By Donna Brazile, Book Club, November 2, 2017<\/p>\n
When I was asked to run the Democratic Party after the Russians hacked our emails, I stumbled onto a shocking truth about the Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n
Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.<\/p>\n
I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton\u2019s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I\u2019d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.<\/p>\n
So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama\u2019s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary\u2019s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party\u2019s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.<\/p>\n
Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn\u2019t been very interested in controlling the party\u2014she let Clinton\u2019s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn\u2019t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The Saturday morning after<\/b> the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary\u2019s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d I screamed. \u201cI am an officer of the party and they\u2019ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t true, he said. Officials from Hillary\u2019s campaign had taken a look at the DNC\u2019s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt\u2014$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign\u2014and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama\u2019s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.<\/p>\n
If I didn\u2019t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie\u2019s way. In my experience she didn\u2019t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post <\/i>broke the news.<\/p>\n
On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo! That can\u2019t be true!\u201d I said. \u201cThe party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGary, how did they do this without me knowing?\u201d I asked. \u201cI don\u2019t know how Debbie relates to the officers,\u201d Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary\u2019s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party\u2019s national committee.<\/p>\n
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund\u2014that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states\u2019 parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement\u2014$320,000\u2014and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait,\u201d I said. \u201cThat victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You\u2019re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,\u201d he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. \u201cIt was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the burn rate, Gary?\u201d I asked. \u201cHow much money do we need every month to fund the party?\u201d<\/p>\n
The burn rate was $3.5 million to $4 million a month, he said.<\/p>\n
I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of the DNC\u2019s operations after having served as interim chair five years earlier. Back then the monthly expenses were half that. What had happened? The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama\u2019s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.<\/p>\n
When we hung up, I was livid. Not at Gary, but at this mess I had inherited. I knew that Debbie had outsourced a lot of the management of the party and had not been the greatest at fundraising. I would not be that kind of chair, even if I was only an interim chair. Did they think I would just be a surrogate for them, get on the road and rouse up the crowds? I was going to manage this party the best I could and try to make it better, even if Brooklyn did not like this. It would be weeks before I would fully understand the financial shenanigans that were keeping the party on life support.<\/p>\n
***<\/b><\/p>\n