Hillary has “lent” her campaign about six million dollars. When does she get paid back?
If I send a dollar today, can it go to her or does it have to be spent on the campaign?
Can any monies be paid back to her while she is still a candidate?
Can a donor stipulate that his contribution be used for campaign purposes only, and not to pay back a candidate?
When, as a donor, will I know (if I can) that my donation is going to pay her back.
If a candidate is elected to office, can they still take donations to their campaign? Does that mean I can ostensibly give vast sums of cash (almost directly) to an elected official?
Where does she stand in line in terms of other creditors? Will a sign-maker who provided items on credit get paid before her? Can loans made to a campaign be secured?
If her campaign ends in debt, does her loan get treated the same as others? That is, if there isn’t enough to cover everything, does she get the same percentage on the dollar as others?
We must have done this before… feel free to just provide a link or two.
Oh, remember to keep politics out of GQ
After some past campaigns, I’ve gotten appeals from candidates who spent more than they had. I suppose she’ll do the same. In the end, if the campaign cannot pay her back, maybe she can write off the loss. If she becomes the nominee, more money will come into the campaign, and she can get her money back. If she doesn’t get the nod, I guess she’ll have to write a couple more books.
Keep in mind that there actually are two seperate financial entities here. Hillary Clinton’s personal money is distinct from the money owned by the Clinton For President Campaign. So it was a genuine loan not just somebody giving money to themselves. And if I recall correctly, the only person who can loan money to a political campaign is the candidate.
As I understand it, the loans will probably not be repaid. In theory if her campaign continues and starts looking more viable, it’ll start attracting more donations from other contributers and might achieve a surplus that could be used to pay back Clinton’s loan. But in reality any money the campaign has is going to be spent on the campaign itself.
For example, a spouse can loan money to a campaign. For a while, much of John McCain’s campaign was funded by his wife.
Also, the McCain campaign also obtained regular commercial loans at one point, using the money they expected to get from public campaign financing as collateral. (And now are trying to opt out of that public financing, and the spending limits that come with it.)
And non-Federal campaigns are bound only by the various State laws. Here in Minnesota, there are no limits on who may loan money to campaigns, just requirements that all loans be publicly reported.
Also, loans to a campaign that are not repaid can be deducted from your taxes just like any other kind of ‘bad loans’, I believe.
Wouldn’t this apply to loan companies, banks, people in the business of lending? I’d be upset if individuals could lend money to political campaigns and get a tax break if the loan wasn’t repaid.
I think actually someone can get in trouble for laws regarding limits on contributions if they forgive any debts owed by the campaign. Not sure what the mechanics would be though.
I’m confident that someone else has already thought of this, but what prevents unlimited loans from being used as an end-run around campaign finance laws? That is, why don’t rich people just donate whatever they want in the form of a, “loan,” that they have little or no expectation of ever being repaid, and then deduct the loss from their taxes?
Anyway, since my thread is mostly dead (thanks, t-bonham, for dropping in), I’ll ask the unanswered questions here: What money raised by whom can be used for what?
(Simple, no?)
For instance, Obama has a pile of money right now. Should he win the primary, what happens to it? Can he apply that immediately to his campaign vs. McCain? Is every dollar that he uses to fight Clinton at this point a dollar that he could have spent targeting McCain? When does the DNC’s money come into play?
What about if he loses the nomination? (Unlikely, yes, but say, a scandal followed by a massive superdelegate defection to Clinton.) What happens to all of the money he has raised?
He can transfer it to his Senate campaign fund, return it to his donors, bank it for another presidential run in 2012 or, subject to campaign finance laws, donate it to other campaigns.
