Playing the Street Cash Jive
Donna Summer – She Works Hard For The Money
Street cash. It’s not illegal, but it does smell a little bit like buying the vote with a bit of palm-greasing, if not in reality, at least in appearance.
So when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and get voters to the polls for the Democratic primary on March 4, which Mrs. Clinton narrowly won.
Well, I have a little quibble here with the NY Times. She won the first round of voting, but not the caucuses, and Texas actually came out for Barack Obama, not the other way around.
And oops, it wasn’t just Texas:
The records show that Mrs. Clinton did something similar in Ohio, giving $38,300 to a state legislator, Eugene R. Miller, who says he used it to pay more than 200 people to get out the vote in predominantly black neighborhoods in Cleveland.
In the days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was questioned rather intensely about whether he would pay street cash to get out the vote in Philadelphia. It was asked as a trap — if he paid it, the door would be open for the Clinton campaign to accuse him of buying votes and playing good old fashioned politics just like everyone else, no matter what he claimed as a ‘change candidate’, and if he didn’t, he risked pushing up against a political machine used to receiving payoffs to get out the vote.
It is all legal — but Obama’s people are telling the local bosses he won’t pay.
That sets up a culture clash, pitting a candidate who promises to transform American politics against the realities of a local political system important to his presidential hopes. Pennsylvania holds its primary April 22.
Obama’s posture confounds neighborhood political leaders sympathetic to his cause. They caution that if the senator from Illinois withholds money that gubernatorial, mayoral and presidential candidates have willingly paid out for decades, there could be defections to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And the Clinton campaign, in contrast, will oblige in forking over the money, these ward leaders predict.
“We’ve heard directly from the Obama organizer who organizes our ward, and he told us it’s an entirely volunteer organization and that I should not expect to see anything from the Obama campaign other than ads on TV and the support that volunteers are giving us,” said Greg Paulmier, a ward leader in the northwest part of the city.
Had he given into that expectation, here’s what it would have cost:
Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000.
“This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people,” Campbell said. “Barack Obama’s campaign doesn’t pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don’t put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won’t stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won’t come out with the numbers that he needs” to win the state.
And indeed, Barack Obama did not come out with the numbers he needed to win the state, which left the door open for the Clinton campaign to crow over the fact that he didn’t win ‘the big states’. He may not have won even if he had bowed to the machine, but the prophecy certainly did come to pass, didn’t it?
As a contributor to Obama’s campaign, I have to say that I’m grateful he didn’t waste that kind of money paying to get out the vote. Voting is a privilege as well as a right. It’s not for sale, not even for the sake of winning delegates.
Time for that machine to break.
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