Correct The Record Friday January 23, 2015 Afternoon Roundup

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*​**Correct The Record Friday January 23, 2015 Afternoon Roundup:* *Tweets:* *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: NEW RECORD ANALYSIS: @HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton>: Smart Energy Innovation http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-smart-energy-innovation/ … <http://t.co/0W7vLH2GZP> [1/23/15, 8:58 a.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/558624743255834625>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> has been a leading advocate for a woman's right to choose #HRC365 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash> http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=92062 <http://t.co/nZrbmQH14C> [1/22/15, 3:49 p.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/558365896100831232>] *Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: Correcting your record, @AmericaRising <https://twitter.com/AmericaRising> MT @danmericaCNN <https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN>: Secret Service says report of 65 agents is "grossly inaccurate and exaggerated." [1/22/15, 2:48 p.m. EST <https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/558350412865363968>] *Headlines:* *FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “Beltway Press Loves To Cover Polling, Except When It's Hillary's” <http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/23/beltway-press-loves-to-cover-polling-except-whe/202248>* “Clearly, different media rules apply to her.” *New York Times: “In Prelude to 2016, Anti-Clinton Groups Are Just Beginning” <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/us/politics/in-prelude-to-2016-anti-hillary-clinton-groups-are-just-beginning.html?_r=0>* “David Brock, founder of Correct the Record, a project that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media, and a onetime conservative critic of the Clintons, published the e-book ‘The Benghazi Hoax’ in 2013 that defends Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya.” *BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton Has Deep History With Latinos And There’s Not A Lot The GOP Can Do About It” <http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/hillary-clinton-has-deep-history-with-latinos-and-theres-not#.qyZPPowyq>* “Even for a candidate who has been on the national stage for decades, Clinton’s history with Latino voters goes back a surprisingly long way.” *The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Hillary Clinton to speak at political journalism award ceremony” <http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/230523-hillary-clinton-to-speak-at-political-journalism-award-ceremony>* “Robin Toner, for whom the award is named, was the first woman to be the national political correspondent for The New York Times, and she covered much of Clinton's career before dying of cancer in 2008.” *New York Times: First Draft: “Reading the Tea Leaves: More Fund-Raisers by Clinton Allies” <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/01/23/?entry=8807&_r=2>* “The final event on the schedule is on March 14, suggesting that the group — which has indicated it will shut down if Mrs. Clinton formally announces her plans — expects to be in business through the beginning of the spring.” *Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Will 2016 Democrats Position on Obama’s Economic Record?” <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/23/how-will-2016-democrats-position-on-obamas-economic-record/>* “Mr. Biden isn’t likely to announce a decision until the summer, a couple of months after Mrs. Clinton is expected to enter the race. Should the two of them square off, Mr. Biden –as the sitting vice president – would be better positioned to make the argument that he would carry forward the positive pieces of Mr. Obama’s economic legacy.” *Politico blog: Dylan Byers: “N.Y. Times adds Patrick Healy to 2016 team” <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/01/ny-times-adds-patrick-healy-to-team-201513.html>* "Healy covered Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008 and helped establish the first political blog on the Times' website. Ryan wrote he'll work closely with Jonathan Martin, who is leading the paper's 2016 coverage." *Articles:* *FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “Beltway Press Loves To Cover Polling, Except When It's Hillary's” <http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/23/beltway-press-loves-to-cover-polling-except-whe/202248>* By Eric Boehlert January 23, 2015 [Subtitle:] Big Leads Make For Boring Storylines How long will the press remain allergic to Hillary Clinton polling data? It's weird, right? For decades, pundits and reporters have worshiped at the altar of public polling, using results as tangible proof that certain political trends are underway, as well as to keep track of campaign season fluctuations. And that's even truer in recent years with the rise of data journalism. Crunching the political numbers has been elevated to a new and respected art form. But that newsroom trend seems to be losing out to another, more powerful force as the 2016 cycle gears up. No longer viewing their job as reporting the lay of the campaign land, more and more journalists seem to have embraced the idea that their role is to help tell a compelling story, even if that means making the narrative more interesting, or competitive, than it really is. The press "desperately wants to cover some Democratic story other than the Clinton Coronation," Bloomberg's David Weigel reported last year. NBC's Chuck Todd conceded it's the Beltway "press corps" that's suffers from so-called Clinton fatigue. The Atlantic's Molly Ball was among those suggesting that Clinton's candidacy is boring and that the American people are already "tired" of the former Secretary of State. A Washington Post/ABC News poll this