Spin Cycle

This week, the Clinton campaign has been hammering on a campaign finance dispute involving Barack Obama's alleged use of money from his leadership PAC, Hopefund, to assist his presidential campaign by spreading money around in early primary states. That's a no-no, because PACs have higher contribution limits than campaign committees. But the legal issues are technical, and Obama's campaign says it has operated within the rules.

Clinton doesn't face the same legal issue, because she shut down her political action committee, HillPac, when she officially declared for president. But before then, she did pretty much the same thing she is now complaining about Obama doing.

In 2006, when her presidential plans were Washington's worst kept secret, she used it to spread at least $42,500 around the early primary states, according to FEC records, including $5000 each to the Democratic parties of Nevada, South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, and bucks for an assortment of House and Senate candidates in those states. As late as this January, she was using the PAC to pay the core members of her presidential campaign staff -- including personal aide Huma Abedin, internet guru Peter Daou, and campaign manager Patricia Solis Doyle.

Since folding the PAC, money has flowed into primary states in other (perfectly legal) ways from other places to help her presidential run. For example, the network of disgraced Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu funnelled more than $50,000 this year to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a big Democratic power in the Hawkeye state whose wife backs Hillary. Also: Newsweek reported that 51 Hillary donors funnelled $103,700 to former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack to help him retire campaign debts when he aborted his presidential candidacy and backed Hillary.

And just this week, no doubt unintentionally, she stumbled on another way to leverage non-campaign cash into a political benefit in a primary state when money from the Clinton Family Foundation, the Clintons' family-funded charity that has given them tax write-offs since 2001, popped up to provide an assist.

On Tuesday, during a swing through the hotly-contested early primary state of South Carolina, Hillary presented a $100,000 gift from the foundation to help build a new public library in poor, rural Marlboro County, South Carolina.

The $6.4 million project is named for Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund and an early Hillary mentor, who grew up in the county. Its backers include U.S. Rep. John Spratt, a key unaligned South Carolina Democrat who has helped arrange federal funds for the project, according to a library fundraiser.

No doubt the gift was genuine. No doubt it went to a good cause. But the money was pledged during a summer fundraiser for the library in Washington, according to news reports. Did Hillary really have to present the check in person, during a campaign swing where she was stumping for votes from the very people who will benefit from the library?

Well, maybe not. But Clinton spokesman Jay Carson points out that Clinton had a longstanding relationship with Edelman, going back decades, and that by presenting the check in person she brought attention, and potentially more donations, to a much-needed project:

"Sen. Clinton's first job out of law school was working for Marian Wright Edelman 30 years ago. Her support of her work comes from her belief in what she's doing."