Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign Raises $143m In August

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign raised an eye-popping $143 million in August for her candidacy and the Democratic Party, the best showing of her campaign, her team said Thursday.

The haul allows team Clinton to begin September – and the election’s home stretch – with more than $68 million on hand.

Of the $143 million raised last month, $62 million was raised for Clinton’s campaign.

“Thanks to the 2.3 million people who have contributed to our campaign, we are heading into the final two months of the race with the resources we need to organize and mobilize millions of voters across the country,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.

“These resources will help us to register and turnout millions of voters to elect progressive candidates across the country.”

By comparison, Barack Obama raised a total of $97 million in August 2012, including $84 million for his campaign, according to the New York Times.

Clinton throughout August participated in 37 private fundraising events in 11 states plus the capital city Washington, according to an AFP count. Most were on the West coast, home to Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley executives, or in the traditional Democratic donor bastions of Massachusetts and New York.

The minimum contribution required to attend the events varied from $500 to $250,000, with higher contributions equating to more exclusive access.

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No Apologies Over Advertorial- Fayose

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Peter Ayodele Fayose stated his no apology response through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Idowu Adelusi in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday, and said that the truth can never be covered indefinitely, insisting that the All Progressive Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, General Buhari was too old and sick to be president of this country. Read Statement below:

” I wish to refer to the late President Umaru Musa Yar; Adua who former President Olusegun Obasanjo claimed was hale and hearty to lead this country and subsequently took ill and died. “I must assure all those who have expressed genuine concerns,unlike the APC that is playing cheap politics over the issue -that my intention is not a death wish to General Buhari but a factual postion that APC is covering.

“My consideration for the advertorial in the midst of alleged ill health of the late president is the need for the nation not to forget the crisis we were thrown into in 2010 but saved by the National Assembly which had to invoked the Doctrine of Necessity after protests by the Save Nigeria Group ( SNG) “It is in defence of fairness that I called attention to the potential crisis we may face God forbid that the health of the general becomes a hindrance if he was president and his Vice who is from the South West would have to step into the saddle not too long after Obasanjo eight years in office. ” I wish to draw attention to the lead story in the Sunday Tribune of January 18, 2015,?entitled, ” Buhari’s planned visit to US causes furore.”

” The story revealed that arrangement had been concluded to fly Buhari to US for a medical check up. That Buhari has been stressed from effects of the rigours of presidential campaigns across the country and he is definitely in need of medical attention, adding that age was a factor as rigours of the campaign was? getting at him”. Fayose therefore adviced Buhari to be sincere with himself and step down for a younger and more vibrant person..again,I say it that Buhari is too old and spent to lead nigeria.

The Governor added, “The health of all of us who have stepped into the leadership space is nothing personal to us anymore as it has implications on the polity.” Fayose said that he was certain that time will vindicate him, calling on all Nigerians to vote enmass for the vibrant and energetic President Jonathan to avoid a repeat of history.

Oil Shocks Hit Nigeria—and Threaten Jonathan’s Re-election

Last Tuesday, Nigeria’s central bank devalued the country’s currency by 10 percent in an effort to shore up foreign reserves hard-hit by falling oil prices. The move comes months before a presidential election and highlights the country’s vulnerability to the price of oil, which makes up 70-80 percent of the Nigerian government’s revenue.

With Brent crude hitting a four-year low of $77.83 per barrel in early November, Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, is feeling the pinch. Government coffers are emptying, and construction companies and other employers have begun to lay off workers. As oil pricescould remain low for 2015, Nigeria must plan for a lean year. On Nov. 16, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced that the government would cut expenditures by 6 percent in its 2015 budget, lower the budget’s benchmark for oil prices from $77.5 to $73 and raise taxes on certain luxury items. That move was followed by last week’s currency devaluation.

As the government recalibrates, the opposition has taken advantage of the market’s uncertainty to articulate a leftist economic vision for Nigeria’s future. Meanwhile, some observers wonder whether the plummeting oil prices will affect the financing for incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid or dampen Jonathan’s appeal. Others speculate that his campaign already has the funding it needs—licit or illicit—to dominate the field.

Nigeria relies heavily on oil, producing above 2 million barrels per day. Recently, economic growth has been faster in the non-oil sector, but oil still provides 70-80 percent of government revenues and over 80 percent of export earnings. Prices have fallen for reasons beyond Nigeria’s control, but Nigeria’s oil sector has internal problems of its own.Oil theft, whether by young men breaking into pipelines or bureaucrats stealing fortunes with the stroke of a pen, costs the government as much as $8 billion a year. Frustrated with the losses, international oil companies like Shell are selling off assets.