week provided little in terms of narrative excitement, but it was newsworthy nonetheless. It showed Clinton with a commanding 15-point lead over former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and a 13-point lead over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, two of the best-known Republicans considering White House runs. Nobody should think that polling results 20-plus months before an election signals certainty. But in terms of context, when the Washington Post and ABC began hypothetical polling in 2011 for Obama's re-election run, its survey showed the president enjoyed a four point lead of Romney at the time. (Obama went on to win by four points.) Today at a similar juncture, Clinton's lead over Romney stands at an astounding 15 points. And so what kind of media response did the Clinton poll produce this week? Mostly shrugs; the press didn't seem to care. The morning the poll was published, NBC's daily political tip sheet, First Read's Morning Clips, omitted any reference to Clinton's enormous advantage in their laundry list of must-read articles for the day. On cable news, the coverage was minimal. Or put it this way, CNN mentioned the Clinton poll once yesterday, while CNN mentioned "Tom Brady" nearly 100 times, according to TVeyes.com. "Clinton Enjoys Enormous Lead" is just not a headline the press wants to dwell on. So polling data is often tossed in the dustbin, clearing the way for pundits and reporters to form whatever storyline they want about Clinton and her possible 2016 run. (Hint: She's in trouble! Her book tour was a "disaster"!) Here's a perfect press example. Rounding out the calendar with a look at how a host of possible presidential candidates performed in 2014, National Journal published a year-end piece with this headline: Jeb, Rand, Marco Exit 2014 Strong. Hillary, Not So Much; Some Presidential Contenders Capitalized in 2014. But Many Look Worse Today Than a Year Ago According to National Journal, even though Clinton remains the frontrunner and will be hard to beat, her political standing looks "worse" than it did a year ago, compared to Sen. Marco Rubio, whose stock apparently rose in 2014. What was omitted from the article? Campaign polling data. What would that data have looked like had it been included? It would have showed that 66 percent of Democrats would support Clinton's run for the Democratic nomination, according to a December CNN poll. Rubio? He's supported by five percent of Republicans, according to the same CNN survey. How does that compare to the one year ago? 63 percent of Democratic voters supported Clinton, according to CNN's polling at the time; nine percent backed Rubio. But National Journal omitted any figures and followed its gut: Rubio's stock rose in 2014, Clinton's sank. National Journal's hook for Clinton's downward year was that her "favorability" rating had fallen in 2014. But it only dipped three points all year. Rubio's favorability? It remains underwater. Do you think there's a single would-be candidate who'd rather be Rubio's position and not Clinton's? But wait, wasn't Clinton supposed to be "inevitable" in 2008 only to blow a gigantic lead in the primary campaign? And doesn't that mean her big polling lead today isn't really worth paying attention to? No and no. During this stage of the 2008 campaign, Clinton basically had a 15-to-18-point lead in Democratic primary polls. Today, it's approximately a 50-point lead. The two situations are not at all comparable, although journalists keep trying to make them analogous. To date, the disappearing polling coverage has most often centered on the supposed battle that's playing out between Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Fourteen months ago The New Republic published a cover story suggesting Warren would emerge as Clinton's "nightmare" foe because she represented a populist and progressive movement and could steal away the Democratic nomination. Journalists generally cheered the notion and spent more than a year echoing the claims, despite nearly 50 separate denials from Warren and her insistence about having no plans to run for president. Note that the same polls that showed Clinton with a 50-point lead over Warren in late 2013 when The New Republic story came out show Clinton maintaining essentially the same 50-point lead over Warren today. So politically, nothing much has happened among Democratic voters in terms of their commitment to Clinton. Some progressives have legitimate policy disagreements with Clinton, and it's possible that those ranks will swell in the future. But Beltway journalists, eager for a more interesting race to cover, have every incentive to inflate the degree to which that has happened to date. Specifically, there's been a media emphasis on the claim that Clinton's candidacy will be met with widespread unhappiness or indifference among liberal voters. But there's just no evidence for it. In fact, the evidence supports the opposite claim. A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found that 62 percent of "very liberal-liberal" Democrats back Clinton, and 11 percent back Warren. Those findings have been repeated again and again for the last year. If reporters and pundits wanted to write the same piece over and over about how liberals are supposedly deeply ambivalent about Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run, shouldn't the same reporters and pundits have pointed out that in virtually all the polling, self-indentified liberals overwhelmingly pick Hillary Clinton as their preferred candidate of choice in 2016? Isn't that Journalism 101? But journalists had a story they wanted to tell so they kept telling it. ABC News: Warren is "The Senator Progressives Want For President." Even when journalists do reference polls, it's often in a baffling manner that seems designed to portray Clinton in the worst light. On January 4, the Wall Street Journal's print edition published a front-page piece detailing what the paper claimed was widespread dissatisfaction with a possible Clinton candidacy in the crucial primary state. The article, which claimed party leaders in the state wanted a more liberal candidate and were worried Clinton could not win a general election campaign, waited until the eighth paragraph to point out Clinton enjoys a massive lead of "nearly 50 points" in the Hawkeye state. Question: If Jeb Bush boasted a 50-point lead in Iowa's GOP primary polls, do you think the Journal would send a reporter there to find out why Bush wasn't gaining enough traction? It would never happen because the premise makes no sense. Or take this odd effort by NBC News. Rather than simply asking voters which would-be candidates they back for 2016, NBC asked respondents if they could "see yourself" supporting various presidential contenders. For Clinton, 50 percent said they could see themselves supporting her; 48 could not. And from that, NBC promoted this headline: Poll: Hillary Clinton the Early 2016 Frontrunner, But Barely But that made no sense. Because when NBC pollsters asked the same respondents if they could see themselves supporting a variety of Republican candidates, every single GOP contender received an overwhelming "no" response. The polling results were something of a debacle for Republicans, but NBC portrayed them as bad news for Clinton, insisting she was "barely" the favorite pick. Note that elsewhere (and when the topic does not revolve around Clinton), the political press remains enamored with polling results and still uses them to prop up preferred storylines. At the end of last year, when Ben Carson's popularity surged among Republicans and he finished second in a CNN GOP primary poll, CNN gushed that the former neurosurgeon had become a "political phenomenon." How did CNN know? Because Carson was polling at ten percent! The fact that Clinton, in the very same survey, polled at 65 percent did not translate into CNN anointing her a "phenomenon." Clearly, different media rules apply to her. *New York Times: “In Prelude to 2016, Anti-Clinton Groups Are Just Beginning” <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/us/politics/in-prelude-to-2016-anti-hillary-clinton-groups-are-just-beginning.html?_r=0>* By Amy Chozick January 23, 2015 First, she was called the bra-burning feminist with a degree from Wellesley. Then, she was the aggressively political spouse from Arkansas who plotted behind closed doors. Today, she is the millionaire elitist who socializes in New York and the Hamptons. Few modern political figures inspire the animus that Hillary Rodham Clinton generates, and the cottage industry that opposes her never really goes out of business. But as Mrs. Clinton prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the sprawling network is evolving to attack her on new grounds. There are “super PACs” with names like Women Against Hillary, Just Say No to Hillary, Stop Hillary and Defeat Hillary. The Republican National Committee recently introduced PoorHillaryClinton.com, which mocks Mrs. Clinton’s wealth. While all politicians endure scrutiny and efforts by the other side to define them, the attacks on Mrs. Clinton often take on a personal tone, which her defenders say is driven by an electorate still coming to terms with the possibility of a female president. But the message against Mrs. Clinton before 2016 is shifting, highlighting new, less gender-based attacks than those leveled during the 2008 campaign. She is no longer caricatured as the embodiment of a 1960s feminist pushing her husband’s administration to the left. Instead, Mrs. Clinton is criticized as overly cautious and centrist, out of touch with average Americans and an opportunist who gives paid speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet said last summer that her family was “dead broke” upon leaving the White House. Richard H. Collins, a Dallas investor whose Stop Her Now website seven years ago suggested that Mrs. Clinton was a witch and featured her bludgeoning other politicians with a “Hillary hammer,” said he had no plans to resurrect the effort in 2016. And when the super PAC The Hillary Project introduced a “Slap Hillary” game online in 2013, many Republicans were quick to denounce the gimmick as sexist. Sexist attacks were “a dumb thing to do in 2008, and will be a dumb thing to do in 2016,” said Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising, an anti-Democrat super PAC. “The most effective arguments against Secretary Clinton have absolutely nothing to do with her gender,” he added. A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Kirsten Kukowski, said it is not an “either/or” question of whether to point out scandals from Mrs. Clinton’s early years or her current record and finances. Internal polling has shown, she said, that attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s more recent years resonate more effectively with voters. (The R.N.C. is also assembling a book on Mrs. Clinton and has dispatched opposition researchers to Little Rock, Ark.) There is no question that Mrs. Clinton, after two decades in public life, remains divisive: 50 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of her, and 45 percent have an unfavorable opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November. Unlike in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton’s campaign largely ignored the “stop Hillary” websites and the sale of “No Way in Hellary” barbecue aprons, this time Clinton loyalists have formed their own groups to counter attacks early. They say they are keenly aware of what happened to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 election, when an independent conservative group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacked his military record in the Vietnam War. The attacks stuck and contributed to Mr. Kerry’s loss to President George W. Bush. David Brock, founder of Correct the Record, a project that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media, and a onetime conservative critic of the Clintons, published the e-book “The Benghazi Hoax” in 2013 that defends Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya. He said criticism that she is wealthy and out of touch would be an easy one to combat, particularly if the Republican nominee is Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, or Mitt Romney, whose personal wealth became a point of contention in his 2012 campaign and who recently told donors that he was considering running again in 2016. It was not long ago that conservatives were “raising money off the caricature of her as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist,” Mr. Brock said. “Now, we’re expected to believe a totally contrary fictional premise — that she’s a plutocrat,” he added. (He proposed a “Poor Jeb” exposé on the former Florida governor’s investments in China.) The fight to define, or redefine, Mrs. Clinton will become only more intense. For Republicans, the attacks not only excite the conservative base, but they can help shape a narrative to weaken Mrs. Clinton’s chances with the broader electorate. Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that produced the 2008 anti-Clinton documentary “Hillary: The Movie,” has another documentary in preproduction set to premiere during the 2016 campaign. That film will mostly focus on Mrs. Clinton’s career as a New York senator through her time as secretary of state, and will look at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United and a longtime critic of the Clintons, said Mrs. Clinton’s time in Arkansas and the White House were less relevant than her ties to the Obama administration and her family’s finances. “People have to be reminded of these things that she was involved in, but are they the most important? No,” he said. Next month, Bruce Fein, a lawyer who is close to Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, plans to introduce a website called HillaryWatch.com that will largely focus on Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy positions and her views on executive power. (He joked that it could be called “Queen Hillary.”) The idea, he said, grew out of a pamphlet that defended Mr. Paul’s foreign policy positions. “We want to destroy these myths about Hillary, one of which is her great competence,” Mr. Fein said. A spokesman for Mr. Paul said the senator had met Mr. Fein but never talked with him about an anti-Hillary website. The cottage industry caricaturing Mrs. Clinton has its own kitschy paraphernalia, some of which seems more rooted in the early mockery of her than on her more recent record, like bumper stickers that read “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Hillary!” The creators behind the “Hillary Nutcracker” plan to reintroduce the item — which, as the name suggests, cracks open nuts between Mrs. Clinton’s thighs — the day she declares her candidacy. They expect it to resonate with both pro- and anti-Hillary customers. “If you see a bossy, polarizing broad with ideas you don’t like, then that’s what you get,” said Gibson Carothers, one of the creators. He added, “If you see a tough, strong leader with ideas you do like, then that’s what you get.” *BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton Has Deep History With Latinos And There’s Not A Lot The GOP Can Do About It” <http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/hillary-clinton-has-deep-history-with-latinos-and-theres-not#.qyZPPowyq>* By Adrian Carrasquillo January 23, 2015, 9:12 a.m. EST Republicans are keenly aware that they must begin to peel away Latino voters from Democrats, who gave President Obama 71% of their vote in 2012. But there’s a huge problem for those 2016 efforts, rarely discussed and largely forgotten. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive favorite for the Democratic nomination, beat Obama 2-to-1 among Latino voters in the 2008 primary. It wasn’t just name recognition, either. The Clintons have a robust network of Latino leaders and activists, and long history with outreach that dates back to 1970s in Texas. This is not to say Clinton’s path is totally clear — her 2008 campaign was not without stumbles, and she faced difficult questions last year from activists on immigration. If Jeb Bush were the Republican nominee, some argue, he might actually compete for a significant share of Latino support, something activists aren’t totally closed to. But there is no other candidate both as likely to win a party nomination and who will be starting with the established, enduring Latino support, as Clinton. “Republicans have a Latino problem,” said Alfonso Aguilar, a former official in the George W. Bush administration and director of the American Principles Project’s Latino Partnership, which promotes conservative values to the Latino community. He described the Republican policies around immigration that put the party stuck between an Obama “amnesty” position and a Steve King “enforcement-only” stance. “Hillary would be a formidable candidate with Hispanics,” he said. Even for a candidate who has been on the national stage for decades, Clinton’s history with Latino voters goes back a surprisingly long way. In 1972, when a young Hillary and Bill Clinton were working the ill-fated George McGovern campaign, she worked closely with well-respected union leader, Franklin Garcia, who took her under his wing as she helped register Latino voters in south Texas and along the Rio Grande Valley. “Hispanics in South Texas were,” she wrote in her 2003 memoir Living History, “understandably, wary of a blond girl from Chicago who didn’t speak a word of Spanish.” But Garcia “took me places I could never have gone alone and vouched for me to Mexican Americans who worried I might be from the immigration service or some other government agency.” Garcia drove her and Bill across the border to Matamoros, a dive which had only a “decent mariachi band,” she wrote, but where she indulged in barbecued cabrito, or goat. Garry Mauro, one of her first contacts in Texas, told the San Antonio Express in 2008 that back then she had a “cultural affinity with Hispanics,” asking questions and listening to their concerns, a dynamic that would be on display again, more than three decades later in Nevada, as she tried to woo an influential Latino activist. Eddie Escobedo was a flashy dresser — suits and hats to match — and hotly in demand by Democratic politicians. The owner of a radio station and El Mundo newspaper, both of which he used to great effect, the late Escobedo was an important ally for anyone who wanted to get their message out to Latinos in Nevada. That’s why Brian Greenspun, a Clinton ally who runs the Greenspun Media Group (which includes the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Weekly, and Las Vegas Magazine), invited Escobedo along with other minority leaders to his home for dinner to meet with Clinton as she was exploring a 2008 campaign. “She had a way about her,” says Eddie Escobedo Jr., who was at the dinner. His father died in 2010 and left El Mundo to him. “The way my dad explained it, she was somebody you could talk to,” Escobedo Jr. said. “She spoke from the heart and asked about what the Hispanic community was going through and what had to be done. My dad was taken aback by Hillary, by how she was able to communicate and listen and how she wanted to help Hispanics.” Escobedo supported Clinton “tooth and nail,” his son says — but of course she did not win. Obama campaign senior advisers repeatedly went to the El Mundo offices to wear down the activist, and finally got him to take a call from Obama. The two eventually had a meeting at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where Escobedo presented Obama with a t-shirt and hat with the words “El Jefe” — the boss — on them. When Escobedo died from cancer in 2010, the Clintons offered their condolences in a letter to the family and Obama called Escobedo Jr. Longtime influential Nevada activist Eddie Escobedo with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who both curried his support. Democrats say it was these kinds of connections and endorsements, and not just name recognition against the ascendant but unknown Obama, that helped Clinton with Latinos in 2008. Her deep network of influential local and state leaders included former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who crisscrossed California for her, and Henry Cisneros from Texas, a longtime Latino leader who served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. They also say Latinos did well during her husband’s presidency. “Latinos fondly remember the Clinton years from an economic perspective,” said Democratic strategist Jose Parra, who worked for Harry Reid. “Older folks have prosperous memories from the Clinton terms.” “Rarely have Hispanics prospered economically like they did under the Clinton administration, which transferred goodwill and good feelings,” Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi said, noting that 2008 was the first year the Hispanic vote was competed for in a major way. Michael Trujillo, a field director for Clinton in North Carolina, California, and Texas in 2008, who now serves as a senior adviser to Ready For Hillary, said a nostalgia effect exists for some Latino voters when it comes to the Clintons because in 1992 and particularly in 1996, recipients of Ronald Reagan’s amnesty that allowed more than 3 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally, were able to cast their first votes — and they did so for Bill Clinton. Still, immigration activists on the left and Republicans reject the idea that Clinton has locked up the Latino vote. High-profile immigration advocates say she must clarify her stances after a major miscue in 2008 and shaky public answers in 2014 around the issue of deportations. Clinton, facing pressure before a Democratic debate in 2007, released a statement saying, “As president, I will not support driver’s licenses for undocumented people and will press for comprehensive immigration reform that deals with all of the issues around illegal immigration, including border security and fixing our broken system.” Many Democrats believe her stance gave Latino voters a clear difference between her and Obama and say the tide began to turn afterwards. Lydia Camarillo with the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, said in 2008 that when Obama supported driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, he gained the support of 29% of the Latino electorate in California. Just last year, DREAMer activists, undocumented youth brought to the country as children, began confronting Clinton in a series of protests around the country, including an instance in Iowa where she was pressed to say whether she supported Obama’s executive actions. She gave an awkward answer — how the country needs to “elect more Democrats,” which confused and annoyed activists. Influential Univision anchor Jorge Ramos asked if she had a “Latino problem” after her comments last summer during the surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America. “Some of them should be sent back,” Clinton said at the time, noting the children who should be deported are the ones who don’t have a legitimate claim for asylum or a family connection. “They need to be given the basics, the necessities and as much love as we can,” she added. “Hillary Clinton hasn’t exactly been the patron saint of undocumented immigrants,” said longtime Republican strategist Ana Navarro. “Obama totally out-strategized her,” Navarro continued, adding that Clinton’s stance on the unaccompanied minors is an emotional issue “and unpopular position for many Latinos.” It’s important, activists said, not to let Clinton off the hook and make her prove her credentials. “For us the reason we started targeting her, a big part of it was that in her statements, with the children, we didn’t see that she understands the issue very well,” said national immigration activist Erika Andiola, who was there when Clinton was confronted in Iowa. “She’s not in a place where she should be, as left as we would like her to be on the side of the immigrant community.” “Absolutely, she needs to clarify her stances,” said National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) director Pablo Alvarado. “If she wants to run on a conservative agenda on immigration then she can come out and say it, but she has to know she will alienate a lot of us. We want to know what’s going to happen with the 7 million or more people excluded by the president, whether deportation policies will continue to persecute them.” Activists like Alvarado believe it’s better when Latino voters are not taken for granted and are fought for by both parties. This partly explains why they have begun talking up Jeb Bush as someone they’re intrigued by. “We’re going to start pressuring Jeb Bush,” Andiola said. “That by default is going to pressure Hillary to be more to the left and not make enforcement her first priority. One activist went further, saying that Bush, who last year said parents bringing their children across the border should be seen as an “act of love,” could be better for immigration advocates than Clinton. “I think it is an open question whether Jeb Bush is to the left of Hillary Clinton on the issue of immigration — it’s a real and open question.” With Hurricane Katrina bearing down on Florida in 2005, Jeb Bush, as he had done before and would do again, resisted the pressure of television networks and easily fielded questions in both English and Spanish, rather than have two separate press conferences. Bush considered it a victory, those familiar with his thinking say, to have his answers broadcast nationally on CNN to Spanish speakers as well as everyone else. This, Republicans say, illustrates the respect and close relationship he has with the Latino community. Bush’s wife Columba is Mexican-American and his son, George P., is an up and coming Latino Republican in Texas. “We’ve been long on lip service in the Republican Party,” says Al Cardenas, a longtime Bush confidante who ran the local Republican Party with him in the early 1980’s. “It’s always missing one essential ingredient, which is the first rule of engagement is to actually engage in the community,” he continued. “Jeb Bush has been walking the walk for three or four decades in the Hispanic community. It’s natural to him, he considers himself in every respect culturally assimilated and instinctively feels as comfortable in the Hispanic culture. It’s a product of his 40-year marriage, he’s embraced Miami’s multicultural community.” “There’s no way Jeb Bush will cede one inch of territory,” Navarro said. “Good luck trying to out-Latino a guy who studies Latin American studies in college, has been married for 41 years to a woman born in Mexico, speaks fluent Spanish, lived in Latin America, oh, and makes killer guacamole. Not gonna happen.” A Bush nomination is far from a sure thing — he’s not even a candidate yet, hasn’t run for elected office in more than 10 years, and currently is out of step with much of the Republican base on both immigration and education. But these Republicans point to the 1998 and 2002 governor’s races when Bush received 61% and 56% of the Latino vote respectively as evidence that he has cracked the code and can reliably gain the support of the Hispanic community. It’s also true, however, that those races happened at a time when Florida’s Latino vote was largely Cuban and more conservative. In 2012, for example, Obama won the crucial voting bloc in Florida. And the demographics have changed nationally. “The formula [George W. Bush] used to win no longer applies because the demographic numbers have changed,” said Republican consultant Luis Alvarado, with Revolvis in California. He said the scope of the problem for Republicans is about more than traditional swing states in the Southwest. “It’s not just about Nevada, but also Georgia now. A 1-2% change in the Latino vote could be the difference between it being red or blue,” he said. Still, if surrogates matter as was pointed at with Clinton’s outreach, Cardenas says Bush’s 2016 campaign would be unmatched on that front. “If he does proceed to run for president, unlike other candidates, his schedule will be filled with Hispanic leaders,” he said. “Of all the Republican candidates in the spotlight, he has the greatest facility to connect and build that bridge and that’s including Latinos Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio,” Alvarado said. “He has complete command of the language and of the culture and has a vision of how Latinos are the important building block to the future of the country.” Alvarado looked forward to a challenge for Bush in 2016. “He has already earned [Latinos] respect, what they would like to see is if he maintains course and doesn’t waiver with pressure from the extreme right of the Republican Party. That would give him a consideration to earn their vote,” he said. The former George W. Bush official, Aguilar, said Jeb Bush, like Clinton, can make a credible argument that he has a connection with major Latino groups like Mexicans through his family, Cubans through Florida and Puerto Ricans whose population has shot up in Florida, as well. But he said the GOP needs to truly grasp what Latino outreach is. “Republicans think Hispanic outreach is translating speeches like the State of the Union, and having Hispanic spokespeople, which is fine, but if your message is not good, if your policy is not good, it doesn’t matter if you have Hispanic faces like Cruz or Rubio,” he said. Mark Hugo Lopez with Pew Hispanic and Matt Barreto with polling firm Latino Decisions both said Clinton may be able to translate high Latino support for Obama’s policies to herself. “Latino registered voters overwhelmingly see the Democratic Party as more concerned with issues that affect the