Democrats’ Legal Bills Top $11 Million
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WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party has run up $11 million in legal bills this year defending itself in investigations into fund-raising, a millstone that threatens to weigh down the party well into next year’s election.
Even with an aggressive year-end fund-raising effort, the party will carry $10 million to $12 million in debt into next year, Democratic National Committee chairman Roy Romer said Tuesday.
Nearly half of that, he said, will be in the form of unpaid legal bills--about $4.2 million.
Romer, Colorado’s governor, said he will not let the debt stop the party from helping 1998 candidates. But he accused the Republican-controlled House and Senate committees that have led the fund-raising investigations of trying to bankrupt his party by inundating it with dozens of subpoenas.
The GOP is about $6 million in debt and expects to lower that to $4 million by year’s end, less than half the burden of the DNC.
Romer said he would support 1998 campaigns aggressively and eliminate the debt before the start of the 2000 presidential campaign.
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