Clinton’s 1990 Campaign Failed to Detail How Expense Fund Was Spent

Bill Clinton’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign failed to disclose how it spent about $40,000 in expenses, as is apparently required under Arkansas election law, the White House said Sunday.

The amount is a fraction of the $2.5 million Clinton raised and spent to win his fifth term. Bruce Lindsey, an adviser who was treasurer of the 1990 campaign, attributed the lapse to confusion over an election law that took effect a month after the 1990 vote.

He said the money paid bills for computers, polling and advertising. Records are now in the hands of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who is examining the race as part of a broad inquiry into President Clinton’s personal and political finances.

Changes in the state campaign law in December, 1990, required detailed accounting of expenses. But Lindsey said the secretary of state’s office did not provide proper forms, so the campaign submitted old forms that did not require an accounting of expenses.

He conceded Sunday that the campaign could have disclosed the expenses by simply listing the bills on a separate sheet of paper, “if we had thought about it.”

Lindsey said there also was some question about whether the new law applied to the 1990 election. The state attorney general issued an opinion that did not definitively answer the question, but said state officials should presume the law was retroactive.