Text size:

Hillary Clinton snubs Wal-Mart cash

BY GLENN THRUSH | NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU

February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won't touch Wal-Mart's money - but Jerry Springer's checks are money in the bank.

Clinton, who served as a paid member of Arkansas-based Wal-Mart's board in the 1980s, last week blasted the company for failing to provide health benefits to workers. But Clinton's most recent federal campaign filings - 3,000 pages worth - show that she began distancing herself from the company months earlier, returning $5,000 in political action committee cash from the world's largest retailer Nov. 4.

The senator returned the money because of "serious differences with current company practices," Clinton campaign guru Ann Lewis said on Friday.

In all, Clinton raised almost $6 million during the last three months of 2005, a bushel of it from A-to-Z-list celeb donors. On the list were Reese Witherspoon ($1,000), Danny DeVito ($1,000), Edie Falco ($1,000), Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward ($2,000 apiece), Jerry Seinfeld's wife, Jessica ($4,200), Marisa Tomei ($2,000) and $4,200 from "Gerald N. Springer, TV Personality."

Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose husband, John Kerry, might face Clinton in a 2008 Democratic presidential primary, tossed Clinton $2,100 for a Senate primary that looks to be anything but arduous.

Even though Clinton eschewed Wal-Mart, she did take contributions from political action committees associated with Arkansas-based power provider Entergy ($420), and Edison Schools ($2,000), a private education company from New York City whose Buffalo charter school Stepping Stone was recently shut down by the state for posting low test scores.

Clinton also accepted $300 from Louis Gelormino, the $134,000-a-year Rudy Giuliani appointee who was dismissed in 2004 from his job as manager of the city's Local Conditional Release Commission after springing disgraced ex-state Sen. Guy Velella from Rikers Island early, records show.