contribution maximums. Reception Paul Blumenthal, a political reporter for The Huffington Post noted that the super joint fundraising committee was unusual. Candidates did not normally agree to joint fundraising until after securing the nomination. It was also the first fundraising committee since the 2014 fundraising law changes. The New York Times reported that some state party officials "expressed reservations" at the Clinton campaign's pairing with the national party before the nominee was officially selected. By comparison, the 2008 campaign's fund was not started until June of the election year, and as of February 2016, the Republican National Committee had not established a joint fundraising committee with its candidates. Some states were hesitant to join the fund, which might have appeared as a Clinton endorsement and alienated local donors, but national party officials described the fund as "a way to strengthen the party at its roots". Clinton's opponents in the Democratic presidential primary complained of lack of impartiality on the part of the national committee. While some Democrats questioned the strategy of joint fundraising, when Republican super PACs were outpacing Clinton's campaign in fundraising, the chairman of the New Hampshire state party said that it was never too early to prepare for the general election. The Washington Post reported in February 2016 that the Clinton campaign had received much of the fund's benefits despite its intended use in state party elections. The newspaper added that the early organization of the fund was a demonstration of the campaign's maximization of big donor support. As the Clinton campaign fought off fellow primary candidate Bernie Sanders, the fund recruited new, small donors—a strategy that campaign finance attorneys described to The Washington Post as "unusual," since joint fundraising committees normally focused on large donors and posh events. A former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission said that the joint fundraising committee structure was never intended to support a single candidate, and the fund appeared to turn "the traditional notion of a joint committee into a Hillary fundraising committee". As of February 2016, the Sanders campaign was not involved in active joint fundraising with the National Democratic Committee and considered the fund to be subsidiary to the Clinton campaign. The Sanders joint fundraising committee, the Bernie Victory Fund, was headed by the national committee's chief financial officer, and its only funding was a $1,000 donation from the national committee. As of March 2016, the Sanders