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For Hillary Clinton, 'Small' Events Still Draw a Frenzy of Attention - New York Times




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Clinton Holds First Campaign Event



Clinton Holds First Campaign Event



Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced her campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday, held a round-table discussion on education on Tuesday in Iowa.


By Associated Press on April 14, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.


MONTICELLO, Iowa — For the start to a presidential campaign in which small-and-personal is the order of the day, “I” and “me” are out and it is supposed to be all about “you,” Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down for an intimate round table chat on Tuesday with a handful of community college students and employees.


Dozens of news media members were looking on, with dozens more outside because they could not squeeze in (including Japanese-, German-, Spanish- and Swedish-speaking journalists), and live television feeds allowed cable news commentators to dissect Mrs. Clinton’s every word and gesture in real time.



It was a frenzy of attention that began when a flock of journalists sprinted across a grassy lawn outside a branch of Kirkwood Community College, in this rural corner of Iowa, to try to record the moment of Mrs. Clinton’s arrival. It ended with others live-streaming instant analyses from cellphones, frantically innovating for a rapidly evolving digital world, while viewers offered their own running commentary criticizing the reporters, the candidate and the dubious newsworthiness of the entire spectacle.




Mrs. Clinton talks during a stop on Tuesday in Le Claire, Iowa. The campaign is emphasizing intimate gatherings. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Politics is replete with theater of the absurd, but Mrs. Clinton’s first retail campaigning excursion, a conversation with just seven Iowans, called to mind a head-on collision between a celebrity candidate who desperately wants to present an everywoman’s approachability and a news media desperate to cover every aspect of that candidacy exactly as it unfolds.


On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton tried to talk to students as a concerned advocate and not as someone so famous that her lunch order the day before had made headlines.


She took notes and spoke about the importance of making college more affordable. She asked questions (“Are there many students doing what you’re doing?”) and responded with enthusiasm (“That’s terrific! You’ll only have to pay for two years of a four-year college?”). And she proved she had studied up on specific issues affecting this critical state: College graduates in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton said, have the “ninth-highest debt load in the country.”


But before any of that, Mrs. Clinton delivered a roughly nine-minute stump speech aimed more at a national audience, with the tools and cars of an auto repair classroom providing the back-to-work backdrop.


“It’s fair to say as you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top,” she said. “There is something wrong when hedge-fund managers pay less in taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80.”






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She talked about her mother’s struggles as a young woman, her work as an advocate for disabled schoolchildren and her efforts at health care reform in the White House.


“I’ve thought a lot about it, and I guess the short answer is I’ve been fighting for children and families my entire adult life,” Mrs. Clinton said.


Ever since Sunday, when Mrs. Clinton announced she would run for president to be a “champion” for “everyday Americans” and hopped into a van to make the two-day trip to Iowa, her campaign had emphasized how down-to-earth it would be.


Before arriving here on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton stopped in for a chai tea at the Jones Street Java House in nearby Le Claire, Iowa. “Hi, everybody,” she said. “Thank you for having us and all of these people. I love it.”


There was no motorcade, only a couple of black vans without markings; no signs with her campaign’s new logo — a blue “H” with a bold red arrow pointing right — leading to the community college event.






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An aide instructed the students who waited (and waited) to meet Mrs. Clinton to address her not as “Madame Secretary” but as “Hillary.”


Yet, for all the stagecraft that went into making Mrs. Clinton’s first campaign stop look quaint and unscripted, some things were outside her aides’ control: the scattering of protesters; the classrooms filled with students who were stuck, unable to leave or use the restroom, as the Secret Service did its preparatory work; and the scores of journalists, most of whom had flown to Des Moines and driven nearly three hours northeast to Monticello on 48 hours’ notice.


Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by Huma Abedin, her longtime aide, who is the vice chairwoman of the campaign; Nick Merrill, a press secretary; and Jim Margolis, the campaign’s media adviser. At least a half-dozen Iowa-based campaign workers worked to set up and manage the event.


Iowans seemed to appreciate the attention, but also to recognize its artificiality. “I’m guessing this was a campaign manager advising her to do this,” said Corey Jones, a 17-year-old student in the small audience allowed in to watch Mrs. Clinton’s round-table discussion. “It doesn’t seem like it was her idea.”


Keith Stamp, a member of the college’s board of directors, said he was grateful that Mrs. Clinton had chosen their community for her first stop. “We know some of this is staged, but it’s about as good as it’s going to get when you’re running for president,” he said.



Mrs. Clinton’s early campaign could look much the same as she meets with voters in small groups elsewhere in Iowa and in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in the coming weeks. On Wednesday, she is to tour a family-owned fruit distributor in Norwalk, Iowa, followed by another round table, this time with small-business owners and employees.


The strategy is a sharp contrast with 2008, when Mrs. Clinton tried to draw bigger crowds to compete with Barack Obama’s large-scale rallies. Six years ago, Mrs. Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, drew as many as 1,000 people to one rally in this county of 20,000. But the big crowds did not translate to a strong turnout in the Iowa caucuses, and Mrs. Clinton placed third behind Mr. Obama and John Edwards.


This time, aides say, the campaign wants to place Mrs. Clinton in smaller settings where they believe voters will see how informed and animated she is in talking about policy and its implications.


Iowans are sophisticated consumers of politics, though, and some students who were not handpicked for the round table by the college’s administration pointed out the strategic shift.


“She’s going back and fixing her mistake,” said Hallie Corum, 17, a high school student. “I don’t think it’s very genuine. It’s not open-forum. It’s all scripted.”


Others just wanted a chance to get to know the real Mrs. Clinton.


Brianna Langdon, 20, who was chosen to participate in the round table, said her only real impression of Mrs. Clinton came from “Saturday Night Live.”


“They portray her as all about herself,” Ms. Langdon said, “so I’m hoping today to see that she’s not.”




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A version of this article appears in print on April 15, 2015, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: For Clinton, ‘Small’ Events Still Draw a Frenzy of Attention.











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