Hillary Clinton's Republican Party Ties

After the right-wing Australian-bred global media baron, Rupert Murdoch, began to politically support 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton in her 2006 campaign to recapture one of New York State’s seats in the U.S. Senate and held a fund-raiser for the former Arkansas governor’s wife, some liberal Democratic voters who grew up in New York State were surprised. Yet long before Hillary Clinton also accepted an individual campaign contribution of $4,200 from Rupert Murdoch on July 26, 2006, she had had historical ties to the Republican Party. For most of the 1960s, Hillary Clinton actually worked for Republican Party candidates, including the 1964 Republican Party presidential candidate who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act: Barry Goldwater. As Hillary: Her True Story by Norman King recalled:

“Hillary’s grandfather and several uncles…were involved in local politics in Chicago. They were Republicans, of course…Hillary was a teenage Goldwater supporter…She was the daughter of Republicans, and a Republican at that point in time by heritage. Kennedy’s presidency—and his assassination—had not changed her political leanings at all…”

The same book also noted that Hillary Clinton’s “favourite poli-sci professor” at Wellesley College was a man named Dr. Alan Schechter and that Schechter said that “Hillary was never radical.” (Downtown 11/24/93)

Perhaps that’s one reason the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate was possibly involved in Arkansas’s “Whitewatergate Scandal” which, according to the New York Times (11/2/93) “focuses on questionable financial dealings involving the savings and loan, called Madison Guaranty, from which Mr. Clinton benefited both personally and politically” which was owned by James McDougal—“one of Mr. Clinton’s closest associates in Arkansas” who was “at various times, his business partner, political fund raiser, family banker and senior aide when Mr. Clinton was Governor of Arkansas.” The Times also noted that in 1978 McDougal and his wife “brought Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton into a real estate deal, buying 200 acres of the Ozarks in northern Arkansas” and set up a real estate business called Whitewater Development.

The Clintons’ Whitewater business partner then bought Arkansas’s Madison Guaranty Bank and during the 1980s—while Bill Clinton was Arkansas governor—McDougal hired Hillary Clinton to be a Madison Guaranty lawyer. He then apparently shifted funds from Madison Guaranty to the Clintons’ Whitewater real estate firm, before his savings and loan association eventually folded.

Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story by Judith Warner also recalled:

“…It turned out that the Clintons had improperly deducted at least $5,000 on their personal tax returns in 1984 and 1985 for interest paid on a portion of at least $30,000 in bank loan payments that the real estate company, Whitewater Development, made for them. The deduction saved them about $1,000 in taxes.”

Yet, ironically, despite their apparent failure to fill out their 1984 and 1985 tax returns in a legally proper way, both former Democratic President Bill Clinton and 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton were Yale Law School graduates. (Downtown 1/19/94)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Blind Trust Revisited