Some members, like Hillary’s Senate chief of staff, Tamera Luzzatto, deal with legislative duties; others, like senior campaign advisers Ann Lewis and Minyon Moore, are focused squarely on ’08. “It’s concentric circles,” offers Melanne Verveer, Hillary’s chief of staff during Bill’s second term.
At the center of all these circles stands Patti Solis Doyle. The first person Hillary hired during the ’92 race, Patti, as she is universally known, worked as her scheduler for eight years, steadily amassing duties and influence. At this point, no one embodies the culture of Hillaryland more than Patti, now the campaign manager of Team Hillary. The 42-year-old Chicago native is direct, focused, and disciplined. She has a quick laugh, a sharp, teasing wit, and little patience for any sort of media attention. (“I’m Mexican, for crying out loud,” quips the first-generation American. “I just want to do my job.”) Officially, Patti is charged with overseeing every aspect of Hillary Inc., from hiring to fund-raising to crisis management. Unofficially, she serves as the eyes, the ears, and the voice of Hillary. While the campaign has its share of political geniuses who are more seasoned and more famous, Patti’s authority flows from having achieved a sort of mind meld with her boss. “Patti almost channels Hillary,” says Kim Molstre, Hillary’s perky and openly starstruck campaign scheduler. Hillary, in turn, seeks out Patti’s counsel. Says policy director Neera Tanden, “On any major decision, the first and last person Hillary talks to is Patti.”
Patti is also the chief enforcer of the family code: no leaks, ever. She expresses admiration for the way George W. Bush’s campaign team controlled its message, and, given her druthers, would run this race no differently. “We are a very disciplined group, and I am very proud of it,” she says with a defiant edge. Patti cites as one of her biggest achievements the fact that Hillary’s campaign launch in January was planned and executed with military precision. “There were so many eyes and ears waiting for her to say something about whether she would run. That what we managed to pull off was a creative, professional rollout of a presidential campaign without anybody really knowing about it [in advance]— I don’t want to say it was the hardest thing I’ve done, but it was one of the things I’m most proud of.”
And pity the poor wretch whom Patti suspects of violating the code. Former Hillary press secretary Neel Lattimore (who is now with the Children’s Defense Fund but still cherishes his status as “the first man in Hillaryland”) vividly recalls the ass-chewing he received in 1997, when Patti thought he had leaked news of the First Lady’s 50th-birthday surprise party to the Chicago media. “She was at the airport on the phone screaming at me, and I was screaming back,” recounts Lattimore. “I told her, ‘Patti, I didn’t do that!’ She was like, ‘You did! I know you did! Just tell me you did it!’?” Terrified that Patti didn’t believe him, Lattimore phoned the reporter in question, begging him to confirm that Lattimore hadn’t been his source. “Never cross Patti Solis Doyle,” Lattimore jokingly cautions. “I would rather throw myself in front of an Amtrak train.”
Of course, the tight-lipped tribalism isn’t Patti’s doing alone: It trickles down from the top. Capricia Marshall, who began working for Hillary in 1992 and now serves as a senior campaign adviser, “remembers fondly” a meeting in early 1993, when the then–First Lady gathered her staff in the correspondence office of the East Wing for a modified pep talk. “It was one of those, ‘Look to your right. Look to your left. This is your teammate for the next few years. We’re going to back each other up. We’re going to help each other out. The only way we can do this in this pressure cooker of a place is to help each other. No stabbing each other. No gossiping.’?” The circle-the-wagons mentality was intensified by the barrage of political brawls and scandals and scorching media coverage during the White House years. (“Another day, another book,” quips campaign media guru Mandy Grunwald.) So protective of the First Lady’s privacy were her aides that they never referred to her by name in public, recalls Lattimore: “We referred to her as Herself.”
There is a significant Go, girl! aspect to working for Hillary. She represented a bold new model of First Lady, and many of these women were drawn to her record of advocacy on behalf of women and children. “There was the feeling that this was a very new and different kind of person trying to do something more with the position that really spoke to women in a larger sense,” recalls Muscatine. “Suddenly, you were invited to be part of this—this movement.” Hillary, in turn, has always taken a close, personal interest in her staff. With eerie uniformity, Hillarylanders proffer heartwarming anecdotes about how she is there for them during the good (weddings, births), the bad (illness, deaths), and the ugly (breakups, weight gain).
As a small female subculture fighting for its agenda within the male-dominated West Wing, Hillaryland swiftly developed a let’s-show-’em attitude. “Sometimes we would initiate something and the boys would take credit for it” even if they had initially fought it, recalls Melanne Verveer with equal parts amusement and annoyance. She points to Hillary’s speech at the 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing, in which she famously asserted that women’s rights must no longer be considered separate from human rights. Coming in the wake of human-rights dissident Harry Wu’s arrest by Chinese authorities, the First Lady’s appearance was opposed as politically risky by many in the West Wing. “They gave us lots of flak,” says Verveer. But in the end, the speech was hailed as a triumph, and Verveer reports that people have since told her that as the president’s staff watched from the West Wing, “they were saying, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ and then basically saying, ‘We’re so glad we told her to go.’?”
