HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton (56 page)

As votes were tabulated in New Jersey on November 5, Clintonworld was focused on Virginia, where McAuliffe, who had failed to get out of a Democratic primary four years earlier, edged out conservative favorite Ken Cuccinelli by about
two-and-a-half percentage points. It was a closer-than-expected result, and Clintonites, who packed McAuliffe’s election-night party, waited anxiously for a final call on the race.

Two hours after the polls closed, a veteran Clinton hand e-mailed from the party: “Everyone’s a little nervous.”

There was good reason to be. Bill and Hillary had ignored the risk of losing to put their full weight behind their old friend’s candidacy. Loyalty, in its many forms, was perhaps the only trait they exhibited in greater abundance than political savvy. Early on in 2013, there had been efforts to minimize the degree to which the national press read McAuliffe’s victory or defeat as a commentary on the Clintons. But by Election Day that was impossible. His campaign manager, Robby Mook, was in the small circle of operatives who were widely perceived to be in the running to head a 2016 Hillary outfit. Tom Steyer, the Hillary bundler and brother of Hillary’s partner in the Too Small to Fail effort, Jim Steyer, spent millions of dollars on ads benefiting McAuliffe. As he had in 2009, Bill barnstormed Virginia, and Hillary made a special exception to her no-politics-in-2013 rule to raise money for McAuliffe and speak as a surrogate for him at a women’s rally in Northern Virginia.

If Cuccinelli had pulled an upset over McAuliffe, especially after the national Republican Party had abandoned him for dead, the morning headlines would have been full of stories about how the Clintons couldn’t get their pal across the finish line. The downside was far greater than the upside. McAuliffe’s win was important, if less than pivotal: Some read it as a boon for Hillary and others wrote it off as meaningless for 2016—or, citing the smaller-than-expected margin, an indication of shifting Democratic fortunes.

The Clinton crew at McAuliffe’s party let out a collective sigh of relief when the result was finally announced around ten p.m. and the race was called for McAuliffe. “Phew!” the Clinton hand said. “Nail biter!”

Hillary planned a more robust return to electoral politics in 2014, when she would start appearing on behalf of other candidates to build the party—and chits if she decided to campaign for herself again. All of the female Democratic senators had
secretly signed a letter urging her to run early in 2013, and Warren said she wouldn’t jump in. But speculation that Warren might run against her persisted. Biden was still building toward his own run, and several other candidates, including governors Andrew Cuomo of New York, Martin O’Malley of Maryland, and Jack Markell of Delaware, were considering their options. Cuomo, a scion of his father’s liberalism and the Clinton’s pragmatism, was a highly unlikely bet to run if Hillary did because her donor base fully eclipsed his. But, like in 2008, there was a hunger in parts of the Democratic base for a candidate who could fell her in the early states and sweep to the nomination.

There were also potentially damaging echoes of her 2008 campaign in the prenatal stages of the 2016 race. While she had offloaded hired guns and brought in longtime aides when she went to the State Department, she still prized loyalty to a degree that sometimes overshadowed competence and sound judgment. Far less appreciated at the time, but nagging nonetheless, was that she might make the same fundamental mistake she had in 2008. Back then, she had run an old-school Democratic campaign, banking on victories in big states to win the nomination at the expense of the
brilliant delegate-obsessive strategy Obama had pursued. More than anything, the sin was that she was such an excellent student of old campaigns that she had run one.

In 2013 she was gearing up to run a race that appealed to the Democratic desire to make history by electing a first—in this case the first Madam President—and functioned on the use of technology as a campaign weapon. It’s what Obama had done in 2008. And, as Obama’s popularity plummeted in late 2013, she ran the risk of running a campaign that positioned her as an encore to his election. Were the Clinton name, deep experience in the trenches of Washington, abiding loyalty, and the prospect of running a history-making campaign strengths or weaknesses? It would depend on how she used them. One mistake she seemed unlikely to repeat was planting her base of operations in the Washington suburbs. By November 2013, she had closed her Washington office and was transitioning her post-State staff to New York so that her entire operation could be closer to the Clinton Foundation nerve center.

But even without a physical presence in Washington, a three-legged support had been constructed to give her a stronger platform in 2016. In addition to Ready for Hillary, which was focused on building a grassroots network of supporters, across the country, Priorities USA, the pro-Obama SuperPAC that got its big fund-raising boost in 2012 when Bill and his inner circle blessed it, was gearing up to raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from major donors for a paid media campaign for the presidential election, and American Bridge, another Democratic SuperPAC, set up an offshoot called Correct the Record to get “earned media”—stories and television segments—to defend Democratic presidential candidates and go after Republicans. By mid-November,
Priorities USA was in talks to bring in John Podesta, Bill’s former chief of staff, and Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager who had developed a strong rapport with Bill during the 2012 campaign, to run the operation.

David Brock, the pro-Hillary founder of Media Matters, headed up the Correct the Record organization and quickly hired 2008 Hillary campaign veterans Burns Strider and Adrienne Elrod to
help run it. The flavor of Hillaryland was unmistakable, as Brock had to be reminded that he couldn’t use the operation to slam Warren, since it was technically created to help the whole field of Democratic hopefuls. The trifecta—grassroots organizing, paid ads, and earned media efforts—positioned Hillary to benefit from the kind of full-scale outside operation that had become a crucial supplement to any modern campaign for the presidency long before she made an announcement.

