In laying out her economic vision for the country, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton attacked banks and Wall Street, and advocated for a less complicated tax code in which the rich pay their “fair share.” But a look at donors to her 2008 campaign paint a different picture, one in which she is quite cozy with the country’s uber-wealthy.
In April, just before her first campaign kick-off, the Center for Public Integrity released “12 things you need to know about Hillary Clinton.” In their list, they point out that her “top 2008 presidential donors generally came from four places: K Street, Park Avenue, Broadway and a certain neighborhood where Brenda, Brandon, Kelly and Dylan grew up during the 1990s.” (90210, or Beverly Hills, for the uninitiated.”
CPI also reported that of Hillary’s top 10 donors, five were “employees of giant financial firms.”
Clinton, who famously claimed to have been “dead broke” when she and her husband left the White House in 2001, also loaned her 2008 campaign “more than half” of its $22.5 million debt when she conceded the race to Barack Obama. She finally retired that debt in 2013, and presumably paid herself back “through a variety of efforts, from peddling leftover trinkets to renting the personal information of its supporters.”