CEDAR
RAPIDS, Iowa — The big rallies and massive fundraising blitzes have to
wait. Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting her 2016 campaign for president
started with a few caffeinated beverages and says she's ready to "drink
my way across Iowa."
"Hi,
everybody," Clinton said Tuesday after popping into the Jones Street
Java House, a coffee shop in the Mississippi River town of LeClaire.
"I'm happy to be here."
Fresh
from a two-day road trip, Clinton's coffee shop stop Tuesday morning is
the first event in her return to presidential politics. It sticks with
her strategy to hold small "retail" style events that allow her to speak
to individual voters. She doesn't plan to hold a large kickoff rally
for several weeks, and will tour a community college and hold a
roundtable discussion with students and teachers in Monticello, Iowa,
later Tuesday.
It's
a debut reminiscent of the "listening tour" that opened her campaign
for Senate in 2000, when she ventured into small upstate towns to
convene meetings with voters and local leaders. At the coffee shop, she
asked for recommendations on what to order, and decided on a Masala chai
and a Carmela latte, along with some water with lemon. Her total:
$6.96.
Among
those she spoke with was LeClaire Mayor Bob Scannell, an independent.
"I always vote for the person who I think will do best for the country,
and she has my vote," he said.
In
a fundraising email to supporters on Monday, Clinton promised not to
take anything for granted and to "work my heart out to earn every single
vote."
Clinton
is taking that same low-key approach to fundraising, forgoing the
celebrity-studded fundraisers that marked her husband's presidency, as
well as the high-dollar private events put on this year by former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential GOP rival. Instead, Clinton's initial
appeals for money will be for small-dollar donations collected over the
Internet instead of in swanky fundraising blowouts in New York, Los
Angeles and Silicon Valley.
Advisers
have set a modest goal of raising $100 million for the primary campaign
and will not initially accept donations for the general election.
"Everyone
knows that over time Hillary Clinton will raise enough to be
competitive," said Tom Nides, a top Wall Street supporter and former
State Department adviser to Clinton. "Her objective is not to raise
money to prove that she can. It's to build the grassroots organization."
Clinton
retains deep ties to the party's top fundraisers, including those
cultivated by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, during the
1990s. During its first call with donors Monday, Hillary Clinton's team
noted that some of those listening in helped President Barack Obama's
campaigns, while others had raised money for Clinton's own White House
bid in 2008. Others, they said, were new to the fundraising circuit.
With
those relationships well established, her aides on Monday outlined
steps to cast their net as widely as possible to broaden their list of
potential contributors, according to several donors who took part. They
spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conference call.
In
the fundraising email, Clinton asked supporters to "chip in what you
can," asking for donations ranging from $5 and $25 to the maximum of
$2,700 per individual during the primary. Her campaign intends to slowly
ramp up its fundraising efforts, focusing first on online fundraising
and building a network of donors whom the campaign will be able to
return to in the weeks and months ahead.
"It's
not going to be the big event rollout right now. The idea is to get
people involved," said Miami attorney Ira Leesfield, a longtime Clinton
friend and fundraiser.
Clinton
wrapped up a roughly 1,000-mile road trip from her home in New York
City's suburbs to Iowa. Riding aboard a van nicknamed "Scooby," after
the cartoon character Scooby-Doo, Clinton surprised fellow travelers
Sunday at a gas station in Pennsylvania and then made a lunch stop
Monday at a Chipotle south of Toledo, Ohio.
In
Iowa, Clinton aims to overcome her disappointing third-place finish in
the 2008 caucuses. Her team says they want to build a grassroots
campaign that will help rebuild the state's Democratic Party, which
suffered losses in the 2014 elections.
Her
events Tuesday and Wednesday will focus heavily on pocketbook economic
issues in small-town Iowa, and Clinton was expected to connect with
local officials, community leaders and Democratic activists.
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