Technically, the outside groups couldn’t coordinate with Hillary, but they were so stocked with former Clinton hands—and so reliant on her high-dollar donors—that it was inconceivable that they would fail to take cues from her brain trust.

As she weighed whether to run—and she had said already that she was doing just that—one existential question facing Hillary was this: How could someone who believed she was the nation’s best choice in 2008, who stood again on the verge of becoming America’s first woman president, who felt called to public service by a higher power, as expressed in her devotion to the service-oriented Wesleyan faith, who had millions of supporters just waiting for the call, say no to one more full-tilt sprint for the ultimate prize?

“Because there are so many other ways to serve,” she said. “I mean, that is truly the honest answer. It’s not just putting you off because I’m not ready to answer the question.

“Look, I do have what I’ve called the responsibility gene. I do believe strongly in public service, and I do have, through my religious upbringing and my faith, a sense of obligation because I’ve been given so much,” she said. “I mean, I am such a fortunate person. And I think I am called on to give back. And so I’ve been doing that all my life, and so it doesn’t have to be one position or another.”

But each time she had felt the call to serve, Hillary had answered it in the affirmative.

“I never thought I’d run for office, and then circumstances kind of conspired to suck me into the Senate race in New York. And it was almost like I was on the outside watching, saying, ‘Oh, my gosh, look at this, it’s coming around and happening to me,’ ” she said. “So
I did that and ran for reelection, then cared deeply about the direction of the country and ran for president. It was an incredibly intense campaign; didn’t work out. I was ready to go back to the Senate, do my service there, because it had been a pretty tough time for New York—I mean, between 9/11 and the financial collapse, I mean, New York was in lots of trouble, and I care deeply about the people who entrusted me with being their senator. And then along comes the president and asks me to be the secretary of state.”

In Hillary’s telling, she’s been drafted time and again—rather than volunteering herself. By the late fall of 2013, she had publicly acknowledged she was thinking about running, but she insisted she hadn’t yet made up her mind.

“I never know what’s going to happen next,” she said. “And I really have never lived my life thinking I knew what was going to happen next. I really try to—I mean, it is very John Wesleyan, believe me. I really try to just do the best I can every day, because who knows what’s going to happen next? I don’t have any idea. So I’m one to just feel like every day I’m being true to my values and I’m contributing in some way, and maybe trying to do some good.”

T
HE
W
OMEN OF
H
ILLARYLAND IN
2008

Front row:
Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary’s onetime campaign manager who stepped down from the post in the middle of the primary, and Ann Lewis.

Second row:
Neera Tanden, who would later join the Obama campaign; Melanne Verveer, a longtime aide who would head up women’s and girls’ issues at State; Capricia Marshall, a longtime Hillary aide who would become chief of protocol; Minyon Moore; and Huma Abedin, one of her closest aides and so-called second daughter.

Back row:
Cheryl Mills, a close aide to both Clintons who would go on to become Hillary’s chief of staff at the State Department; Tamera Luzzatto, Hillary’s Senate chief of staff; Mandy Grunwald; and Lissa Muscatine.

(Melina Mara, The Washington Post/Getty Images)

President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton share a laugh after she dropped her briefing papers on the Oval Office floor.

(White House photo/Pete Souza)

President Obama and former president Bill Clinton speak outside the White House briefing room before addressing reporters in December 2010.

(White House photo/Pete Souza)

President Obama sits beside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a cabinet meeting in February 2011. Clinton formed an alliance and friendship with Gates during her time at State.

(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

State Department aides Alec Ross and Jared Cohen helped Hillary ramp up her online efforts at the State Department. Many observers say technology was a major problem for Hillary during the 2008 campaign and one of the biggest lessons she learned in the campaign’s aftermath.
(Michele Asselin/Contour/Getty Images)

President Obama and Hillary Clinton pose for a photograph in November 2012 with Aung San Suu Kyi and her staff at the residence in Rangoon, Burma, where she had been detained for fifteen years.

(White House photo/Pete Souza)

Hillary Clinton talks to her speechwriter Dan Schwerin in Islamabad, Pakistan, in October 2011. She is also joined by top aides Huma Abedin, Toria Nuland, and Philippe Reines, along with Cameron Phelps Munter (
left of Schwerin
), the ambassador to Pakistan, and Ambassador Marc Grossman (
seated
), the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
(Diana Walker HC/Contour/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton watches the Osama bin Laden raid in the West Wing. The now famous photograph was particularly striking, observers said, because of Clinton’s expression. Hillary described the time as “thirty-eight of the most intense moments.” She later explained that she did not know what she, Obama, Biden, and other top officials were looking at when the photograph was taken. She also chalked up her expressive hand gesture to “my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs. So it may have no great meaning whatsoever.”
(White House photo/Pete Souza)

President Obama receives a congratulatory hug from Hillary Clinton the day after the House passed the Affordable Care Act. Clinton, who had pushed for health care reform when her husband was president, supported Obama’s insistence that the law be passed and spoke up on the president’s behalf during a cabinet meeting.
(White House photo/Pete Souza)

Hillary Clinton traveled to 112 countries, including this trip to the Philippines in 2009, during her time as secretary of state—more than any of her predecessors. At a cabinet meeting early in his first term, Obama looked at his tireless secretary of state and decided to make an example of her. She was working around the clock, flying around the world, and it showed. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Obama said.
(Nick Merrill)