Word: raiser
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...both parties that the latest pay-to-play scandal looked for a while as if it would just go away, especially if the White House continued to ignore it energetically enough. But last week even the cynics had trouble keeping up. White House logs showed that former Democratic fund raiser John Huang visited dozens of times in the past year, a level of access Warren Christopher might envy. And Huang wasn't just taking the tour. He dropped in on the President and the man who worries most about the President's re-election, deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes...
Another former fund raiser, Mark Middleton, known in the West Wing as the "Aryan Rotarian" for his blond toupee and his mercantile moxie, liked to remind people that he worked for the chief of staff, even after he didn't. He allegedly continued to pass out his White House calling cards after he had gone into the private sector. The phone number on the card forwarded callers to Middleton's company. "When I read that," whistled a former senior Clinton official, "I thought, 'Oh...my...goodness...
...explain is just what Huang was doing during all those visits. Could he have been seeking political favors for big contributors, particularly those with ties to Indonesia, the home of the multibillion-dollar Lippo Group financial conglomerate that was once Huang's employer? Was Huang a rogue fund raiser? Or was he acting at the behest of the White House--perhaps even the President--to bring cash into the Democratic National Committee's coffers...
...Huang became a fund raiser for Clinton's presidential campaign. "I was helping out to drum up Asian-community support," Huang said in the deposition. He volunteered for the job, he said, because Clinton "had been a friend to us since the Arkansas time, [and] we feel obligated to help a friend." But Huang added that his politics could be bipartisan. "I gave money," he said, "to the Republicans also...
...this year, Huang quit the Commerce Department to launch into his next career: Democratic fund raiser. He was an instant achiever. By all accounts he brought in more cash and aroused more enthusiasm among Asian Americans than any Democratic presidential candidate before Clinton had ever enjoyed. At a $1,000-a-plate dinner for Asian Americans in Los Angeles last July, Clinton proudly praised Huang for being so good at getting the audience to open its wallets. But on Oct. 18, Huang was suspended from his fund-raising slot after news leaked that he had solicited the $250,000 South...