Hillary Clinton to Announce 2016 Run for President on Sunday
The prolonged prologue to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
second run for the White House will reach its suspenseless conclusion
on Sunday: The former secretary of state, senator and first lady is to
announce that she will indeed seek the Democratic nomination for
president.
Mrs.
Clinton is expected to begin her campaign with a video message on
social media, followed by a visit to important early-primary states next
week, said two people briefed on her plans.
But
for all the attention paid to how Mrs. Clinton would reveal her 2016
candidacy, little has been said about her reasons for mounting another
presidential bid. Her campaign rollout is expected to provide voters,
particularly users of Twitter, Facebook and other social media, a
succinct rationale that she is best positioned to address an American
electorate that has seen virtually stagnant wages for middle-income
earners over the last 15 years.
A fresh epilogue
to Mrs. Clinton’s 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices,” posted on The Huffington
Post Friday morning, signaled a number of elements of what is very
likely to be a familiar feature of her campaign message: evoking her new
status as a grandmother to talk about creating opportunities for all
Americans.
Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?
“I’m
more convinced than ever that our future in the 21st century depends on
our ability to ensure that a child born in the hills of Appalachia or
the Mississippi Delta or the Rio Grande Valley grows up with the same
shot at success that Charlotte will,” Mrs. Clinton wrote, referring to
her new granddaughter.
Mrs.
Clinton will begin testing that and other themes in earnest beginning
on Sunday and stretching through next week when she travels to Iowa and
later this month to New Hampshire for a series of small-scale events
where she can field questions and address the concerns of the voters her
campaign calls “everyday Americans,” people made aware of her plans
said.
In
the early months of the Democratic primary contest, Mrs. Clinton’s
campaign hopes to capture some of the magic of her successful 2000 run
for the Senate in New York, when she worked to show some of the common
touch that had helped catapult her husband to the White House. Her
governing principle in the 2000 campaign was demonstrating that she
would work hard to earn every vote.
Mrs.
Clinton’s team is also planning a slow expansion of its staff over the
course of the year, deliberately avoiding the appearance of a battleship
heading into the fight, as her organization seemed on her entry into
the 2008 Democratic campaign. Back then, Mrs. Clinton arrived at some
events in Iowa on a chartered aircraft called the “Hill-A-Copter” that
became a symbol for how her campaign spent heavily in the early voting
states, leaving her short of cash as the primary contest dragged on.
But
even as Mrs. Clinton attempts to set aside her celebrity and offer
herself as a fighter for ordinary voters, her finance team and the
outside groups supporting her candidacy have started collecting checks
in what is expected to be a $2.5 billion effort, dwarfing the vast
majority of her would-be rivals in both parties.
The
Clinton campaign’s fund-raising staff and other aides have already
started working out of a new headquarters in Brooklyn, with almost the
entire team working there on Friday.
Mrs.
Clinton has fielded advice from more than 200 policy experts in
formulating her economic agenda and still has not settled on the
details. Rather than deliver a robust policy speech immediately, she
intends to ease into presenting her ideas for alleviating the growing
gap between rich and poor and for increasing wages, said several people
involved in her plans. The slow pace will allow her to continue to
generate news coverage as Republican presidential hopefuls engage in
heated debates in their crowded primary field.
But
the essence of Mrs. Clinton’s message has become clearer and was
reiterated in the new epilogue of her memoir on Friday. “You shouldn’t
have to be the granddaughter of a president or a secretary of state to
receive excellent health care, education, enrichment, and all the
support and advantages that will one day lead to a good job and a
successful life,” she wrote.
Many
factors played into the timing of Mrs. Clinton’s announcement. Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida, whom Mrs. Clinton’s advisers are watching
closely as a potential opponent, staked a claim on Monday as his
announcement date. Mrs. Clinton’s announcement on Sunday will certainly
draw attention from Mr. Rubio’s entry into the race and could well
eclipse it.
Some
in her campaign are betting that Democrats will applaud the show of
force against a Republican. (Others involved insisted the date was
selected before Mr. Rubio scheduled his event, but said that the
juxtaposition was an added bonus.)
Mrs.
Clinton’s advisers are holding a conference call for her entire staff
on Saturday afternoon, according to two people briefed about it. For all
the planning that went into Sunday’s event, her team has been working
feverishly in recent days, another sign of how the campaign’s
infrastructure has been slow to take shape.
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