Edwards flies cut rate on his finance chair's jet

John Edwards, who raised $7.1 million for the quarter but spent $8.2 million, was spending at a rate of $1.17 for every dollar raised in the third quarter.

One big savings for Mr. Edwards is his use of the private jet of Fred Baron, a trial attorney, who is allowed to charge the campaign discount rates. Mr. Edwards paid Mr. Baron $234,000 for the use of his jet. Mrs. Clinton used chartered jets, which cost more, and paid $1 million.

The Edwards campaign has paid more than $430,000 to Fred Baron for the use of his private plane, according FEC documents.

Baron, a successful asbestos trial lawyer, is a former president of the Association of American Trial Lawyers and is currently the national finance chair of Edwards’ ‘08 presidential bid.

As of the end of June, donations from lawyers accounted for little more than a fourth of the $23 million raised by Mr. Edwards. By comparison, lawyers donated roughly half the $12 million he had raised by the end of the first half of 2003, two and a half months before he officially declared his candidacy.

Still, it is hard to overstate lawyer donations’ continuing importance to Mr. Edwards’s campaign. While he may trail Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama in the polls and in overall fund-raising, he is ahead, though slightly, in such contributions. Through the first two quarters of this year, he had received $6.5 million from lawyers, compared with $6.3 million for Mrs. Clinton and $5.5 million for Mr. Obama.

In fact, of his campaign’s top 20 donors, 15 are from law firms and 12 from the plaintiffs’ bar. No other single industry accounted for more than 2 percent of the $23 million he raised through the first two quarters. Mr. Obama, who raised $59 million, and Mrs. Clinton, who raised $63 million, have tapped a far broader range of sectors.

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Mr. Baron, who did not respond to a request for an interview, is Mr. Edwards’s finance chairman and has made his Hawker 800 corporate jet available to the candidate at discount rates. Through 2004, he and his former law firm had donated $407,000 to Mr. Edwards’s senatorial and presidential campaigns and his political committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, in Washington. This year, Mr. Baron and his wife have donated $9,200 to the Edwards presidential candidacy, while his former law firm has donated $23,000.

Great! It shows that there will be more trial lawyers in his gov't, exactly what we need,

I guess it's legal what with all these lawyers involved, but it strikes me as very odd that a campaign official can do this. Clinton pays Baron, her own bundler-in-chief, a fraction of the cost of a private jet thus receiving an in kind contribution from Baron for the remainder. Baron, Clinton's finance chair in 2004 and now again in 2008, is a former head of the Trial Lawyers Association which lobbies on behalf of trial lawyers. As finance chair, he also coordinates law firm bundles of campaign donations from trial lawyers who have lobbyists representing them in Washington.