Clinton Team Breaking the Bank

It’s not easy to win a presidential primary, nor is it cheap. This is a lesson that Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems to be learning as they go. During a time when you are trying to bolster the troops and keep confidence among your supporters high, leaving a string of unpaid campaign bills and frustrated, angry vendors probably isn’t the best message to send.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small business circles.

The Clinton campaign is still aggressively raising funds in impressive amounts, so why would they not take care of the caterer after the party?

The New York senator’s presidential campaign ended February with $38 million in the bank, according to a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission, but only $16 million of that can be spent on her battle with Obama.

The rest can only be spent in the general election, if she makes it that far, and must be returned if she doesn’t. If she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills she reported as debt and had not loaned her campaign $5 million, the cash she would have had available at the end of last month to spend on television ads and other up-front expenses would have been less than $2 million.

$2 million, while it may be significant to you or me, is not much to wage a primary battle against Barack Obama across multiple states. Senator Clinton will likely burn through more than that in Pennsylvania media buys alone. By contrast, Obama can subtract out the money which must be held for the general election and his comparatively paultry $600K in debts he’s still sitting on a cool $31 million.

Fundraising and management of resources is an important yardstick in a national campaign. Read what you like into the polls, but the old phrase ‘follow the money’ has particular significance here. If your opponent is still firing volleys at you, but you’ve run out of ammo to fire back, the fight begins to turn into a rout. Senator Clinton still insists she is in this for the long haul, but as David Brooks recently put it, this may be a case of The Long Defeat.