CDR: soft money (for what it's worth)

[Declan McCullagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: kim2048 at aol.com
To: sascha at ex.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 7:42 AM
Subject: Fw: Soft Money...


 > Sascha --- you gotta see this.
 >
 > ----- Original Message -----
 > From: xanna237 at aol.com
 > To: kim2048 at hotmail.com
 > Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 7:41 AM
 > Subject: Soft Money...
 >
 >
 > >
 > > Kim,
 > >
 > > Hi There!
 > >
 > > Sorry for taking so long to email you back.  I've been really
 > > busy---not just with schoolwork, either.  And, no, I don't have a
 > > boyfriend.  It's practically Election Day!  And since this is my
 > > first time voting, participating and everything has been really
 > > important to me.
 > >
 > > Remember when John McCain visited my campus back in the spring,
 > > and I thought that his talk about campaign finance reform was
 > > pretty cool?  Well, I've changed my mind.  Reform would be nice,
 > > but right now the most important thing is the election. And this
 > > election is so close, it could really be decided by which
 > > campaign is able to run the most television advertisements.
 > >
 > > Which brings me to what I've been doing for the past few months.
 > > Which is, basically collecting soft money for the campaign and
 > > our candidates --- I call them Our Boys.  And if anybody found
 > > out what I'm doing, there would be hell to pay. So I am totally
 > > trusting you to keep this to yourself, OK?
 > >
 > > Here's how it started: My father was a delegate at the convention
 > > this summer. I came along.  It was amazing --- a whole week of
 > > partying and flirting. The food was fantastic. But I also
 > > listened to the speeches, and I really got energized, you know
 > > what I mean? I really got into the messages.  I agreed with so
 > > much of what the candidate and his VP and everybody else had to
 > > say---I was totally tripping on the atmosphere.  I asked M&D if I
 > > could give $1000 of my savings account to the campaign, and they
 > > must have been tripping too, because they said yes.
 > >
 > > Silly me, I thought that once you give a thousand dollars, that's
 > > it. But when I turned in the check, the boy who took it asked if
 > > I wanted to match my contribution with another thousand dollars
 > > to the party. That's the "soft money" that McCain was talking
 > > about. When I told him that I didn't think I could afford any
 > > more, he said "ok," but that I might want to go out fund raising,
 > > to see if I could get anybody else to contribute.
 > >
 > > This is then when I had my---oh, let's call it a revelation.  We
 > > were at this after-hours party the night before the last night of
 > > the convention, and lots of people---M&D included---were trashed
 > > off their asses.  Personally, I was soberer than sober.  So this
 > > slick-ass middle-aged man in a suit comes up to me and asks me
 > > what I'm doing there, who I'm with, blah blah blah.  We start
 > > talking, and he's all impressed with my intelligence and
 > > education and tan and my Prada minidress. So I tell him that I
 > > just contributed $1000 and he's all super-impressed with me.
 > >
 > > So the guy gets really close to me and murmurs something to the
 > > effect of: "How would you like to contribute another $1000?"  He
 > > said that he had to contribute $5000 to get into the party, and
 > > that they were expecting him to contribute another $5000 the next
 > > day. He said that if I let him kiss me, he would increase his
 > > donation to $6000.
 > >
 > > Wow.
 > >
 > > I got all warm and uncomfortable all of a sudden. I'm sure I was
 > > blushing. I didn't know what to do. And he said, "what's the
 > > harm? This campaign is very important to you. It's important to
 > > me. They need my money. I want to kiss you. A thousand dollars
 > > for our team."
 > >
 > > "You would give them an extra thousand dollars, just for a kiss?"
 > > I said.
 > >
 > > "Well, I was hoping that you would also come back to my hotel
 > > room with me," he said, with a sly smile on his face.
 > >
 > > Right. "My folks are around," I whispered back.  "They'll wonder
 > > where I am."
 > >
 > > "Fine.  A stolen kiss in an empty corner it is," he said.  He
 > > looked pretty disappointed.  "$100 work for you?"
 > >
 > > I was imagining trying to kiss him. To tell the truth, he didn't
 > > look that bad. But I felt like he was changing the bargain. "I
 > > thought you said a thousand dollars."
 > >
 > > "Yeah, I guess I did. How about $250?"
 > >
 > > I nodded and smiled, and we left the big party and went into this
 > > little conference room with the lights out, and he flipped me
 > > over like a movie star and gave me this long, slurpy, oops-I'
 > > m-accidentally-rubbing-your-tits-aren't-I? kiss.  Then he took
 > > out his checkbook, wrote out a $250 check to the National
 > > Committee, and gave it to me.
 > >
 > > Wow, I thought.  That was pretty easy.  I felt like I had given
 > > blood or something---drained but exhilarated.
 > >
 > > So the next day, while everyone was all at their little parties
 > > before the Boys were supposed to make their speeches, this other
 > > older guy comes up to me.
 > >
 > > "Hello," he says, with this little dancing school bow.  "You must
 > > be Xanna."
 > >
 > > "Yeah." I say a little suspiciously, because today I'm not all
 > > tarted up in Prada or anything.
 > >
 > > He smiles this weird smile.  "You are, I assume, the young virgin
 > > ready to serve her country?"
 > >
 > > I'm thinking, who the hell are you, asking me if I'm a virgin or
 > > not, and then I get it.  "Oh, did Jim tell you about me?"
 > >
 > > "He did.  My pockets aren't as deep as Jim's, I'm afraid. But I'm
 > > wondering how much money I could give the Party if you would put
 > > your hands in them?"
