrs. Clinton came in third in the Jan. 3 caucus. It did not snow.
