Basic bio info
The daughter of a small-business owner and homemaker, Hillary Rodham Clinton grew up in suburban Chicago. As a senior at Wellesley College, she delivered a 1969 commencement speech that earned national attention. At Yale Law School, she met Bill Clinton. After working as a child advocate, she followed her future husband back to Arkansas, where he launched his political career. In Arkansas, she was a lawyer at a top firm while Bill Clinton was governor. She advised her husband after he won the White House in 1992. When her time as first lady was over, she won election to the U.S. Senate, representing New York. She made a bid for the Democrats’ nominee for president, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state, a position in which she served for four years.
The couple’s 35-year-old daughter, Chelsea Clinton, gave birth to her first child, Charlotte, in September.
Her stand (entering the race)
Clinton — who made a run for the presidency before Barack Obama became the Democrats’ nominee in 2008 — jumped back into presidential politics on Sunday, April 12, making the much-awaited announcement she would again seek the White House with a promise to serve as the “champion” of everyday Americans.
Clinton opened her bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination by positioning herself as the heir to the diverse coalition of voters who elected her immediate predecessor and former campaign rival Obama, as well as an appeal to those in her party still leery of her commitment to fighting income inequality.
Unlike eight years ago, when she ran as a candidate with a deep resume in Washington, Clinton and her personal history weren’t the focus of the first message of her campaign. She made no mention of her time in the Senate and four years as secretary of state, or the prospect she could make history as the nation’s first female president.
Instead, the announcement video was a collection of voters talking about their lives, their plans and aspirations for the future. Clinton doesn’t appear until the very end.
“I’m getting ready to do something, too. I’m running for president, ” Clinton said. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.
“Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion, so you can do more than just get by. You can get ahead and stay ahead.”
It’s a message that also made an immediate play to win over the support of liberals in her party for whom economic inequality has become a defining issue. They remain skeptical of Clinton’s close ties to Wall Street and the centrist economic policies of the administration of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
“When families are strong, America is strong. 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, ” she said in the video.
Her support
Clinton could make history: No woman has been a major party’s presidential nominee or been elected president.
A 1995 address in Beijing and her final campaign event in 2008 are considered signature moments. As first lady, Clinton declared in a speech at a U.N. conference on women that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” The speech challenged human rights abuses of women and helped set the tone for Clinton’s work years later in the State Department. Her 2008 speech, delivered after Obama locked up the nomination, told supporters they had made “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling, denoting the number of primary votes she won. It left the impression of unfinished business and the potential for a woman eventually to win the White House.
While in Congress, Clinton introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act and plans to push such legislation.
Of course, her support isn’t among a single gender. Her stands appeal to many Democrats, including such issues as building on health care access and on immigration reform that includes creating a path to citizenship.
Her critics
Her many years in politics not only means she has name recognition but also means she (along with her husband) has faced her share of political scandals over the years.
As first lady to President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, she was a driving figure in a failed health care overhaul and lived through multiple ethics investigations and her husband’s impeachment. Her critics remember her for blaming her husband’s scandals on a “vast right wing conspiracy.”
She’s faced criticism from within her own party despite being the presumed front-runner even before she announced her candidacy this year. Her Senate vote for the 2002 Iraq invasion became a point of contention in 2008; Obama had spoken out against the “dumb war.” At the State Department, she was a hawkish member of Obama’s national security team. And her status quo as a political insider, including ties to big-money donors, doesn’t sit well with some Democrats as well as independents and Republicans.
Her tenure as secretary of state has brought the most recent political discord over her record. Four Americans, including the ambassador, died in an attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. Clinton has been pressed to explain three key points: why, in the months leading up to the attacks, requests for increased security in Benghazi were not heeded; why a “talking points” memo after the deadly incident did not spotlight terrorism but suggested the attack was in response to an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. and that extremists “hijacked” supposed street protests; and why more immediate military was not available. After several official investigations, the questions persist and Clinton faced Congress about the deadly attack again as recently as Oct. 22 in an 11-hour House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing.
Also mentioned at the latest Benghazi hearing was another diplomatic scandal: her use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department. While she has maintained that rules allowed the practice, questions about what was and wasn’t on that server — including sensitive diplomatic and security information because of her high position — has continued to dog her. She finally told ABC News when asked about the private email server in a September interview: “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”
