Declaring that “it’s go time!” in an email to supporters, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign kicked off a grassroots organizing push Wednesday to sign up volunteers and set up bases of operation in every state.
The effort, dubbed Ramp Up Grassroots Organizing Program, included campaign staff deployed to all 50 states, territories and Washington, D.C., to enlist volunteers, train them and help set house parties, days of action and other community events to coalesce a movement around Mrs. Clinton, according to the campaign.
The email linked to a video on the campaign’s Hillary for America website and a volunteer sign-up page.
“This is your campaign. This is your time,” Mrs. Clinton said in the video. “There’s gong to be campaigns in all 50 states and we are going to need as many people as we can to volunteer and to sign up, to help us organize, because I need your voices to be speaking out on behalf of the issues that we think are important.”
The campaign said the program showed that the former first lady, senator and secretary of state was determined to build a grassroots movement about everyday Americans, not herself, and that she was campaigning in every state because she doesn’t take winning the primary for granted.
Still, the nationwide drive also could signal that Mrs. Clinton, who is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination, had already set her sights on the general election. Her preparation to compete in every state bares a striking resemblance to 50-state strategy promoted by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and used successfully by President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Mrs. Clinton began her run with a series of small events last week in Iowa and this week in New Hampshire, testing the political waters with broad campaign themes and avoiding taking positions on hot-button issues.
Nevertheless, her charm offensive managed to win over some skeptical Democratic activists in those early voting states.
“I was not a Hillary supporter two weeks ago and I was hoping someone else would come out and challenge her, but I was really impressed with the roll out of her campaign,” said Robert Shields, Democratic Party chairman in Buchanan County, Iowa.
“I think it is more of what she did than what she said,” he said of Mrs. Clinton’s interaction with voters at coffee shops and small roundtable discussion groups. “I think she is genuine, or at least she’s given that impression.”
Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to unveil her campaign agenda next month with speeches at large rallies. By then, the grassroots organizing teams across the country will have put together house parities to watch Mrs. Clinton lay out her vision, said campaign officials.
“Organizing is the heart and soul of this campaign,” Marlon Mashall, director of state campaigns and political engagement, said in the video. “Face-to-face conversations with your friends and neighbors are how we will win. So we are doubling down on old school organizing.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton took time off the campaign trail to present the Hillary Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security at Georgetown University in Washington.
In the academic setting, she avoided partisan politics as she extolled the role of women as “agents of change, they are drivers of progress, and makers of peace.”
Mrs. Clinton highlighted her experiences at the State Department, which took her around the world and to some of the hot spots that are also at the forefront of the struggles involving women and women’s rights.
She recalled visiting a 10-year-old girl in Yemen who was trying to get a divorce from a marriage she’d been “bartered into with a much older man,” standing up for women in Saudi Arabia who were arrested “for daring to drive cars,” and warning before the Arab Spring that regimes “were going to sink into the sands unless significant reforms were to occur,” according to a pool report.
“Those travels to many countries, 112 in all, really brought home to me how important it is that everyone be able to participate,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We are at our strongest when we are inclusive, when we use the talents and the energies of every person.”
The former first lady, senator and top diplomat noted that women have made progress on health and education, enabling elementary school-age girls to get nearly to parity to attending school with their brothers and cutting maternal mortality rate.
“But in several areas we haven’t and one of those is peace and security. How do we do more to end conflicts which now principally affect women and children, and how do we do more to bring more women into that process of peacemaking,” she said.
“We can’t see women as victims. We must see them as so much more,” said Mrs. Clinton. “They are agents of change, they are drivers of progress, and yes, they are makers of peace.”
The awards named after Mrs. Clinton were created by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in 2014. Mrs. Clinton also serves as the honorary founding chair of the institute.
The recipients of the awards this year were UN Envoy for Afghanistan Staffan de Mistura and Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, who served as the chief negotiator of the Philippines government in the Mindanao Peace Talks.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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