Nation
An extra little boost
Sen. Clinton paying some staffers more each
month to work on her campaign, according to records
Photos: Hillary Clinton(Gegenheimer.com file
copy)
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BY GLENN THRUSH
WASHINGTON BUREAU
November 3, 2005
WASHINGTON -- With her election day still a year away, Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton is paying eight full-time Senate staffers as much as
$2,600 in extra monthly wages to moonlight as campaign operatives,
records show.
The "double-dipping" system is used by a handful of other senators,
including Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and
Thomas Carper (D-Del.), but each of those campaigns makes such
payments to only one or two staffers.
Clinton's $100,000-a-year communications director, Lorraine "Lorrie"
McHugh Wytkind, received the highest stipend, garnering $2,600
during September from Clinton's re-election campaign, records show.
"I think the appearance is not good," said political finance expert
Gene Russianoff, staff attorney with the New York Public Interest
Research Group.
"How do you separate what's good for the candidate and what's good
for the public?" he added. "It seems to just add to the power of
incumbency and adds to the cynicism of voters."
Such double-dipping is legal under Senate and Federal Election
Commission rules, as long as employees document hours spent on each
job, experts say. And Clinton's spokesman says the split-payment
system actually helps differentiate political from governmental
work.
Still, legislative aides typically take unpaid leave from their
government jobs and join campaigns as paid workers a few weeks or
months before an election.
Clinton can afford to employ a standing army of dual-purpose aides
thanks to a $15 million-plus war chest collected by Friends of
Hillary, her re-election campaign, and HILLPAC, her political action
committee.
Clinton's likely Republican opponent next year, Jeanine Pirro,
raised only about $450,000 as of Oct. 1 and trails her by more than
20 points in most polls.
Politicians have often tried to augment their overworked employees'
salaries. In 1952, Sen. Richard Nixon made his famous "Checkers"
speech to defend his use of a business-funded $18,000 account to pay
staffers for political work, according to former Federal Election
Commission chairman Trevor Potter.
"Powerful, busy senators like Mrs. Clinton want to have good staff
and a lot of staff because they have more demands on their offices
than other senators," Potter said. "But to use this practice as much
as she does is unusual. She's paying multiple people and using two
different campaign accounts and I haven't heard of that kind of
thing before."
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines said the former first lady
consulted Senate Ethics Committee guidelines before approving the
payments.
"Under these guidelines, the percentage paid is based on time spent
on official and nonofficial business, including accompanying the
senator to events," said Reines, whose $65,000 annual salary is
bolstered by $2,000 a month in campaign payments.
Deputy press secretary Sarah Gegenheimer, who makes $90,000 a year,
gets an additional $2,200 per month from the campaign as of
September.
Clinton's Washington-based chief of staff Tamera Luzzatto draws a
$135,000 paycheck from the Senate and received $1,740 more in
September, split equally between HILLPAC and Friends of Hillary.
Luzzatto's combined income from Clinton-related work, projected for
a full year, is $156,000.
Karen Persichilli Keogh, Clinton's New York State director, gets
$1,940 a month from Friends of Hillary to go with an $85,000-a-year
Senate salary, according to third-quarter campaign filings.
Three lower-level Clinton employees receive monthly stipends ranging
from $670 to $1,650.
In addition, Friends of Hillary has been paying $2,187 per month in
consulting fees to James Kennedy, a former spokesman for the senator
who recently quit a $102,000-a-year job at Bill Clinton's
presidential library.
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