Ending two
years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary
Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the
presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely
2016 Democratic nominee.
Regardless of the outcome,
Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign will open a new chapter in the extraordinary life
of a public figure who has captivated and polarized the country since her
husband, former President Bill
Clinton, declared his intention to run for president in 1991. Mrs.
Clinton was the co-star of the Clinton administration, the only first lady ever
elected to the United States Senate and a globe-trotting diplomat who surprised
her party by serving dutifully under the president who defeated her.
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For all the months of quiet
and careful planning, however, her campaign’s rollout did not come off as
smoothly as envisioned. Rather than gliding into the spotlight as an
above-the-fray former secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton entered the 2016 race in
the midst of lingering questions about her exclusive use of a private email
address while at the State Department and about donations from foreign
countries to her family’s philanthropic foundation.
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Ending two
years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary
Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the
presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely
2016 Democratic nominee.
“I’m running
for president,” she said with a smile near the end of a two-minute
video released just after 3 p.m.
“Everyday
Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion,” Mrs. Clinton said.
“So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote — because it’s your time. And I hope
you’ll join me on this journey.”
The announcement
came minutes after emails from John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign
chairman, alerting donors and longtime Clinton associates to her candidacy.
Mr. Podesta
said that Mrs. Clinton would meet soon with voters in Iowa and host a formal
kickoff event some time next month.
The
announcement effectively began what could be one of the least contested races,
without an incumbent, for the Democratic presidential nomination in recent
history — a stark contrast to the 2008 primaries, when Mrs. Clinton, the early
front-runner, ended up in a long and expensive battle won by Barack Obama. It
could also be the first time a woman captures a major party’s nomination.
Regardless of the outcome,
Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign will open a new chapter in the extraordinary life
of a public figure who has captivated and polarized the country since her
husband, former President Bill
Clinton, declared his intention to run for president in 1991. Mrs.
Clinton was the co-star of the Clinton administration, the only first lady ever
elected to the United States Senate and a globe-trotting diplomat who surprised
her party by serving dutifully under the president who defeated her.
She will embark on her
latest — and perhaps last — bid for the White House with nearly universal name
recognition and a strong base of support, particularly among women. But in a
campaign that will inevitably be about the future, Mrs. Clinton, 67, enters as
a quintessential baby boomer, associated with the 1990s and with the drama of
the Bill Clinton years.
This campaign will begin on
a small scale and build up to an effort likely to cost more than any
presidential bid waged before, with Mrs. Clinton’s supporters and outside “super PACs”
looking to raise as much as $2.5 billion in a blitz of donations from Democrats
who overwhelmingly support her candidacy. Much of that enthusiasm is tied to
the chance to make history by electing a woman to the presidency. But some,
too, owes to the lack of compelling alternatives in a party trying desperately
to hold on to the White House when Republicans control the House and the
Senate.
Mrs. Clinton’s declaration
on Sunday is to be followed by a series of intimate but critical campaign
events in Iowa and New Hampshire. She will use them to reintroduce herself to
voters and begin to lay out the central theme of her candidacy: improving the
economic fortunes of the middle class, with an emphasis on increasing wages and
reducing income inequality.
In the video, she does not
appear until after 90 seconds of images featuring personal stories of others,
each describing how they are getting ready to start something new.
The video prominently
features a black couple expecting a child, a young Asian-American woman, and
two men who say they are getting married. It also shows plenty of the white,
working-class people who were crucial to her previous White House bid and
signals that she intends to make helping the middle class and reducing income
inequality major themes of her campaign.
Near the end of the video,
Mrs. Clinton finally appears outside a suburban home and says: “I’m getting
ready to do something too. I’m running for president.”
Her return to the campaign
trail this week offers her a fortuitous circumstance: Tuesday is National Equal
Pay Day, the point in the year at which, on average, a woman’s pay for working
in 2014 and 2015 would equal a man’s pay just for 2014. Pay equity is an issue
that Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy will take up in earnest, along with others
important to many women, like paid family and medical leave, a higher minimum
wage and affordable access to child care.
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Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s Political Life
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Political Life
Credit Associated Press
Unlike in her 2008
campaign, when she played down gender and sought to show she was tough enough
to be president, Mrs. Clinton plans to highlight that she is a grandmother and
trumpet her chance to make history.
“Being the first woman to
run for president with a real chance of winning, that’s a wild card, but
potentially a net positive, particularly for undecided women,” said Scott
Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center.
It was not surprising that
Mrs. Clinton chose to make her intentions public in a video circulated on
social media. Since she left the State Department in early 2013, she has found
a welcome outlet in Twitter, which has allowed her to express her opinions in
terse missives while avoiding the news conferences that are likely to become a
mainstay now that she is a presidential candidate.
She will also look for ways
to demonstrate that, after more than three decades in public life, she
understands the ways of modern campaigns and can appeal to younger voters. Mrs.
Clinton’s 35-year-old campaign manager, Robby Mook, known for exploiting
technology, data and analytics to win elections, has already dispatched field
organizers to Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
For all the months of quiet
and careful planning, however, her campaign’s rollout did not come off as
smoothly as envisioned. Rather than gliding into the spotlight as an
above-the-fray former secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton entered the 2016 race in
the midst of lingering questions about her exclusive use of a private email
address while at the State Department and about donations from foreign
countries to her family’s philanthropic foundation.
Mr. Podesta, the campaign
chairman, assured donors that both controversies would pass and that the
momentum would shift as soon as Mrs. Clinton was officially a candidate,
according to a person involved in those discussions.
Mrs. Clinton will enter the
race with a strong base of support: 81 percent of Democrats said they would
consider voting for her, according to a CBS News poll conducted in February. That
support dwarfs that of her potential rivals for the nomination, including
former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, former Senator Jim Webb of Virginia
and Senator Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont who could run as a
Democrat.
But the roller coaster of a
presidential campaign can erode even the most seemingly certain advantages.
Just over eight years ago, Mrs. Clinton began that campaign with an email to
supporters declaring that she was “in to win.” That announcement began a
downward trajectory in which she went from being considered the inevitable
nominee to finishing in third place in the Iowa caucuses, behind Mr. Obama and
John Edwards.
She went on to pick up
primary victories in crucial battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania,
but by then Mr. Obama had an edge in the fight for delegates.
In her 2008 concession
speech, Mrs. Clinton sought to energize the women who had supported her
candidacy.
“Although we weren’t able
to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s
got about 18 million cracks in it,” she said. “And the light is shining through
like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the
path will be a little easier next time.”
This time, Mrs. Clinton’s
aides have signaled that she will take nothing for granted and present herself
as a more humble candidate, as unencumbered by the trappings of power and
celebrity as is possible for a universally recognized former first lady,
secretary of state and presidential candidate.
There may be little room
for error, though, for Mrs. Clinton, who will begin her campaign under the
glare of intense media scrutiny and criticism from a broad field of potential
Republican opponents, including former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, Gov. Scott
Walker of Wisconsin, and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and
Rand Paul of Kentucky — all of whom will try to prove they are best positioned
to defeat her.
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