Friday, November 9, 2007

Clinton Campaign Says It Tipped the Maid and Waitress

The Clinton Campaign Says It Tipped the Maid and Waitress
But the Maid and Waitress say: ain't so!

A waitress causes a stir on the political blogs. The waitress at a Maid-Rite restaurant in Iowa says she did not get a tip after serving presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat from New York. But the Clinton campaign says a $100 tip was left at the diner.
Anita Esterday, a waitress at the Maid-Rite in Toledo, Iowa, told NPR's David Greene in a report that aired on Morning Edition Thursday that "nobody got left a tip" on Oct. 8, when Clinton sat at the lunch counter and ordered up the restaurant's famous loose-meat sandwich.

Esterday served Clinton, chatted with her and later ended up as an example of a hard-working single mom in Clinton's stump speech. She told NPR she's considering voting for Clinton, but was disappointed the senator and her staff didn't make sure she got a tip for her labor.
The tip issue was a small part of an eight-minute piece about how everyday people get caught up in political campaigns. Half the story was about an incident in which another presidential candidate, Barack Obama, failed to follow up on a letter he said he might send to a supporter he met at a rally. The Obama campaign Thursday said they fired off a letter to the supporter after the story aired. But that part of the story received little mention in the news after airing Thursday.

Burried in the article was the following quote from a Clintoon staffer:

The campaign also produced photocopies of receipts showing $157.46 was paid to Maid-Rite on a VISA card on Oct. 8 for meals consumed by the candidate's entourage. The tip was supposed to have been paid in cash, and the campaign insisted such a payment was made but has declined to make available a staff member who was present at Maid-Rite and left tip money.

So I guess they expect us to believe that the staffer operating on an expense budget, put the food on a card and gratiously took a $100 out of their pocket to donate to the wait staff. Sure, that explains everything (NOT). What BS.
Come on now, who would leave a $100.00 tip in CASH just sitting on the table?

No comments: