Hillary Clinton's road trip: political (and middle) class welcome change in style

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/hillary-clinton-iowa-scooby-van-campaign-president

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A cross-country road trip and a van affectionately named “Scooby” are hardly enough to recast the world’s most famous female politician as just another American driving across Interstate 80.

But Hillary Clinton’s 1,000-mile presidential kickoff journey – from her $2.4m mansion in Chappaqua, New York, to a series of sit-downs in the American heartland that culminates on Wednesday in Norwalk, Iowa – appears to have succeeded, at least temporarily, in brushing off the image of a political royal awaiting coronation for a “champion” of the people ready for battle.

In the days since the former first lady, senator and secretary of state entered the race for the White House, pollsters, strategists and even a politician who road-tripped through his state to win voters say Clinton’s opening act was savvy – if not quite “pitch-perfect”.

“Will this make her more relatable? No,” said Geoffrey Skelley, a political scientist at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and an editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the nonpartisan political forecaster. “It’s like an SNL skit: ‘Look at me – I’m so relatable.’

Related: Can 'Obamadale' become 'Clintondale'? Iowa progressives await humble Hillary

“But I think it’s a case of Hillary’s campaign doing its due diligence,” he said. “It sends the message to voters that she’s learned from the past and that she doesn’t believe she has the nomination wrapped up.”

The Clinton campaign is acutely aware that it cannot take – or have the appearance of taking – anything for granted in Iowa, the early caucus state where Clinton finished behind both Barack Obama and John Edwards in 2008.

“We understand one thing – and we understand that we have to earn this,” a senior aide told reporters on a conference call earlier this week. An internal campaign-staff strategy memo, circulated before Clinton’s highly anticipated launch on social media and obtained by the Guardian on Sunday, declared simply: “We are humble.” On Wednesday, campaign manager Robby Mook sent an email to supporters adding that “we’ll have fun”.

The road trip, which senior aides swear was Clinton’s own idea, began shortly after her announcement on Sunday. Clinton, joined by two longtime aides and a clutch of secret service agents, quietly took off in a tricked-out Chevrolet Express 1500 to meet “everyday” Americans.

When the van first popped up on Sunday evening in Pennsylvania, where her father was born, and where she won in 2008, Clinton tweeted a photo with a Michigan family she met at a gas station.

In an interview later, Chris Learn, a 19-year-old student, told CNN that he spotted Clinton at a Pilot gas station and immediately recognized her. He told the network that Clinton chatted with him and asked him a couple of questions.

“She didn’t really say why she was there, but I was guessing it was for presidential stuff,” he said.

Later on Sunday, Clinton dined, apparently incognito, at a Chipotle Mexican Grill in the swing state of Ohio, where she ordered a chicken burrito bowl with guacamole and “no one really noticed”, the restaurant’s manager told the Guardian. The closed-circuit footage – sunglasses and all – quickly went viral.

Spotted: @HillaryClinton ordering Chipotle in Ohio, security footage (and Clinton aide) confirms. (ht @jasonvolack) pic.twitter.com/cbofpGwkra

On Monday, Clinton grabbed attention when she stopped at the Jones Street Java House in Le Claire, Iowa. This time, she was less low-key. “Hi, everybody,” Clinton reportedly told patrons of the coffee shop. “Thank you for having us and all of these people. I love it.”

Later that day, Clinton’s caravan pulled into an Iowa community college, where she sat for a roundtable discussion with a handful of pre-selected students and educators. Clinton laid out for the first time since declaring her candidacy the building blocks of her nascent campaign, which include revitalizing the economy, supporting families, keeping unlimited spending out of politics and defending against threats seen and unseen.

A throng of reporters flocked to the van; voters were mostly off the premises.

Embarrassing. Reporters chase after Hillary's Scooby van. https://t.co/4miinTe9WU

“It’s a great first day,” Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who ran for president in 2004, said Tuesday on MSNBC. “There’s a big difference … between what the media thinks is important and what the ordinary American thinks.”

John Weaver, an adviser to John McCain during his two presidential runs who also ran Jon Huntsman’s campaign in 2012, said he was “impressed” by the campaign kick-off.

“As a political tactic and something to slightly recalibrate her image, I thought it was smart,” Weaver said.

It appears the presidential campaign rollout has earned bipartisan support.

David Axelrod, the strategist behind Obama’s two presidential campaigns, told the Des Moines Register that Clinton appears more authentic in her appeal to voters this time around.“Humility is the order of the day,” said Axelrod, who helped Obama defeat Clinton for the Democratic nomination. “In 2007, her campaign was this juggernaut of inevitability and it was a top-down experience. Voters don’t like to be told that their decision is predetermined. They want to be asked for their vote and more than that they want to have a genuine connection with the candidate.”

An anonymous survey of GOP insiders released by Politico on Wednesday found that most Republicans thought the former secretary of state’s announcement was a “savvy and effective campaign launch”.

“The drive to Iowa is the smartest play I’ve seen her make in a while,” a Republican in New Hampshire, where Clinton is expected to travel soon, with or without her van, told the website.

Perhaps he meant since 2000, when Clinton went on a listening tour in upstate New York to reintroduce herself to voters as a candidate rather than the former first lady. Weaver said the New York tour, which he called a “cousin” of the Iowa road trip, was executed “brilliantly” by Clinton’s then-campaign team, which launched a successful bid for senate before her confidants squandered an early advantage in chasing the White House seven years later.

More recently, the road-trip strategy was optimized by former veteran congressman Jack Kingston, who, facing a bitter primary last year, decided to hit the open road. His ride was simple, a 1993 Buick Roadmaster stationwagon, and his purpose clear: connect with everyday Georgians.

As Kingston, an 11-term Georgia congressman, drove through the lush farmlands and peach groves that dot his state, he stopped at convenience stores and gas stations along the way to introduce himself to constituents and share his platform.

“We were trying to show that I hadn’t lost touch,” said Kingston, who was running in 2014 for an open Senate seat in a crowded Republican primary. “That I was still the same guy I was when I was elected.”

Despite losing narrowly in a runoff election, Kingston said polling by his campaign showed that the road trip, and especially the station wagon, was well-received by voters. One major difference between Kingston’s road trip and Clinton’s, he said, was that he was trying to improve his name recognition. On the other hand, the former secretary of state, a household name for more than two decades, is seeking to redefine what it means to be a Clinton.

“She has lived in a bubble for 20-plus years,” Kingston said. “And this isn’t going to get her out of that bubble, but it’s at least doing something that gets her closer to the people.” He added with a smile, “Though I can’t really see her hopping out and filling up the tank.”

As the four-day road trip draws to a close, with Clinton due to return to New York on Thursday, some critics have pointed out that the sleek rollout has yet to answer fundamental questions: why is she running? And what is she really going to run on, beyond slightly more down-home appeal?

On Tuesday, Clinton promised reporters hungry for more than broad-brush talking points that there was “more to come”.

“I will be rolling out very specific policies over the weeks and months ahead that I think are going to be at the core of not only a successful campaign but, much more importantly, getting our government to work again,” she said.

Clinton will address another roundtable of small-business owners on Wednesday in the Des Moines suburb of Norwalk.

Shooing the idea that the campaign should have unveiled policy specifics along with the launch, Weaver said: “She’s got a track record that’s 20 years long. She can’t move too far away from the track record.”

He said the theatrics were part of the buildup and that there should be no rush to dive into policy at such an earlier stage, when most voters aren’t yet paying attention.

“The hardest thing in theater or in sports or in business or in politics?” Weaver said, “What is your second act.”

Additional reporting by Ben Jacobs