[Last August, HRC campaign officials] urged state officials to sign on to an ambitious fundraising endeavor that would allow Clinton’s presidential bid, the DNC and the state parties to scoop up and share big checks from wealthy donors[after a] 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision that knocked down a cap on how much donors could give to federal campaigns in a single year.
A record 32 state parties signed on to the fund, allowing the committee to solicit donations 130 times greater than what a supporter can give to Clinton’s campaign for the primary.
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Establishing a victory fund the year before the election allowed the Clinton campaign and DNC to ask wealthy backers to give the $356,100 maximum annual contribution twice: once in 2015 and again this year.
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The fund is run by Clinton campaign staff, and its treasurer is Clinton’s chief operating officer [Elizabeth Jones].
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She controls how the money is transferred to the states and the DNC.
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Last year, the fund reimbursed the [Clinton] campaign nearly $1.5 million for salary and overheard.
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For every state party that joined the Hillary Victory Fund, officials were able to increase the maximum annual donation from an individual by $10,000.
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[T]he states have yet to see a financial windfall. Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign has been a major beneficiary, getting an infusion of low-dollar contributions.
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Many states were wary of joining the effort, worried that such a partnership would be perceived as an endorsement of Clinton and might interfere with their efforts to raise money from home state donors. But campaign officials — including Marlon Marshall, Clinton’s director of state campaigns — emphasized that this was a way to strengthen the party at its roots.
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So far, the state parties have served only as a pass-through for their share of the funds. Campaign finance records show that nearly $2 million in donations to the fund initially routed last year to individual state party accounts was immediately transferred to the DNC, which is laboring to pay off millions of dollars in debt.
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“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Lawrence Noble, a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who is now with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “Joint victory funds are not intended to be separate operating committees that just support a single candidate. But they appear to be turning the traditional notion of a joint committee into a Hillary fundraising committee.”
WaPo
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