War Room - Salon.com

Friday, Aug 22, 2008 13:01 EDT

Clinton still carrying heavy debt

Hillary Clinton has apparently barely made a dent in her campaign's sizable debt -- in fact, she raised only $2 million in July.

By Alex Koppelman

As of the end of July, Hillary Clinton had made very little headway toward paying off her campaign's still sizable debt, a recent disclosure report shows. As CNN's Political Ticker blog noted, according to the disclosure, Clinton's debt was $24 million, only $1.2 million less than it was a month before.

This seems attributable to some decidedly lackluster fundraising numbers for Clinton. She pulled in only $2 million in July, about $1 million less than she was able to raise in June.

Thirteen million dollars of the debt is owed to Clinton herself. She has previously said she's not seeking to pay that part back.

Also, as Daily Kos points out, these numbers would seem to put another dent in the credibility of the leaders of the PUMA [Party Unity, My Ass] movement, a group of people still trying to get Clinton the nomination. During a July appearance on Fox News in which he discussed a fundraising initiative his group put together for Clinton, Will Bower, one prominent PUMA leader, said, "Within that week leading up to the Fourth of July, we raised approximately $10 million. Our most conservative estimates have it at $6 million ... our sources tell us that the debt is now less than $5 million away from being in the black."