Ai. Oops. Sorry ’bout That
Aug 30th, 2007 | 4 responses
Spree (Susan) published a post yesterday about an important Democratic fundraiser named Norman Hsu. Hsu started raising money for Democrats three years back or so, and quickly became one of the best fundraisers the Democrats had. He was one of a few fundraisers who were able (and are able) to raise $1 million dollars, which is quite an accomplishment considering that an individual is allowed to give a mere $4600 dollars.
There was just one problem: Hsu was [is] a fugitive.
At first, the Clinton campaign refused to give the money back Hsu raised, but after a short while Hillary seemingly changed her opinion. Republicans are, of course, going to have a field day with this, but I do not quite understand how people can blame Clinton for what Hsu did. As far as I know, it is not expected of candidates to check whether those who donate money to them have a criminal history / record. Once she found out, she should have cut all ties with him and should have returned the money, of course, but how one can blame her for being duped by Hsu is beyond me.
And so, we again talk about things that are actually quite irrelevant and nothing more than “the issue of the day” instead of actual policies.
It always works, doesn’t it?
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4 Responses to “Ai. Oops. Sorry ’bout That”
After the issues in 1996 with Clinton finances you would think they would try and be a little more carefull.
The campaign should step up and return all money raised by Mr. Hsu as well. It is probably not necessary, (although it may be as some of the contributions could have been illegal – follow the link to the story of the generous Paw family) but would inoculate the campaign from any criticism of wrong doing.
Sadly, I think that the campaign will stubbornly stick to their guns, hold on to the cash and create a larger problem for themselves down the road when this year’s ‘blue dress’ comes out.
My understanding is, after an inital denial of involvment, that the money will be donated to charity.
Only the money that was donated by Mr. Hsu personally is tagged to be donated to charity. This story first appeared because of the unlikelyhood that the Paw family would be donate as much money as they had give their financial means. I first read about it at Captain’s Quarters where I believe it was posited that the Paw family only acted as a surrogate for Mr. Hsu to funnel money to various democrats.
The Captain did not mention the notion that, Mr. Hsu being Chinese, may in some way be directing Chinese money into the campaign coffers of democrats for the benefit of the Chinese government, something like that has happened before. Thus I think that the Clinton campaign, as well as any other that received donations from Mr. Hsu or any donations forwarded by him for third parties should be returned. The amount of money in question is relatively small in comparison to the amount these candidates are able to raise in a month.