“One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.”
Haim Saban, 'billionaire entertainment magnate" (and alleged briber) denies it, 4 others confirm the call, and, so far, Clinton’s campaign has no comment. YDA turned down the offer.
I was a little freaked out by this news, and I worry if stuff like this is commonplace.
Well, becoming a Democratic Party superdelegate means you’re probably either
(a) an elected Democratic official who presumably has a re-election fund,
(b) a Democratic Party leader who presumably directs money into those re-election funds
or
(c) “Average” Joes and Janes selected by their state Democratic Party who presumably support Democratic causes and would like to see money directed to those causes.
And being a top-of-the-ticket candidate means that you have to work to help out the down-ticket races, and you’ve probably already worked on the DCCC. You’ve also got a big damn war chest (or at least a few million bucks in credit, if you’re Hillary) to spend on local advertising, mobilization, and so on. You have a network of supporters with money who are constantly asking “how can I do more for you, if I can’t donate more than $2,300?”
A Democratic Presidential candidate is going to spend money in places where everyone has a (D) next to their name. Naturally some of it will benefit people who are superdelegates; it’s just a matter of how explicitly the candidate explains the quid pro quo, and how much of their spending is strategically targeted at earning superdelegate votes (vice coincidentally beneficial). Here is an article where a superdelegate essentially names his price – $20M in support to a cause he backs. I would not be surprised to find out that other superdelegates have been persuaded to join ranks for smaller concessions.
Hell, the foundation of the Clinton campaign in 2007 was promises of pork for backers, and oblique threats of retribution for disloyalty. The Clinton fundraising machine has always been good to those who chipped in, and it was implied/whispered that anyone who donated to the Obama campaign would be shunned and cut out of the loop of patronage when she inevitably ascended the throne. Creating an early drought of big money available to other candidates combined with the new rules for proportional representation to form a strategy intended to give her an early lead that would be nearly insurmountable. (Memo to Clinton strategists: a 2m ventilation shaft on your Death Star is 2m too large. “Nearly” insurmountable is not nearly insurmountable enough.)
Read up on what machine politics is and you’ll understand a little bit more of how the system works. One of my main reasons for voting Obama is that he served as a community organizer within the Chicago machine, but seems to have escaped without it corrupting him – he refused to pay “Street money” in Philadelphia, and it may have cost him a few thousand votes (and perhaps a pledged delegate or two) in Pennsylvania. In essence, the local party bosses were asking him to shell out cash to increase his lead in pledged delegates; not all that different from what Mr. Ybarra proposed above.
So yeah, everyone from the lowliest voter up through the various supers is “influenced” – it’s just a matter of how explicit the statement is.