Hispanic community,” Lopez said. “The deferred action for sure, the one for kids and the ones for parents. If she commits to them — those are so incredibly popular — if she says she’ll continue them it can push her even higher, but she needs to clarify that,” Barreto said. Clinton hinted about what she would like to see with immigration, calling his announcement a “historic first step” and tweeting, “Thanks to POTUS for taking action on immigration in the face of inaction. Now let’s turn to permanent bipartisan reform.” Delia Garcia, the first Latina in the Kansas state legislature in 2004, is now on the Latino advisory committee for Ready For Hillary, a group that has thrown 14 parties for Latinas in the last year, with 30 to 70 people per event in states like Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and California, with a Miami event on tap. She said because of her history in the state, Latinas in Texas say they see her as “familia” and “one of us,” but acknowledged that she has heard the immigration complaints. On that front she has a suggestion for the eventual Clinton campaign. “I do look forward to her adding a Latino, a Latina, in the inner circle that does have her ear,” Garcia said. Escobedo Jr. in Nevada said he had a meeting with Ready For Hillary in November, where 25 influential activists like him were asked to support a Clinton candidacy. Fernando Romero, a grizzled Latino advocate like his father, who has led Nevada’s oldest Latino political organization, the aptly named “Hispanics in Politics,” for more than 15 years, stood up and said, “What do we get?” “Like a baseball going 99 mph it caught a lot of people off guard,” Escobedo Jr. said. And that question is at the heart of why he says that while a majority of the 25 people at the meeting said they will support Clinton, many like him are still on the fence. He pointed to the practical problems with the immigration issue, often cast aside as less important to Latinos than many make it out to be, as a sticking point and something Clinton will have to be clear on. “Immigration is a very big issue here in Nevada, which has the largest concentration of guest workers,” Escobedo Jr. said. “They all have family members who can vote. It’s an economic issue for us, Nevada was hit hard with workers doing construction who went back to Mexico.” So what does Clinton have to do to gain his support? “Right now, she has to say she’ll continue fighting for [deferred action], and that she supports the executive action, and reaffirm what the president has done and say what needs to continue to be done — then she will immediately gain the support of everybody else in that room.” Cardenas said this whole conversation goes back to the need for candidates to understand that demographic trends mean America can not be successful without Hispanics being successful. And while he was speaking about Bush’s relationship with Latinos, Cardenas could also have been talking about the challenge Republicans facing Clinton will be up against. “It’s something you have to earn, you don’t gain that in a 30 second ad,” he said. *The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Hillary Clinton to speak at political journalism award ceremony” <http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/230523-hillary-clinton-to-speak-at-political-journalism-award-ceremony>* By Peter Sullivan January 23, 2015, 10:55 a.m. EST Hillary Clinton will give the keynote address at a political journalism awards ceremony in March, as she heads towards a campaign with a sometimes rocky relationship with the press. Clinton will speak at a ceremony on March 23 in Washington for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, sponsored by the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Robin Toner, for whom the award is named, was the first woman to be the national political correspondent for The New York Times, and she covered much of Clinton's career before dying of cancer in 2008. Clinton has long had a fraught relationship with the press, dating back to the scandals of the 1990s when she was First Lady. In October, at a technology conference in San Francisco, Clinton decried the state of the press, saying it creates "hurdles for people who want to serve." "If you look at how much time used to be spent reporting the news, the real news, not analyzing it, but reporting the news, in the 1960s and '70s compared to now, it's dramatically shrunk," Clinton said. "And people are looking for the best angle, the quickest hit, the biggest embarrassment, instead of in a democracy doing what we should be doing, which is giving people information so they can be decisionmakers, since as voters, indeed they are," she added. The Newhouse School dean praised Clinton as an example for women. “It’s an extraordinary pleasure to have Secretary Clinton as our speaker at this important event,” Newhouse Dean Lorraine Branham said in a statement. “She is a vivid example—like Robin—of a pioneering woman at the top of her profession.” *New York Times: First Draft: “Reading the Tea Leaves: More Fund-Raisers by Clinton Allies” <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/01/23/?entry=8807&_r=2>* By Nicholas Confessore January 23, 2015, 11:30 a.m. EST When will Hillary Rodham Clinton announce her long-awaited presidential campaign? One guess can be found in a new round of fund-raisers being organized by Ready for Hillary, the “super PAC” founded to organize grass-roots supporters and potential donors for a potential Clinton campaign. Past and potential donors were alerted on Thursday to a calendar of 11 more fund-raising events for the group, a mix of high-dollar and low-dollar events held mostly in the donor-rich states of New York, Texas, California and Florida. (An event for grass-roots activists will also be held in Ohio, a critical swing state.) The final event on the schedule is on March 14, suggesting that the group — which has indicated it will shut down if Mrs. Clinton