Hillary Clinton

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Clinton campaign hires paid staffers for California

Posted on by Josh Richman

Two seasoned political operatives have signed on as paid staff for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in California.

The Clinton campaign announced Wednesday that it’s deploying paid staff in each of the 50 states who’ll coordinate local grassroots organizing meetings and house parties, engaging her supporters and training volunteers. California’s paid staffers are Ian Leviste and Sam Schneidman, a Clinton campaign official said Thursday.

Schneidman, 26, the Northern California organizer, most recently worked as field director for the Australian Labor Party, but earlier was an organizer for President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Nevada, Alaska and Iowa. He also was a legislative intern for Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla. , and for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Leviste, 28, the Southern California organizer, has been working as deputy Western field director for the Ready for Hillary PAC that was laying groundwork for the campaign.

Their mandate is old-school organizing: block-by-block, person-to-person contact. In the short term, they’ll be organizing house parties at which supporters can watch Clinton lay out her vision of the campaign during a formal kickoff next month.

As the Huffington Post noted Wednesday, hiring paid staffers all across the nation is reminiscent of “the ‘50-state strategy’ pushed by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean when he was chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Dean argued that Democrats shouldn’t concede any state as ‘unwinnable’ and should invest resources in building an infrastructure in every single state.”

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Clinton taps Kamala Harris’ sister as policy advisor

Posted on by Josh Richman

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has named California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ younger sister, civil rights attorney Maya Harris, to help lead her campaign’s policy team.

Maya HarrisMaya Harris – who also is the wife of former Associate Attorney General Tony West, who stepped down last year from his third-in-command post at the U.S. Justice Department – most recently was a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. Before that, she was vice president for democracy, rights and justice at the Ford Foundation; before that, she was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, based in San Francisco.

Harris, 48, is one of three senior policy advisers Clinton named Tuesday to lead the development of her campaign’s agenda, Politico reported. The others are Ann O’Leary, a former legislative director to Clinton when she was in the Senate; and Jake Sullivan, a top aide to Clinton while she was Secretary of State and a former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

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Clinton aims to break James Buchanan’s curse

Posted on by Josh Richman

James_BuchananMy article in today’s editions about the Bay Area being “Ready for Hillary” included this historical fact: “Six American presidents had prior experience both as members of Congress and as cabinet secretaries; the most recent one, James Buchanan, left office in 1861. Then again, Buchanan is widely panned for letting the nation slide into the Civil War; as divisive a figure as Clinton might be, she’ll never top that.”

In case you were wondering, the other presidents who had been both members of Congress and cabinet secretaries were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren.

Also, Buchanan both was the last to succeed a fellow Democrat to the presidency by election, and was the last former U.S. Secretary of State to win the White House — a pair of 19th-century curses Clinton hopes to break.

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Hillary Clinton hires Google exec for campaign tech

Posted on by Josh Richman

A longtime Google executive will run the tech division of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Washington Post reports.

Stephanie HannonStephanie Hannon, Google’s director of product management for civic innovation and social impact, will be the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, charged with building new ways for the former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady to engage with voters, sources told the Post. Hannon, a 40-year-old Democrat from San Francisco, is the first woman to hold the top tech post in a major presidential campaign.

My colleague Matt O’Brien has confirmed with Google that Hannon is departing to go work for Clinton.

Hannon’s LinkedIn profile shows she has held her current post at Google since March 2013, “building innovative technology to help people broaden engagement with their community, government and nonprofits” with a focus on “changing how the world prepares and responds to natural disasters, using big data and experiments to enable cities to make evidenced based decisions and sharing transparent election ballot, candidate and results globally.”

Here’s Hannon speaking last year about share how Google helps cities make better decisions with data:

Earlier, she was a product manager at Facebook from 2012 to 2013, working in site integrity and trust engineering – that is, “building product features and operations tools to ensure Facebook is a safe space for communication where people use their authentic identities.”

Earlier still, she was a vice president at Eventbrite from late 2011 to early 2012; a cofounder at Sensey, a startup that aimed to bring web technology to residential energy management through smart thermostats, in 2011; and a Google product manager from 2004 to 2011 in Mountain View, Zurich, and Sydney, Australia. And she was a software engineer at Cisco Systems from 1996 to 2002.

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Hillary on Blackberries, Fitbits and tighty-whities

Posted on by Josh Richman

After Hillary Clinton finished her speech Tuesday at the Lead On Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women in Santa Clara, she sat for a Q-and-A session with noted tech pundit Kara Swisher. Before getting to more serious stuff, they took a quick run through gadgets, Fitbit guilt, and appearing in front of 37.3 million viewers in one’s tighty-whities:

SWISHER: So I want to ask the big question, iPhone or Android?

CLINTON: iPhone. (Cheers.) Okay, in full disclosure, and a Blackberry. And I think the president told you the same thing, because I think he really loves his.

SWISHER: Well, you know, it is –

CLINTON: There are reasons why when you start out in Washington on a Blackberry you stay on it in many instances. But, it’s also — I don’t know. I don’t throw anything away. I’m like two steps short of a hoarder. So I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry.

SWISHER: You know, if you lived in, and I go to Washington a lot lately, my kids are living there, and you would think Blackberry was the biggest company in the world form all the people that — because everybody uses it. All right, second one, Apple Watch or Fitbit?

CLINTON: Well, you can tell I’m not doing Fitbit and I haven’t gotten into the Apple Watch yet. I’m not in a wearable frame of mind yet. You know, I mean three people have given me a Fitbit or a Jawbone, and I look at it and I think do I really want something telling me I should do what I know I should do? I mean I have enough stress in my life avoiding doing what I’m told I should do, so I haven’t jumped off the ledge yet.

SWISHER: Okay. President of the United States, running for President of the United States or host of the Oscars next year, both jobs are open it seems?

CLINTON: Yes. Well, and both jobs are really painful from my own personal experience and observation. I don’t think I could do the “Birdman” man imitation. That goes back to the Fitbit conversation. I just couldn’t do that.

SWISHER: What about the president thing?

CLINTON: You know, there have been a lot more Oscar presentations than there have been presidents. So the pressure is probably somewhat less. It’s a one-night gig. And for many it’s just one night. And the other one it’s like a many-year commitment.

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Hillary Clinton in Silicon Valley next month

Posted on by Josh Richman

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State and presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, will give a paid speech at a women’s conference on professional development and personal growth next month in Silicon Valley.

Clinton is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women on Tuesday, Feb. 24 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

She last visited the Bay Area in October for a Democratic fundraiser; in August for a paid speech at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit; and in July to visit tech companies and tout her book.

Themed “Lead On,” next month’s nonpartisan, nonprofit conference is “a unique place for women coming together to promote professional development and personal growth, to further opportunities for connections and to inspire each another,” organizers say. “The day will feature one-of-a-kind discussions among thought leaders and industry experts about how women can rise to the top of their organizations; insight and expertise about navigating career and life transitions, and interactive sessions offering practical advice to help create and grow positive personal experiences outside the workplace.”

Others scheduled to speak at the conference include fashion icon Diane von Fürstenberg; former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson; artist and motivational speaker Candy Chang; and author and motivational speaker Brené Brown.