Your 'old days', flop?
Clinton Strategist Tied to Nuclear Power Company
By Mike McIntire
February 14, 2008, 7:22 pm
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
Earlier this month, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, circulated a memo calling attention to a New York Times article about Senator Barack Obama’s dealings with Exelon Corporation, a nuclear power company.
The article showed how legislation sponsored by Mr. Obama regulating radioactive leaks at power plants was changed to reflect the views of its opponents, including Exelon, “the company whose plants created the issue and whose key executives are big contributors and bundlers to his campaign,” Mr. Penn wrote. The article also pointed out that Mr. Obama’s chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, was a consultant to Exelon.
Now it turns out that Mr. Penn’s company, Burson Marsteller, has also been an Exelon consultant. An Exelon spokesman confirmed a report today on the Huffington Post that Mr. Penn’s firm was recently paid $230,000 for public relations work last year in New Jersey, where Exelon was seeking to renew a license for one of its nuclear plants.
Mr. Penn’s memo also left out another inconvenient fact, one that had been mentioned in The Times article: Mrs. Clinton was a co-sponsor of Mr. Obama’s radioactive-leaks bill.
The Clinton campaign could not be reached for comment. |