Oil theft has also played into Nigerian politics in ways that will resonate through the elections in February 2015. In 2013, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then the governor of the Central Bank, alleged that $50 billion was missing from the accounts of Nigeria’s state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). In response, Jonathansuspended Sanusi, a move that deepened many Nigerians’ suspicions that Jonathan’s administration, like others before it, thrives on oil-related corruption. In August, Jonathanshook up the NNPC’s leadership, but some analysts saw the move as a way of tinkering with patronage networks rather than rooting out wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, former militants in the Niger Delta—Jonathan’s home region, the locus of Nigerian oil production and the site of an insurgency from 2006-2009—have threatened to resume violence if Jonathan is not re-elected. With an amnesty for militants set to expire in 2015, and Jonathan likely to extend it, some of the president’s backers will settle for nothing short of maintaining the status quo.

Heading into 2015, however, Jonathan faces the most formidable opposition coalition yet assembled in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: the All Progressives Congress (APC). Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has won every presidential election since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999. But some northern Nigerian elites feel Jonathan has usurped their region’s rightful turn in Nigeria’s informal, rotational politics. In the booming southwest, meanwhile, APC politicians are emphasizing tax collection and service delivery, charting a vision that points to a possible future for Nigeria beyond oil. In 2011, southwestern politicians cemented their regional dominance while leaving the presidency to Jonathan. Since then, the APC’s architects have built a national party, including by wooing PDP malcontents. Five PDP governors, four of them from the north, switched parties in 2013.

The 2015 election will be decided partly through the machinations of these so-called political godfathers, including vote-buying and thuggery. Yet there are also real ideas at stake. In his Nov. 11 declaration of his candidacy for the February 2015 elections, Jonathan ended with the refrain that his government is “expanding opportunity.” With Nigeria’s economy growing over 6 percent annually, the economy is indeed expanding, but over 60 percent of Nigerians still live in extreme poverty. In the shadow of falling oil prices, Nigeria’s 2015 election campaign will feature a debate about the direction of the economy—and about who really benefits from current growth.

In a Nov. 13 op-ed, Bola Tinubu, an APC godfather and former governor of Lagos state, outlined the APC’s economic vision, including its response to declining oil revenues. Tinubu argued that despite “rosy GDP numbers,” poverty levels and middle class struggles indicate that “Nigeria is mired in a long-term, secular depression.” Castigating the PDP as a party whose policies favor the wealthy, Tinubu contended that austerity measures were the wrong response to falling oil revenues. Rather, he suggested that the government should cease to peg expenditures to the amount of dollars it holds, and instead print more money and stimulate the economy with job-creating infrastructure projects. “The rewards of job creation and economic growth allocated among the bulk of the populace outweigh the inflationary risk,” Tinbutu argued. Okonjo-Iweala rejected the proposal.

Will the APC’s economic vision earn them support? Their model of governance has drawn acclaim in Nigeria’s mega-city of Lagos, where the opposition has held power since 1999. But voters in an off-cycle election in Ekiti state in June rejected a reformist incumbent APC governor and embraced a PDP challenger with a populist touch and access to the party’s deep coffers. Many observers attributed the PDP’s upset in Ekiti to the so-called politics of rice—the PDP’s ability to mobilize voters by catering to their immediate needs.

If oil revenues continue to fall, however, the PDP’s finances could suffer—or not: Nigerian critics have raised suspicions about the role that Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, a close ally of Jonathan, occupies on his campaign, namely chair of the finance sub-committee. One commentator speculates that the campaign already has a “bottomless war chest” comprised of “the billions of dollars allegedly missing under Diezani’s watch” at the NNPC.

Jonathan’s government cannot ignore the drop in oil prices, but the advantages of incumbency, particularly if the rumors of illicit financing are true, could be enough to guarantee him another term.

Alex Thurston

Credit: worldpolitics.com

View Expressed are Solely Author’s.

Oshiomhole’s 2015 Presidential Ambition?

Reports has it that, Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, has submitted a letter of intent to the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress, APC, just as he intensified consultations with the likes of the former president and stakeholders across the country.

Also, reports say that majority of the APC governors may soon endorse him as their candidate because they believe that his popularity cuts across the country, which is one of the attributes they intend to explore to stop President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. We also learnt that His former governorship campaign office will serve as his presidential campaign office in Edo State.