formally announces her plans — expects to be in business through the beginning of the spring. The timing may also be influenced by Federal Election Commission reporting deadlines. Should Mrs. Clinton wait until after March 31 to begin raising money for a campaign, she will not have to disclose any donors or fund-raising figures until the middle of July, giving her team ample time to amass an impressive (and, to potential rivals, intimidating) campaign war chest. *Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Will 2016 Democrats Position on Obama’s Economic Record?” <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/23/how-will-2016-democrats-position-on-obamas-economic-record/>* By Peter Nicholas January 23, 2015, 9:28 a.m. EST The prospective Democratic presidential candidates are staking out distinct and contrasting positions when it comes to an issue that figures to loom large in the 2016 campaign: How the economy has fared under President Barack Obama. Vice President Joe Biden, who affirmed this week that he might vie for the Democratic nomination even if Hillary Clinton enters the race, gave a speech Thursday that previewed the message he would lay out should he decide to run. Speaking at a conference of mayors in Washington, D.C., Mr. Biden rattled off examples of economic progress in the Obama administration. He cited the improving stock market, consistent job growth and an easing of health care costs as examples of sound economic leadership of which he was an integral part. Implicit in the message is that he would continue policies that have fed the economic recovery. He would, in effect, mount a campaign based on the idea that he would keep Obamanomics alive, leaving intact policies that ended the recession and created wealth. “The generic point I’m trying to make, guys, is we’re doing the right thing,” Mr. Biden told the mayors. “We’re moving in the right direction. You’re moving in the right direction. So, we’ve got to keep it going.” Mr. Biden isn’t likely to announce a decision until the summer, a couple of months after Mrs. Clinton is expected to enter the race. Should the two of them square off, Mr. Biden –as the sitting vice president – would be better positioned to make the argument that he would carry forward the positive pieces of Mr. Obama’s economic legacy. Mrs. Clinton is likely to be more selective in which parts of the Obama record to embrace. She sent out a revealing tweet Tuesday after Mr. Obama gave his State of the Union speech. “@BarackObama #SOTU pointed way to an economy that works for all. Now we need to step up & deliver for the middle class. #FairShot #FairShare” — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 21, 2015 An enduring critique of the Obama presidency is his penchant for giving inspiring speeches that don’t translate into concrete policy changes. Mrs. Clinton, when she ran against Mr. Obama in 2008, cautioned voters that soaring rhetoric and good intentions aren’t enough to overcome gridlock in Washington. In saying “now we need to step up,” Mrs. Clinton seems to be making a similar case: while she supports Mr. Obama’s goals, she also believes it takes a certain strong-willed chief executive to make them happen. The example from history Mrs. Clinton likes to cite is Lyndon Johnson, the president who ushered in landmark civil rights and anti-poverty legislation in pursuit of what he called a “great society.” The idea is that she would be another Johnson, taking unredeemed promises from the Obama era and making them law. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, the only Democrat who has taken formal steps to explore a White House bid, launched a tweet during the State of the Union that could be seen as a veiled shot at Mrs. Clinton, who has received millions of dollars in campaign donations and charitable contributions from Wall Street and financial sector. “Here’s a challenge for our time: Can a Congress dominated by Wall Street’s financial sector really make our tax system fair? #webb2016” — Jim Webb (@JimWebbUSA) January 21, 2015 Another potential candidate is Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent who is also considering a long-shot run for the Democratic nomination. Mr. Sanders is laying claim to a political space on the left of both Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton. Though he is willing to give Mr. Obama credit for economic progress, he tends to emphasize the people who have been left behind in the economic recovery. “As President Obama indicated, our economy today is much stronger than it was six years ago,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement after the State of the Union speech. “The bad news, however, is that millions of middle-class families continue to struggle economically and we have an obscene level of income and wealth inequality.” *Politico blog: Dylan Byers: “N.Y. Times adds Patrick Healy to 2016 team” <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/01/ny-times-adds-patrick-healy-to-team-201513.html>* By Hadas Gold January 23, 2015, 11:13 a.m. EST The New York Times has moved theater reporter Patrick Healy to the 2016 campaign beat as a national political correspondent, Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan wrote in a note to staff on Friday. "Patrick is an uncommonly gifted reporter, supple writer and journalistic innovator whose career has taken him from Dover, N.H., to Afghanistan, Iraq, two presidential campaigns and the star-crossed production of Spider-Man on Broadway," she wrote. "His groundbreaking coverage of theater has perceptively examined Broadway through the lens of culture and business, and he has traveled the globe capturing theater trends, personalities and emerging talents." Healy covered Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008 and helped establish the first political blog on the Times' website. Ryan wrote he'll work closely with Jonathan Martin, who is leading the paper's 2016 coverage.