Hillary Clinton Emails: Domestic Politics, Image-Tending By Peter Nicholas And Byron Tau
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-emails-domestic-politics-image-tending-1435730314
While secretary of state, Clinton was keenly attentive to domestic political issues
The 3,000 pages of emails offer a window into the thinking of Mrs. Clinton and senior staff, who ran the State Department during President Barack Obama’s first term.
Mrs. Clinton, now the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, received numerous updates from her department advisers about the changing politics of gay rights and activists’ frustration with the Obama administration. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton both ran against gay marriage in 2008 but the politics of the issue were quickly changing within the Democratic Party after Mr. Obama’s election.
One top adviser sent Mrs. Clinton a 2009 Politico article titled “Gay groups grow impatient with Obama.” Advisers also shared a CNN article that emphasized Mrs. Clinton’s early role in pushing the Obama administration to give federal benefits to same-sex couples.
The emails also show Mrs. Clinton tending to her image. Shown an early draft of some remarks for a food event, Mrs. Clinton wrote to her top advisers, “Can we claim more leadership for you, me and State?”
A federal judge in May ordered the department to release emails monthly under a Freedom of Information Act request. The release made late Tuesday night was the first batch made public under that order.
The department previously released about 300 emails totaling more than 800 pages related specifically to the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Mrs. Clinton last year turned over to the State Department about 55,000 pages of emails from her time in office. The emails came from a personal server run out of her own home, an arrangement that was legal, but discouraged by Obama administration policy.
The emails show Mrs. Clinton engaged with domestic political figures. Call sheets, for instance, show she intended to phone then-Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, as well as Judith Hope, a political ally. She also plans dinner with Randi Weingarten, who heads the American Federation of Teachers, and Hilary Rosen, a Democratic political consultant. In another email, she asks for a phone number for Terry Murray, whom she describes as “President of the Mass State Senate and was a big supporter of mine during the primaries.”
In another email, Mrs. Clinton responded to learning that the Obama administration had decided not to participate in the U.S. Conference of Mayors and had asked cabinet agencies to withdraw from the event as well. “Why wouldn’t they [participate] in [Conference] of Mayors?” she wrote to an aide. “Can you try to find out? Maybe they don’t want to be associated [with] big cities? I had a lot of support from the [Conference] and the mayors so I hope that’s not it.”
The emails released Tuesday are rife with news clippings and information that reflect positively on Mrs. Clinton. One email to Mrs. Clinton in March, 2009 from a senior aide, Cheryl Mills, was a copy of an article about a national poll showing her approval rating was high.
In cases where Mrs. Clinton didn’t like the press coverage, she let her aides know.
In November 2009, she asked aides to request a correction to a Washington Post story about her campaign spending in 1999 and 2000, when she was running for the U.S. Senate. She said the comparisons the paper used were “misleading,” given the time frames of her campaign and an opponent’s. “Can you get correction somewhere?”
In one email message, Paul Begala, who helped Bill Clinton get elected president in 1992, told Ms. Mills that he had given “Sec. Clinton an A+ in our dopey CNN report card last night.”
The note was part of string of emails that included one to Mr. Begala from former department chief of protocol Capricia Marshall titled “Thank you so very much!!!” It refers to a fundraising effort that was apparently used to help Mrs. Clinton pay down debt from her failed 2008 presidential bid.
“We raised $500k from the email contest!!” Ms. Marshall wrote. “You are all amazing—the world adores you! You put a serious hole in hrc (Hillary Rodham Clinton) debt!”
—Laura Meckler and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this article.
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