Alright, Sen. Hillary Clinton is making a fund-raising swing through Charlotte next week. Lotsa money here, makes sense to try and get some. But the info on the host of the $1,000-per person event seems kinda thin. Johnny Taylor is described here as a Charlotte executive and the chairman of the Society for Human Resource Management, an organization of HR professionals. Moreover, a search of FEC records only turns up a single $1,000 contribution to Hillary, in May 2005. He no doubt plans more, but usually the honor of hosting such an event goes to a bigger hitter.
Then again, there really haven’t been many Hillary contributors in N.C. of any size so far, at least besides Crandall and Erskine Bowles.
Taylor did give $4,000 to Erskine Bowles’ senate campaign. Taylor’s wife, Charlotte Smith-Taylor also gave $4,000 to Bowles’ campaign in December 2003. Hoops fans may recognize that name as the former Charlotte Sting player who now plays for the Washington Mystics. More importantly, Smith hit the game-winning, buzzer-beating shot to give her UNC Tar Heel women the national title back in 1994. Anyway, the Bowles money bumps up the overall political giving somewhat and the Bowles’ tight connection to the Clintons — Crandall went to Wellesley College with Hillary and Erskine served in Bill’s White House — could not hurt either.
There is also another angle at work. Taylor is SVP for human resources at the InterActiveCorp. IAC is the mix of Internet-centric companies that includes Charlotte-based Lending Tree, the online mortgage company. The CEO of IAC is studio and network warhorse Barry Diller. Diller has given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates dating back to Carter-Mondale era. Just last year he gave $4,000 to Hillary and another $35,000 to the Democratic congressional committees.
That fleshes out HRC’s event a little. It will be interesting to see who drops by the Taylors with their checkbooks.
