I've said in other threads and I'll say it here. If people think this is a scandalous act, they have no idea how Washington works. The entire system works like this. Donating to the charities, pet projects, and friends of politicians is how people gain their name recognized and then they hope to parlay that recognition into an appropriate political appointment.
I'm not going to say that people who are concerned about such things should ignore it. Obviously, if your personal morality finds this objectionable then you should object to Hilary doing it.
But I'm going to stop short of calling this "pay for play" unless I'm literally calling the entire bureaucratic model "pay for play".
However, I can't be a hypocrite. When I wanted to run for office, I found myself treating a decent number of people to dinners on my tab. Donating to public events that I didn't care about just so that I could make connections with people who might help me. And, honestly, it worked even at the lowly level that I engaged in. And why bother? Because political affiliations meant a better chance of being awarded certain types of government paid legal work. When they hand out the snow plowing contracts in a city...it's not random. Some guy has been donating to the right causes for years.
I know of a guy who started a cancer research charity just so that he could parlay it into a conversation with a billionaire who's concerned about cancer. Lots of politicians got donations out of that. Just the way the world works.