Hillary Rodham Clinton added passion and verve to her speech Monday for a crowd of women voters in Iowa, laboring to stop a skid in the polls among a demographic that is key to her campaign strategy for winning both the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House.
Pledging to fight for economic empowerment of women and rolling out an agenda for combating sexual assault on college campuses, Mrs. Clinton displayed an earnestness that critics say has been missing from her tightly scripted campaign.
She stressed that the sexual assault issue was “deeply important to me.”
“It is not enough to condemn campus sexual assault, we need to end campus sexual assault,” the former secretary of state told the audience at a “Women for Hillary” organizing event at the University of Northern Iowa.
Mrs. Clinton has been sliding in the polls for weeks. But a CBS/YouGov survey of likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers released Monday highlighted how much support she had lost among women voters. Sen. Bernard Sanders broke out to a double-digit lead over Mrs. Clinton in the caucus race, 43 percent to 33 percent, and topped her among Iowa women voters, 41 percent to 36 percent, according to the poll.
The Clinton campaign has responded with a new strategy in which Mrs. Clinton will be more personable and present an authenticity of conviction that has been the hallmark of Mr. Sanders’ run.
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Mrs. Clinton’s new style was on display at the women’s event, as she outlined an agenda that includes raising the minimum wage, passing equal pay laws, providing child care and mandating paid sick leave for workers.
“An issue that affects women’s lives and women’s futures and the future of families and our economy is an issue that I take seriously and it is one that I’m campaigning on and it’s one that I will continue to speak out about,” she said. “Raising the minimum wage is a women’s issue.”
David J. Andersen, a political science professor at Iowa State University, said that Mrs. Clinton needed to show some excitement about her agenda to keep her supporters — especially women — from defecting.
“Women are probably the ones looking for some really important policy talk about things that women voters tend to care about, like health care, like education, like what we are going to do to make it easier on American families,” said Mr. Andersen, an expert on voter behavior. “Clinton has some good policy prescriptions in these areas but she doesn’t seem excited about it.”
“Instead of just standing out in front of a crowd and just being herself, she is allowing herself to be managed. She is a product that has a marketing campaign and, you know, I think people are tired of that,” he said. “People just want to hear who the candidates really are and what they really stand for. And I think if Hillary finally starts doing that she is going to surge in the polls.”
Mrs. Clinton’s tumble in the polls has been attributed to the growing scandal over her exclusive use of a private email account for official business as secretary of state, including scrutiny of her handling of classified material that spurred an FBI investigation that conceivably could result in criminal charges.
However, the CBS/YouGov poll found that 74 percent of likely Iowa Democratic voters said that the email scandal “doesn’t matter,” while 22 percent said it made them less likely to voter for her.
Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent and avowed socialist whose economic justice agenda has caught fire with Democratic voters, also has taken the lead in several polls in New Hampshire, home to the nation’s first primary.
Just last month, Mrs. Clinton garnered more than 50 percent of the vote in Iowa and nationally, beating Mr. Sanders by as much as 30 points.
In her speech yesterday, Mrs. Clinton touted her long history of championing women’s rights, including her trip to Beijing as first lady when she made headlines by challenging China’s treatment of women.
“I went to Beijing in 1995 on behalf of the United States to state what should be obvious but need to be said, that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights for once and for all,” she recalled.
She outlined a plan to fight what she called the “epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses.” Her plan included more services for victims, a greater emphasis on fairness in the process of handling allegations of sexual assault and increased criminal prosecution of rapes on campus.
“Rape is a crime wherever it happens,” said Mrs. Clinton, adding that universities and colleges have an obligation to report to police any allegations of rape.
Speaking about economic empowerment through raising the minimum wage, Mrs. Clinton called for a “groundswell of support” for abolishing the tip minimum wage, which allows workers such as restaurant servers and bartenders to be paid as little as $2.13 per hour with the expectation that tips will add up to at least the legal minimum wage.
“In fact they may not get those tips or they have to be harassed on the job to get those tips, or even worse their employer pockets those tips,” said Mrs. Clinton. “So when we raise the minimum wage we are going to do away with this incredible injustice of the tip minimum wage.”
She concluded her speech with an often-used reference to her ambition to be the United State’s first female president.
“Please join me in helping to build an America where everyone has a shot at achieving their dreams and living up to their potential and, yes, where a father can say to his daughter, ’You can be anything you want, even president of the United States,’” she said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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