Spin Cycle

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 4,000-page (!) April-July campaign filing is studded with stars like J. Lo and Chris Rock, but the most interesting revelation just might be a pair of lowly bills at an airport hotel in Des Moines, Iowa dating from April 17 and May 26.
On the surface, the $182.85 and $145.77 charges at Hampton Inn on 5001 Fleur Drive seem to be the first hint that Clinton’s staff is networking in the critical 2008 presidential caucus state. So far, the senator has avoided Iowa and New Hampshire as if they were plague zones to avoid criticism that she’s looking past her 2006 re-election to the gleaming prospect of 2008. Her potential opponents, by contrast, have been criss-crossed the state lustily.
But there, in black and white, neatly reproduced by a first-class laser printer submitted to the Federal Election Commission by Friends of Hillary, is irrefutable proof that someone on Clinton’s campaign staff stepped foot in Iowa!
Not according to Ann Lewis, communications director for Friends of Hillary. Lewis said the charges were a bizarre, inexplicable clerical error.
“It caused quite a stir on our office,” she said yesterday. “But one of them was actually a staffer who went to Texas and the other was a photographer in Albany who went to F.O.H. events… We don’t know how it was billed to Iowa.”

Glenn Thrush