A New York businessman enlisted to bundle donations on behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has said he can't do it while there are so many unanswered ethical questions.
Jon Cooper
told The Washington Times that he was in the middle of drafting a fundraising email to send to 10,000 different individuals to solicit donations for Clinton when he said he realized he "just couldn't do it."
Cooper, an openly gay man who was a bundler for President Barack Obama's campaigns, was recruited by team Clinton as part of its elite group of early fundraisers called "HillStarters."
But he said that Clinton's lack of answers on foreign donations accepted by the
Clinton Foundation during her tenure at the State Department, the private server she kept her emails on while secretary of state, and her seemingly wavering commitment to liberal issues such as gay marriage and increasing the minimum wage are holding him back from throwing his full support behind her campaign.
"It's just the drip, drip, drip that is a little concerning, and I just wish that there would have been a more forceful response from the Clinton campaign to some of this," Cooper told The Times.
"I'm not saying there are any inherent weakness[es] in Hillary as a candidate, but there are some valid questions that are being raised by good people, and I think we need to have better answers to some of these questions," the New York businessman said.
"I would have hoped there would have been a strong and forceful and complete and detailed response to the questions that were raised," he said.
"That's a sign that they still need to do a bit of a better job in the top organizational structure of the campaign. They don't really have complete answers to these questions."
Despite Cooper's public reservations, he says that it doesn't mean he can't support Clinton at some point in the future, especially if she becomes the Democratic nominee.
However, the Times said that it does reflect the growing reservations about Clinton's campaign within the Democratic Party, and the call for someone to challenge her nomination.