Hillary Clinton’s 2008 run lingers over her 2016 bid
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Des Moines, IowaCNN
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Democrats in Iowa are betting that a little competition among friends is good for everyone – including the front-runner.
With Hillary Clinton on her way to the Hawkeye State hours after making her presidential campaign official, Iowa Democrats feel that a competitive primary will help the state party and will therefore help the former secretary of state.
“The more people that get in and expand this debate, the better the party will be,” Bob Meddaugh, a Democratic activist and supporter of Vice President Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential bid, said at a Polk County Democrats event. “And I think it will help Hillary, too.”
And even those behind the Clinton’s Iowa operation are saying they’ll fight for every vote and they’re anticipating primary challengers.
“We expect the caucus to be competitive,” said Matt Paul, Clinton’s 2016 Iowa campaign manager. “Hillary’s committed to working hard to earn the support of every Iowan.”
Democrats in the first-in-the-nation caucus state are hungry for an exciting, competitive contest, one where multiple candidates are asking for their vote by showing up on their doorstep. They are jealous of Republicans who have had regular cattle-call events in the Hawkeye State and will likely have a dozen candidates to choose from.
“Iowa, we are really spoiled, we are used to that pressing the flesh and talking to these people,” said Monica McCarthy, the Union County Democratic Party chairwoman in 2008. “We expect that.”
Clinton’s ever-growing world of campaign staffers has watched Democrats like former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tease presidential runs in Iowa. Though it may seem counterintuitive, Team Clinton’s hope is that one candidate will emerge as Clinton’s foil, someone who will push her to compete and run a competitive caucus campaign.
Despite low poll numbers, O’Malley has emerged, in the eyes of Clinton supporters, as the most likely person to be her foil. He has been a repeat visitor to the state and received plaudits from a wide array of Iowa Democrats for the time he has put in. What’s more, O’Malley’s super PAC shipped a dozen staffers to Iowa to work on different campaigns during the 2014 midterm elections.
When Clinton arrives in Iowa on Tuesday to kick off her new bid for the White House, she’ll be armed with a new game plan and a new message, but the memories of her first presidential campaign are still waiting for her.
“She gives off the feeling that she really doesn’t want to be here,” Marcia H. Fulton, a Democratic activist, said about her lingering impressions of Clinton from her time in Iowa eight years ago. “Now that may change this time, but that is the way it felt last time. It was, ‘Ok, now I have to do Iowa.’”
That sentiment isn’t unique to Fulton.
Will Mullery/CNN
A conversation with five women at a Polk County Democratic dinner late last week illustrated what is facing Clinton as she opens her candidacy with a two-day visit to Iowa on Tuesday. Their conversation focused on the vivid memories they have about her 2008 caucus bid, where she finished third.
Several Democrats at the dinner said Clinton’s last campaign in Iowa was cocky. The feeling made Obama’s staff look like “the cool kids” and Clinton’s team “not,” they said, making Obama’s effort, in the end, the winner.
“She kind of thought she was inevitable and her staff were going to tell us how to do things,” said McCarthy, who recalled once telling a overbearing Clinton staffer, “Wait a minute honey. No, no, no. You come to my county… you [need to] listen to us a little bit.”
It isn’t that these women dislike the former secretary of state or her campaign – in fact, many of them think she is the best candidate in 2016. But they want options and, more than anything, they want the two men they met on Friday night – O’Malley and Webb – to return to Iowa, compete in the caucus and challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
There is also realization among Clinton’s staff that the former first lady will never be able to run away with the caucus. Tom Harkin, an Iowa icon and a longtime U.S. senator, won 76.4% of caucus goers in Iowa when he ran for president in 1992. If Harkin, the state’s most beloved Democrat, can lose nearly 25% of all voters, Clinton’s campaign – who wouldn’t put a number their candidate’s Iowa ceiling – believe there will be a healthy number of Democrats in 2016 who want to vote against the party’s frontrunner.
Clinton announced her candidacy for president in a video on Sunday, and shortly there after her campaign announced her first trip would be to the Hawkeye State. The two-day, multi-stop trip is an acknowledgement that she can’t perform poorly in Iowa this time around. Clinton’s campaign aides privately say they recognize that activists who have negative memories from her 2008 campaign are not wrong.
Clinton was not at her best in Iowa, they say. She came into Iowa as the favorite for the nomination, and both Clinton and Obama staffers from that campaign have said that she acted like it. It wasn’t until weeks after finishing third in Iowa, when Clinton was pushed to run a more humble campaign that she turned out some surprising wins.
To run that humble campaign, Clinton plans to go small in Iowa and elsewhere. Clinton’s two open press Iowa events this week will both be small gatherings, one at a local business and another at a community college. Clinton is also road tripping from New York to Iowa, something aides have said was her idea.
Iowa Democrats think this will bode well for Clinton. The women at the Polk County dinner said that the few times they met the former first lady in small, one-on-one settings, she was charming and likable.
Fulton glowingly described a 2007 private roundtable she attended with Clinton in western Iowa.
“She sat down and almost like kicked her shoes off and was really personable,” she said. “There were maybe a dozen people in the room and it was real difference. Although I had loved her speech and I was excited and everything, in the small groups she really was personable.”
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state was the first woman to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Before marrying Bill Clinton, she was Hillary Rodham. Here she attends Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her commencement speech at Wellesley's graduation ceremony in 1969 attracted national attention. After graduating, she attended Yale Law School.
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Rodham was a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee, whose work led to impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in 1974.
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In 1975, Rodham married Bill Clinton, whom she met at Yale Law School. He became the governor of Arkansas in 1978. In 1980, the couple had a daughter, Chelsea.
