Indian summer of Trump and Fiorina's debt problem

Indian summer of Trump and Fiorina's debt problem

by digby

The Huffpost poll aggregation:


I have no idea why he would be rising, but it does appear to be at Carson and Fiorina's expense so maybe it's just that they are not wearing well.

Speaking of Fiorina, this story in today's Washington Post is really something:
Famed California pollster Joe Shumate was found dead in his home one month before Election Day 2010, surrounded by sheets of polling data he labored over for the flailing Senate bid of Carly Fiorina.

Upon his death, Fiorina praised Shumate as “the heart and soul” of her team. She issued a news release praising him as a person who believed in “investing in those he worked with” and offering her “sincerest condolences” to his widow.

But records show there was something that Fiorina did not offer his widow: Shumate’s last paycheck, for at least $30,000. It was one of more than 30 invoices, totaling about $500,000, that the multimil­lionaire didn’t settle — even as Fiorina reimbursed herself nearly $1.3 million she lent the campaign. She finally cleared most of the balance in January, a few months before announcing her run for president.

“Occasionally, I’d call and tell her she should pay them,” said Martin Wilson, Fiorina’s former campaign manager, who found Shumate after the pollster collapsed from a heart attack. “She just wouldn’t.”

I've written about her failure to pay her campaign staff before but I'd never heard that detail. One of her staff famously told a reporter that he'd rather go to Iraq than ever work for her again ...

But what can you make of this?  Granted it's not her speaking but it's an absurd comment anyway. The article goes on to note that she refused to pay vendors who printed flyers and did surveys and this is a response from some California Republican:

Fiorina, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment. Her supporters say the criticism was misplaced.

“People are just upset and angry and throwing her under the bus,” said Jon Cross, Fiorina’s operations director for her Senate campaign. “If we didn’t win, why do you deserve to get paid? If you don’t succeed in business, you shouldn’t be the first one to step up and complain about getting paid.”

Now I understand why vendors insist on getting their money upfront. For some reason people like this guy think that if their candidate loses it's the printing company's fault and they don't deserve to get paid at all.

Keep in mind that Fiorina is worth 60 million dollars --- all of it from a golden parachute from her failed leadership at HP.

I have to note one other thing, so typical of the Washington Post:

Many campaigns end up in debt, including that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who did not close out the $20 million she owed from her 2008 presidential campaign until January 2013. Struggling campaigns often set up payment plans or hold fundraisers to pay their bills. Fiorina’s staff members said they asked her to do the same. She declined.

Here's how Reuters reported that Clinton debt issue earlier this year:

At the end of her 2008 presidential bid, Clinton owed $12 million to nearly 500 staffers, consultants and vendors, according to campaign finance website Opensecrets.org. FEC documents show Clinton paid off the bulk of her leftover debts by the third quarter of 2009.

Clinton did continue to owe money, about $845,000, to one firm, that of her pollster Mark Penn, which her campaign steadily chipped away at over the course of the next three years, the records show. As secretary of state, Clinton was banned from fundraising to clear the debt, but both President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton helped fundraise the money.

It's hard to know where the discrepancy between 12 million and 20 million comes from. But the only one they left hanging for very long was that overpaid jackass Mark Penn. If there's anyone who deserved to wait for his money it was him.

But throwing that in there about Clinton made it appear that she didn't bother to pay up 20 million until 2013, which is nice. It doesn't matter if it's true or not --- it's "out there".


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