Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interest groups have emerged as a key sticking point for voters ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Although the first rumblings of potentially problematic paid speeches came in April of last year, the issue seemed to wilt before springing back to life last month through a series of veiled attacks from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The suggestion that Clinton’s commitment to Wall Street reform could be compromised by her acceptance of $675,000 in fees from just three speeches to Goldman Sachs was made by Sanders and publicly discussed weeks before the Iowa caucus.
However, the attack didn’t catch fire until the candidates’ collective attention turned to New Hampshire, where Clinton has struggled to answer questions about her high-dollar speeches to corporations and lobbying groups.
Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said the “unique” dynamics of New Hampshire politics has allowed the paid speech controversy to grow.
“Once you go down into South Carolina, Nevada and the Super Tuesday states, I don’t think it’s going to be as big an issue,” Bannon said. “First of all, New Hampshire is unique. Second, these questions about her meetings and speeches and transcripts and everything are part of a larger narrative about her ties to Wall Street, which works in New Hampshire.”
“But I don’t think it will work very well in the South,” he added. “I don’t think they care very much in the South.”
Even so, Bannon said he thinks Clinton has not done a good job of addressing the attacks on her paid speeches.
Clinton responded to a question in the most recent Democratic debate about whether she would release the transcripts from those speeches by agreeing to “look into it.”
Days later, she expressed her frustration at the controversy by arguing she has been held to an unfair standard over other politicians who have also profited off the speaking circuit. Clinton dismissed the possibility of making the transcripts public.
“I would tell her to release everything,” said Bannon, who does not advise any of the Democratic presidential candidates. “You get in more trouble when you look like you’re hiding something than you do if you release something and it looks bad.”
New Hampshire State Rep. Wayne Burton, a Democrat who has endorsed Sanders, said he is among many in his state that have concerns about Clinton’s Wall Street ties.
“I, like many, believe that even the appearance of money taken from those seeking influence corrupts our democracy and compromises Hillary as a candidate for our Protector of Democracy in Chief,” Burton told the Washington Examiner.
Burton cited the enthusiasm behind Sanders’ candidacy, pointing to a packed rally at the University of New Hampshire Monday evening as an example.
RCP Poll Average for New Hampshire Democratic Primary InsideGov
“[It’s] great to see about 1,000 UNH students so excited by a candidate who refuses to accept big bucks from corporate thieves,” he said.
Sanders has consistently led Clinton in Granite State polls. He heads into Tuesday’s primary with a 12.8 percent lead, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Clinton has worked hard in the week between her narrow Iowa victory and the first-in-the-nation primary to minimize the expected New Hampshire loss, dispatching her husband and a handful of trusted allies to blanket the state with attacks on her rival.
But the haphazard nature of those attacks — from accusing Sanders’ supporters of sexism to arguing the Vermont senator is too inexperienced, to, in a near reversal, blasting his decades in Washington — has blunted the momentum of any one criticism.
Sanders, on the other hand, has declined to take any shots at Clinton beyond his charge that the former secretary of state has been influenced by her acceptance of Wall Street cash.
Clinton has called her opponent’s criticism of her big-bank donors an “artful smear.”
Bannon said the focus on Clinton’s paid speeches has proven a successful tactic in New Hampshire because it fits into some Democrats’ existing perception of Clinton as friendly to corporate interests.
“I think the reason it’s happening now is that Bernie Sanders and his supporters are pushing the argument real hard,” Bannon said of the paid speech controversy. “And the reason I think it is working is because it’s part of a larger narrative that the Sanders campaign has been pushing, which is that Hillary Clinton is beholden to Wall Street, and they’re using the paid speeches as evidence of that.”
Concerns about her ties to big banks seem to have taken a special hold in the Granite State.
A CBS News poll of New Hampshire voters conducted in mid-January found 79 percent of Democratic primary voters thought Sanders would do a better job of reforming Wall Street, compared to just 11 percent who said the same of Clinton.
The same poll found 40 percent of voters felt Clinton did not understand their everyday concerns. Only 5 percent of Democrats felt as though Sanders was out of touch with their concerns.
The sharp divide in opinion among New Hampshire Democrats does not necessarily extend to South Carolina, however, where the next primary will take place on Feb. 27.
A CBS News poll conducted over a nearly identical time period in South Carolina discovered Democratic voters in that state view Clinton and Sanders as much more evenly matched on the issue of Wall Street reform. Thirty-six percent of South Carolina Democrats felt Clinton would do a better job of reforming Wall Street, while 48 percent felt Sanders would do a better job.
Similarly, just 31 percent of South Carolina Democrats felt Clinton was out of touch with their concerns, compared to 23 percent who said the same of Sanders.