 > >
 > > Oh my God, I think.  Like my brain can't quite process what this
 > > all means, but I say, "$500."
 > >
 > > He looks at me again.  "What if you would. as you young people
 > > put it.blow me?"
 > >
 > > I say, "Spit or swallow?"
 > >
 > > He says:  "Price is no object."
 > >
 > > I say, doing the math, "One-thousand spit.  Two thousand
 > >  swallow."
 > >
 > > "Spit."
 > >
 > > So I do.  We go looking around the convention center for a quiet
 > > place, but we can't find anything. I'm getting ready to give
 > > up --- perhaps I really don't want to do this --- when he finds
 > > one of those handicap bathrooms, you know, the kind with a single
 > > toilet and a door that locks? We go inside, he locks the door,
 > > and he can barely get his pants down, he's so hard. I mean, he
 > > almost loses it the moment I touch him. Let me tell you, this guy
 > > was no different from the undergrads in my dorm. And the guy
 > > feels so bad about it, hitting my dress, just like Bill and
 > > Monica -- that he ends up writing a $1500 check to the National
 > > Committee. (He offered to give me $100 for the dry-cleaning, but
 > > I told him that I wouldn't take the money.)
 > >
 > > At this point I was totally grossed out but filled with, what,
 > > this kind of patriotic fervor.  I can't tell you how loud I
 > > cheered that night when Our Boys finally got onto the podium and
 > > accepted the nomination.
 > >
 > > The second I get back to school I signed up for the Election
 > > Events committee, which handles the campus organization, the
 > > get-out-the-vote, and such. But it was all so removed. So I went
 > > down to the state party headquarters at the capital. They wanted
 > > me to stuff envelopes and make phone calls --- until I told them
 > > that I had raised $2000 in soft money in two nights by attending
 > > parties and flirting with VIPs. That did the trick. I got added
 > > as a special guest to all of the mailing lists, parties, and
 > > special events until the election. It was sort of a tacit
 > > agreement --- I could go to all of the cool events, as long as I
 > > could keep the donations coming in.
 > >
 > > Now Kim, don't get me wrong --- the state party never explicitly
 > > endorsed the idea of trading blowjobs or a quickie for campaign
 > > contributions. They just know that I'm very good at what I do. I
 > > get to go to all of the exciting parties. I get to taste all of
 > > the amazing food, drink all of the expensive drinks (nobody cards
 > > me), and get to meet all of those important people. And they get
 > > their contributions. There's a reason that our state is up 200%
 > > over the record that we set in '96.
 > >
 > > Some of the guys try to pay me personally, but I don't let them.
 > > That would make me a whore, you know? And one guy kept calling
 > > me, trying to see if we could get together again. I told him that
 > > we couldn't do that, or else people might get suspicious.
 > > Besides, this is about being part of the political process, isn't
 > > it? It's my responsibility to get as money from as many people as
 > > possible, rather than concentrating on a few big spenders.
 > >
 > > The sex?  I admit I get into it sometimes.  A lot of these guys,
 > > they're really good in bed.  You wouldn't believe it.  I try not
 > > to fake orgasms, and what's really cool is a not insignificant
 > > amount of time I don't even have to. I mean, most of these guys
 > > act like it's their responsibility to get me off. I wish that
 > > more of the guys in my dorm felt that way!
 > >
 > > I'm really strict about my guidelines.  We meet.  We fuck or
 > > whatever.  They write out the checks.  I leave.  At first I was
 > > pretty naïve and I was willing to go along and pretend that I was
 > > their daughter's roommate or their son's girlfriend, but I
 > > finally decided that I just couldn't do that --- not that it
 > > doesn't stop them from asking.  I also won't get tied up, or tie
 > > them up.  And if it's too gross to even mention it here, I won't
 > > do it either.  One guy wanted me to have sex with him in front of
 > > his wife --- no way, I told him. Remember that line about
 > > "plausible deniability?" Right. And I got offered $10K to do
 > > something that I'd never even heard of before.  I thought Our
 > > Boys wouldn't approve, so I said no.
 > >
 > > Some guys want to fuck me and have, like, political discourse at
 > > the same time.  They're not paying for sex, they're paying for
 > > politics, right? And they have to prove it or something?  And
 > > then I was sitting on top of this man who wanted me to answer a
 > > lot of political questions for him, and every time I gave him my
 > > opinion he got more and more excited, until finally I said
 > > something about strategic tax breaks and he.well I won't say it
 > > here.  It's not nice.
 > >
 > > Oh yeah.  That reminds me.  They always have to use a condom.  A
 > > lot of them are so old they don't know about safer sex.  And then
 > > some of them really want to fool around in my dorm room because
 > > it reminds them of their own politically active college days.
 > > Like, meet a girl, talk heavy politics with her, then take her
 > > home and nail her?  It's sort of sweet of them, actually. But
 > > there would be too many witnesses.
 > >
 > > And no, I've never fallen for any of my contributors.  There was
 > > this one guy ---  a CEO from California who was in town for some
 > > reason --- who asked me to marry him.  I said, No deal---no
 > > matter how the election turns out.
 > >
 > > I had to go through midterms like this.  But luckily the
 > > fundraisers and whatnot are winding down, and honestly, I'm very
 > > tired.  Tired of putting on my best clothes all the time.  Tired
 > > of having them ask me if "Xanna" is my real or my "professional"
 > > name.  I'm not a professional!  I haven't made a cent off this!
 > > But Our Boys have pulled in nearly $100,000 since this summer.
 > > So every time I see a full-page newspaper ad for my causes or a
 > > really spiffy TV ad, I know that I've done my bit.
 > >
 > >
 > >
 >