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Arkansas' first lady, now using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton, wears her inaugural ball gown in 1985.
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The Clintons celebrate Bill's inauguration in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1991. He was governor from 1983 to 1992, when he was elected President.
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Bill Clinton comforts his wife on the set of "60 Minutes" after a stage light broke loose from the ceiling and knocked her down in January 1992.
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In June 1992, Clinton uses a sewing machine designed to eliminate back and wrist strain. She had just given a speech at a convention of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.
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During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton jokes with her husband's running mate, Al Gore, and Gore's wife, Tipper, aboard a campaign bus.
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Clinton accompanies her husband as he takes the oath of office in January 1993.
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The Clintons share a laugh on Capitol Hill in 1993.
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Clinton unveils the renovated Blue Room of the White House in 1995.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton waves to the media in January 1996 as she arrives for an appearance before a grand jury in Washington. The first lady was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons' business investment was investigated, but ultimately they were cleared of any wrongdoing.
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The Clintons hug as Bill is sworn in for a second term as President.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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The first lady holds up a Grammy Award, which she won for her audiobook "It Takes a Village" in 1997.
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The Clintons dance on a beach in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January 1998. Later that month, Bill Clinton was accused of having a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
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Clinton looks on as her husband discusses the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 26, 1998. Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." In August of that year, Clinton testified before a grand jury and admitted to having "inappropriate intimate contact" with Lewinsky, but he said it did not constitute sexual relations because they had not had intercourse. He was impeached in December on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
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The first family walks with their dog, Buddy, as they leave the White House for a vacation in August 1998.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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President Clinton makes a statement at the White House in December 1998, thanking members of Congress who voted against his impeachment. The Senate trial ended with an acquittal in February 1999.
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Clinton announces in February 2000 that she will seek the U.S. Senate seat in New York. She was elected later that year.
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Clinton makes her first appearance on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
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Sen. Clinton comforts Maren Sarkarat, a woman who lost her husband in the September 11 terrorist attacks, during a ground-zero memorial in October 2001.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton holds up her book "Living History" before a signing in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2003.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton and another presidential hopeful, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, applaud at the start of a Democratic debate in 2007.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Obama and Clinton talk on the plane on their way to a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, in June 2008. She had recently ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Obama.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Obama is flanked by Clinton and Vice President-elect Joe Biden at a news conference in Chicago in December 2008. He had designated Clinton to be his secretary of state.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton, as secretary of state, greets Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a meeting just outside Moscow in March 2010.
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The Clintons pose on the day of Chelsea's wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in July 2010.
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In this photo provided by the White House, Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
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Clinton checks her Blackberry inside a military plane after leaving Malta in October 2011. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state. The account, fed through its own server, raises security and preservation concerns. Clinton later said she used a private domain out of "convenience," but admits in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.
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Clinton arrives for a group photo before a forum with the Gulf Cooperation Council in March 2012. The forum was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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Obama and Clinton bow during the transfer-of-remains ceremony marking the return of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who were killed in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012.
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Clinton ducks after a woman threw a shoe at her while she was delivering remarks at a recycling trade conference in Las Vegas in 2014.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton, now running for President again, performs with Jimmy Fallon during a "Tonight Show" skit in September 2015.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attack during a House committee meeting in October 2015. "I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said during the 11-hour hearing. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done." Months earlier, Clinton had acknowledged a "systemic breakdown" as cited by an Accountability Review Board, and she said that her department was taking additional steps to increase security at U.S. diplomatic facilities.
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders shares a lighthearted moment with Clinton during a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015. It came after Sanders gave his take on the Clinton email scandal. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails," Sanders said. "Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing the United States of America."
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton is reflected in a teleprompter during a campaign rally in Alexandria, Virginia, in October 2015.
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Clinton walks on her stage with her family after winning the New York primary in April.
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After Clinton became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, this photo was posted to her official Twitter account. "To every little girl who dreams big: Yes, you can be anything you want -- even president," Clinton said. "Tonight is for you."
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Obama hugs Clinton after he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The president said Clinton was ready to be commander in chief. "For four years, I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment and her discipline," he said, referring to her stint as his secretary of state.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
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Clinton arrives at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony in New York on September 11. Clinton, who was diagnosed with pneumonia two days before, left early after feeling ill. A video appeared to show her stumble as Secret Service agents helped her into a van.
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Clinton addresses a campaign rally in Cleveland on November 6, two days before Election Day. She went on to lose Ohio -- and the election -- to her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight
Andrew Harnik/AP
After conceding the presidency to Trump in a phone call earlier, Clinton addresses supporters and campaign workers in New York on Wednesday, November 9. Her defeat marked a stunning end to a campaign that appeared poised to make her the first woman elected US president.
The reasons Iowans are itching for a competitive caucus are not all for the love of the party. Some of it is self-serving: The more active Clinton is in Iowa, the more other candidates will be forced to campaign in the state. That means more fundraising opportunities for Iowa county Democrats and more prestige for top Democrats throughout the state.
It also means money for Iowa’s economy. Some economists estimate that more than $51 million was spent in Iowa during the uber-competitive 2008 caucus.
But for women like McCarthy, Fulton and the three others in their group – Judy Woods, JoAnn Larkin Bradley and Carol Smith – Clinton running hard in Iowa is not about money, it’s about options.
“I am totally an equal opportunity Iowan,” Fulton said. “I just think an awful lot of questions haven’t been answered. There are so many things going on in the nation and the caucus is a time that we can be sure our nominee is right on the positions.”