Sunday, January 20, 2008

Are the Clintons too extravagant?

Norm @ lvj.com tells readers:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her camp ate a little higher off the hog than her rival Barack Obama during their week of campaigning in Las Vegas.

Both campaign camps called N9NE Steakhouse at the Palms minutes apart Friday for a food delivery.

Chef Barry Dakake and Jenna Morton, wife of N9NE co-owner Michael Morton, delivered around $200 worth of food, including two Kobe burgers, two organic chicken sandwiches and one order of Dover sole, to Obama in a conference room at the Las Vegas Signature Terminal.

The Clintons' tab came to $1,530 and included entrees of nine steaks, three chicken, three salmon and three Maine scallops, two lobster pappardelle, salads, sashimi, rock shrimp, and various side dishes.

The Clintons, who spent the week in a Bellagio villa, also had a big order delivered from N9NE on Monday.
I know some of you will gasp at the Clinton’s tab.

But keep this in mind: The Clinton’s are used to renting out the Lincoln bedroom @ $75, 000 per night.

When you look at it that way, is their N9NE tab really that out of line?

Anyway, what’s $1,530 these days?

It wouldn’t even buy John Edwards four haircuts.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the interests of fairness, someone should note that the Obama order seemed to be essentially food for 5, while the Clinton order seemed to be food for at least 20. It's hard to say -- it may be more -- I only added up through the lobster. "Salads, sashimi, rock shrimp, and various side dishes" may go along with the other dishes, or may reflect additional lunches. To compare apples to apples, you'd need to adjust one of the orders by at least a factor of four. The Clinton order is still obviously quite a bit more expensive per plate based on my estimates of number of people (almost twice the cost), but the $200/$1530 comparison isn't really fair. Also, to really make a comparison meaningful, you'd have to know who was fed -- if one lunch was for a meeting with campaign donors, and another was for a lunch break for people stuffing envelopes, for example, then it might not reflect the actual overall food tabs of the respective camps.

And finally, I didn't notice any pork dishes itemized on either list, so I don't see that either camp ate "higher off the hog"... :)