Is Hillary running?

This Federal Election Commission report will probably start making the rounds. It shows the formation of a Hillary Clinton for President in 2004 committee.

CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM ID: P00003392
Office Sought:   President
Election Year:   2004
State:   Presidential Candidate
District:   03
Party:   DEM (Democratic Party)

It looks legit. And it wasn't filed by an unauthorized draft movement (I compared it to reports filed by the draft Clark movement). It appears to be official.

Still, I wouldn't discount the possibility that the committee is somehow unofficial. She has denied she was running for so long, and the Clintons have their preferred candidate in the race (Clark). So this makes little sense.

Update: From the sleuths in the comment boards, it does look like this filing hails from a Hillary afficionado (or troublemaking freeper nut?). The candidate ID number is the same as that of a similar 2000 filing. Wired News got the scoop at the time.

But no, the first lady is not -- or at least not yet -- attempting to avoid having to pack her bags and move out of the Clintons' White House digs by January 2001.

The cause of the apparently misleading info: Arcana buried in dusty FEC regulations, which make little sense at the best of times, and are near-inpenetrable here.

It turns out that devout Hillary fan Tom McMullen kicked off what amounted to a draft-Hillary movement in January when he formed a committee called "People for American Leadership."

As soon as that happened, it triggered a clause in the labyrinthine Code of Federal Regulations, and McMullen registered with the Feds by filling out FEC Form 1.

So it's no big deal.

Posted October 07, 2003 08:23 AM | Comments (93)