Clinton fundraisers team up with the theoretically impartial DNC
The Hillary Victory Fund is a "joint fundraising committee" that distributes its earnings to the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and state-level Democratic Party organizations (see the full list of the committee's beneficiaries here). The fund was organized in September, and since then it has donated almost $20 million to the DNC.
This is unusual — and potentially a conflict of interest — for one big reason: Hillary Clinton isn't yet the Democratic nominee for 2016.
Though she has long been considered the clear frontrunner, at this pre-primary stage in the game, party machinery is theoretically supposed to be a neutral manager that facilitates the process of determining Democratic voters' preferences. Typically, a candidate does not combine fundraising efforts with their national party until after locking up the nomination.
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Update Jan. 6: DNC spokesman Eric Walker told The Week that the Democratic Party has offered the same joint fundraising options to the Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley campaigns. The Sanders camp signed an agreement with the DNC but is not jointly fundraising with any state parties, while the O'Malley campaign has so far declined the arrangement at both the state and national levels.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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