Oh-eight (D): Sub-prime problem?
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2007 9:19 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats
CLINTON: The Washington Times runs this story: "Officials of a defunct pro-Democratic group that was hit with a near-record campaign-finance fine last month hold strong ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, documents show. At least four persons who worked for the America Coming Together (ACT) fundraising group, which the Federal Election Commission recently fined $775,000, work directly for the Clinton campaign or hold top positions with consulting firms hired by it."
And don’t miss the clipart graphic a Web site run by the Clinton campaign used of Obama likely leading in fund-raising. The graphic was also passed along by the Clinton campaign itself over e-mail. Notably, it’s no longer on the Web site, but the Boston Globe clipped it and asked, Did someone think that maybe it was a little too much?
Rob Reiner can handle the truth! He's for Hillary.
EDWARDS: The candidate's ties to the hedge fund Fortress continue to haunt the candidate in some of the early states. A few weeks ago, a South Carolina paper noted the number of local foreclosures by subprime mortgage companies owned by Fortress and had the candidate on the defensive. Now, this morning, in the Des Moines Register, the paper reports on another 100+ Iowa homeowners being foreclosured upon by Fortress-owned lenders. "Most Iowa Democratic activists interviewed by The Des Moines Register say the foreclosures by themselves do not undermine Edwards' anti-poverty message. However, some say he should have known that his tie to Fortress, which paid him $479,500 for 14 months of work, would be scrutinized in the campaign."
Edwards said he did not know about the Iowa foreclosures until his campaign was contacted by the Register. Edwards said he has no plans to establish a charity for the Iowans with Fortress mortgages because they were not affected by Hurricane Katrina the way borrowers in New Orleans were.
OBAMA: NBC-NJ's Aswini Anburajan reports, at a debate watch party for Obama supporters at Dartmouth last night, the audience was subdued during the debate (maybe because it wasn't that exciting or because the eighty-plus degree weather helped lull the crowd into a stupor) but there was a large chorus of boos for NBC commentator Chris Matthews for criticizing Obama's performance.
A hoarse Obama stopped by the debate party around 11:30 and spoke for about five minutes. Emphasizing the importance of building momentum from the ground up, he told the story of starting out as a community organizer in Chicago where only one or two people showed up for the first three meetings he tried to hold. He also referred to a recent poll that had Sen. Clinton in the lead by twenty points, and said that it meant nothing besides what percentage of people were supporting which candidate. "Twenty percent of voters are with Sen. Clinton, 10 percent are with me, Edwards has about 5 percent and the rest of the candidates have less than that."
Citing that same poll, Obama said the most important fact overlooked by the pundits were the number of undecideds still up for grabs. "There are 55 percent of voters who are undecided. That's 55 to 60 percent of the people who are waiting to hear from you," he told the crowd of campaign volunteers made up of students from colleges in Massachusetts and across New Hampshire as well as local volunteers.
Obama’s fund-raising “is slipping,” Bloomberg News writes. The expectation is about $20 million this quarter, according to the article, but “a failure to out-raise Clinton would deprive Obama of the momentum he needs to overcome his rival's leads in national and key state polls.”
