Bill Clinton campaigns for Chelsea's mother-in-law
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Bill Clinton is wading into a hotly contested U.S. House primary in Philadelphia and its suburbs to raise money for Marjorie Margolies, the mother-in-law of Chelsea Clinton who is running for a seat two decades after she lost it.
Clinton, perhaps the national Democratic Party's most potent fundraising force, will headline an April 10 fundraiser at a restaurant at the tony Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia. It's $1,000 to attend and $5,000 for a VIP reception.
Margolies' son, Marc Mezvinsky, married the former first daughter in 2010.
Margolies is trying to recapture the U.S. House seat that she lost in the 1994 election after casting a vote for then-President Clinton's budget proposal that increased taxes on the wealthy.
Margolies represented Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district from 1993 to 1995. The incumbent, Democrat Allyson Schwartz, is running for governor and is not seeking re-election, leaving the seat open in 2015.
Three others have filed to run in the primary, including state Sen. Daylin Leach, of Montgomery County, state Rep. Brandon Boyle, of Philadelphia, and Montgomery County physician Valerie Arkoosh, an obstetric anesthesiologist who had been a prominent advocate for President Barack Obama's signature 2010 health care law.
Margolies trailed in fundraising on Dec. 31, the last deadline for candidates to report their campaign finances to the state.
The former NBC news reporter is now the president of Women's Campaign International, which she founded, and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
She first ran for Congress in 1992, when she was known as Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and was married to former U.S. Rep. Edward Mezvinsky, an Iowa Democrat who went on to become the party's state chairman in Pennsylvania. They divorced in 2007.
Edward Mezvinsky pleaded guilty in 2002 to bilking investors of more than $10 million after he lost millions to African con artists pitching pyramid-type schemes. Federal prosecutors said he boasted of his close relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton and his son's then-friendship with Chelsea at Stanford University.
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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