At the center of all these circles stands Patti Solis Doyle. The first person Hillary hired during the ’92 race, Patti, as she is universally known, worked as her scheduler for eight years, steadily amassing duties and influence. At this point, no one embodies the culture of Hillaryland more than Patti, now the campaign manager of Team Hillary. The 42-year-old Chicago native is direct, focused, and disciplined. She has a quick laugh, a sharp, teasing wit, and little patience for any sort of media attention. (“I’m Mexican, for crying out loud,” quips the first-generation American. “I just want to do my job.”) Officially, Patti is charged with overseeing every aspect of Hillary Inc., from hiring to fund-raising to crisis management. Unofficially, she serves as the eyes, the ears, and the voice of Hillary. While the campaign has its share of political geniuses who are more seasoned and more famous, Patti’s authority flows from having achieved a sort of mind meld with her boss. “Patti almost channels Hillary,” says Kim Molstre, Hillary’s perky and openly starstruck campaign scheduler. Hillary, in turn, seeks out Patti’s counsel. Says policy director Neera Tanden, “On any major decision, the first and last person Hillary talks to is Patti.”
Patti is also the chief enforcer of the family code: no leaks, ever. She expresses admiration for the way George W. Bush’s campaign team controlled its message, and, given her druthers, would run this race no differently. “We are a very disciplined group, and I am very proud of it,” she says with a defiant edge. Patti cites as one of her biggest achievements the fact that Hillary’s campaign launch in January was planned and executed with military precision. “There were so many eyes and ears waiting for her to say something about whether she would run. That what we managed to pull off was a creative, professional rollout of a presidential campaign without anybody really knowing about it [in advance]— I don’t want to say it was the hardest thing I’ve done, but it was one of the things I’m most proud of.”
And pity the poor wretch whom Patti suspects of violating the code. Former Hillary press secretary Neel Lattimore (who is now with the Children’s Defense Fund but still cherishes his status as “the first man in Hillaryland”) vividly recalls the ass-chewing he received in 1997, when Patti thought he had leaked news of the First Lady’s 50th-birthday surprise party to the Chicago media. “She was at the airport on the phone screaming at me, and I was screaming back,” recounts Lattimore. “I told her, ‘Patti, I didn’t do that!’ She was like, ‘You did! I know you did! Just tell me you did it!’?” Terrified that Patti didn’t believe him, Lattimore phoned the reporter in question, begging him to confirm that Lattimore hadn’t been his source. “Never cross Patti Solis Doyle,” Lattimore jokingly cautions. “I would rather throw myself in front of an Amtrak train.”
Of course, the tight-lipped tribalism isn’t Patti’s doing alone: It trickles down from the top. Capricia Marshall, who began working for Hillary in 1992 and now serves as a senior campaign adviser, “remembers fondly” a meeting in early 1993, when the then–First Lady gathered her staff in the correspondence office of the East Wing for a modified pep talk. “It was one of those, ‘Look to your right. Look to your left. This is your teammate for the next few years. We’re going to back each other up. We’re going to help each other out. The only way we can do this in this pressure cooker of a place is to help each other. No stabbing each other. No gossiping.’?” The circle-the-wagons mentality was intensified by the barrage of political brawls and scandals and scorching media coverage during the White House years. (“Another day, another book,” quips campaign media guru Mandy Grunwald.) So protective of the First Lady’s privacy were her aides that they never referred to her by name in public, recalls Lattimore: “We referred to her as Herself.”
There is a significant Go, girl! aspect to working for Hillary. She represented a bold new model of First Lady, and many of these women were drawn to her record of advocacy on behalf of women and children. “There was the feeling that this was a very new and different kind of person trying to do something more with the position that really spoke to women in a larger sense,” recalls Muscatine. “Suddenly, you were invited to be part of this—this movement.” Hillary, in turn, has always taken a close, personal interest in her staff. With eerie uniformity, Hillarylanders proffer heartwarming anecdotes about how she is there for them during the good (weddings, births), the bad (illness, deaths), and the ugly (breakups, weight gain).
As a small female subculture fighting for its agenda within the male-dominated West Wing, Hillaryland swiftly developed a let’s-show-’em attitude. “Sometimes we would initiate something and the boys would take credit for it” even if they had initially fought it, recalls Melanne Verveer with equal parts amusement and annoyance. She points to Hillary’s speech at the 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing, in which she famously asserted that women’s rights must no longer be considered separate from human rights. Coming in the wake of human-rights dissident Harry Wu’s arrest by Chinese authorities, the First Lady’s appearance was opposed as politically risky by many in the West Wing. “They gave us lots of flak,” says Verveer. But in the end, the speech was hailed as a triumph, and Verveer reports that people have since told her that as the president’s staff watched from the West Wing, “they were saying, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ and then basically saying, ‘We’re so glad we told her to go.’?”
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