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Clinton camp gives backers pep talk |
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By Sam Youngman
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Posted: 02/28/08 04:49 PM [ET] |
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) senior staff sought to reassure donors and supporters Thursday afternoon while announcing that Clinton had raised $35 million in February.
While excitedly announcing yet another eye-popping figure, the campaign staff also told about 560 supporters on a conference call that the media has painted an inaccurate picture of a campaign that is losing superdelegates and haunted by low morale.
Maggie Williams, Clinton’s campaign manager, said that staff and former staff correspondence to The New York Times following a story about eroding morale in the campaign helped buck up those who might have been slipping.
“It really helped everyone here to understand and affirm that we have a winning spirit,” Williams said. “We believe we’re going to win this thing.”
Harold Ickes, a senior adviser to the campaign, said that superdelegates who had pledged to support Clinton are “holding,” and that press accounts of superdelegates switching their support to rival Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) are a “very rare exception.”
“There is a very strong spirit, and they are holding fast,” Ickes said.
Campaign officials said the campaign raised $35 million for the month on the strength of 300,000 donors — 200,000 of which were new donors.
The amount represented a big turnaround for a campaign that raised $16 million in January, overwhelmed by Obama’s $36 million haul.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said in an email that the Obama campaign has raised “considerably more” than $35 million. Burton said in an email that the campaign would not be making an announcement Thursday.
Despite the financial turnaround, the Clinton campaign officials on the call Thursday were clearly trying to reassure their donors and supporters. After losing the last 11 contests to Obama, numerous reports have surfaced that major donors and supporters are getting skittish about Clinton’s chances.
The campaign’s national chairman Terry McAuliffe, finance director Jonathan Mantz, Internet director Peter Daou, as well as Williams and Ickes all made the push with supporters to stay positive and focus on next Tuesday’s elections in Texas and Ohio.
“We’re stronger than we were 30 days ago, and we’ll be stronger 30 days from now,” McAuliffe said. “Hillary Clinton’s not going anywhere.”
One supporter on the phone, Betsy Ebeling, a Chicagoan and grade school classmate of Clinton’s, was apparently moved by the advisers’ enthusiasm.
“This call has done wonders for me,” Ebeling said, adding that she and a few of Clinton’s other grade school classmates will be campaigning on Clinton’s behalf in Houston over the weekend.
Williams and Ickes said the campaign has sent its best people to Texas and Ohio, two states that are crucial to Clinton’s hopes, and they are pouring millions of dollars into those states.
Ickes also picked up on the recent campaign refrain that the media has not fairly covered the two candidates.
“The press in the main has given Senator Obama a pass,” Ickes said.
He added that as Obama enjoys frontrunner status, reporters will start to scrutinize the Illinois senator more closely.
“We expect the press to drill down on him,” Ickes said.
Ickes also said that only 93 delegates separate Clinton and Obama, and that amount is “just a whisker.”
“If you read the press and listen to the television, you would think this thing is over,” Ickes said. “[We’re] a long way from that.”
After a brief question and answer session that seemed to draw little interest from the call’s participants, McAuliffe closed with inspirational exclamations and the officials on the call whistled and clapped.
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