Already straining.....

Hillary's dash for cash

Clinton’s campaign is already straining under the gargantuan task of raising huge sums.

By Gabriel Debenedetti and Annie Karni
 
The formal launch event has been delayed. The main pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC has shaken up its leadership. Clinton has done more than twice as many fundraisers as open public events since announcing her presidential bid, lining up an aggressive schedule that has or will soon take her to all of the nation’s big-city money centers.

One month into her bid for the presidency — and without even the prospect of a serious primary challenge — Clinton’s schedule is already straining under the gargantuan task of raising somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion, the estimated amount that it will take to elect her to the White House.

Donors and those inside the Clinton fundraising operation say they have been encouraged by the results of the campaign’s — if not the super PAC’s — early cash strategy, which focuses on the role of “Hillstarters” — backers who have given the maximum $2,700 and collected ten $2,700 checks from others. But the money has flowed in amid nail-biting both about Priorities USA Action, the pro-Clinton super PAC undergoing a leadership transition amid a lackluster fundraising start, and concerns about fundraising firepower on the Republican side — particularly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Clinton’s focus on events that include midlevel donors — those who have given the maximum to the campaign but can not send millions to the super PAC — has given her a chance to “put in place the kinds of grass-roots financial seeds that will be useful to the campaign in the long haul,” said Democratic operative and former Bill Clinton White House aide Chris Lehane, who co-hosted one of Clinton’s fundraising events in San Francisco and who works with mega-donors like the environmentalist Tom Steyer. “We were oversubscribed in San Francisco, and I know they were oversubscribed in Los Angeles. From what I’ve picked up around the country, it’s pretty similar.”

Clinton backers say that by spending personal time with donors who aren’t planning to sign huge checks for her, the candidate is empowering a level of donors that is often overlooked in favor of the mega-donors.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a presidential fundraiser and seen so many new faces,” said Robert Zimmerman, a Hillstarter and Democratic National Committee member. “I feel like a chaperon.”

But Clinton’s Republican rivals, who have fought to become her most ardent critic, have been quick to bash her focus on chasing campaign dollars from coast to coast at the apparent expense of open events — and while she rails against unaccountable political money on the campaign trail.

“On Sunday, Marco answered more questions in one interview than she has this entire campaign,” one fundraising email from Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign read on Tuesday.

Still, despite Republican criticism of Clinton’s fundraising juggernaut, there’s no way of gauging its progress as the campaign aims to raise $100 million for the Democratic primary: It is not required to disclose its donors until July, so few public indicators of its financial success will be available until then.

People active in Clinton’s campaign money operation tell POLITICO that Clinton appears at ease when getting face time with the moguls expected to be the top donors to her campaign and Priorities. From Marc Lasry’s Manhattan apartment to Tom Steyer’s San Francisco spread, to Haim Saban’s Los Angeles home, to Fred Eychaner’s Chicago mansion, Clinton has occasionally stayed longer than planned and given her backers more attention than she will be able to when her campaign eventually picks up its pace. In the coming weeks, Clinton’s cash dash will take her to Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Miami and the hedge fund capital of Greenwich, Connecticut, among other financial hubs.

The money events have been shaped as “mini town-halls” so far, Lehane explained, where attendees get one-on-one time with Clinton so that she can establish relationships with the midlevel donors who will likely not write headline-grabbing checks but will contribute steadily over the coming months.

Nonetheless, Clinton’s fundraising focus comes amid lingering worries from top campaign operatives that Priorities, the super PAC tasked with tapping mega-donors for million-dollar contributions, has been underperforming and will have an uphill battle competing with the massive super PAC operations being assembled by Republicans — primarily Bush, whose group may raise $100 million by the end of May.

Eychaner — the country’s fifth-biggest donor in the 2014 election cycle — hosted a Clinton fundraiser on Wednesday afternoon; he told Bloomberg this week that he had yet to hear from Priorities, which backed Obama in 2012, though he assumed the ask would come.

People close to the campaign’s fundraising operation said the super PAC would kick into high gear soon, though it was still ironing out its leadership structure after Guy Cecil — Clinton’s 2008 political director — took over this spring, effectively sidelining Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina. The elevation of Cecil, a trusted Clinton aide who also has Bill Clinton’s ear, was a sign to Clinton’s financial backers that she wants them to engage with the group, even as she publicly urges the Supreme Court to overturn the Citizens United decision that paved the way for super PACs.

On a campaign fundraising swing through California earlier this month, Clinton also courted Priorities donors. But a campaign supporter who is close with a handful of the major Democratic contributors said considerable skepticism remained about how it planned to do business.

“There is a justified concern that if [Republican donor] Sheldon [Adelson] does a billion and the Kochs do a billion, how do Democrats compete with that? The challenge is that there aren’t nearly as many on the Democratic side that are going to write those checks,” the fundraiser said. He added that some of the wealthiest donors would likely give “six- or seven-figure checks to Priorities” but would invest more heavily in their own political and issue-based groups in 2016.

And other Democratic donors are waiting for people close to Clinton to provide clarity about where to send donations now that another outside group supporting Clinton — Correct the Record — has come into the fold as a piece of communications machinery.

With the campaign still taking shape — and as Clinton’s packed fundraising schedule showing no signs of slowing — some donors are holding their fire, waiting for more clarity about the plan for their contributions while looking for the best way to maximize their money.

“The fact of the matter is, if you don’t give over $1 million to Priorities, you’re not a player,” said one Clinton backer who doesn’t plan to contribute quite that much to the super PAC. “It’s wiser politically to invest money in writing checks to the DNC and the Hillary campaign.”