Clinton, Hillary Rodham (1947-…), a former United States secretary of state under President Barack Obama, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016. She lost the election to New York businessman Donald J. Trump. Clinton, the wife of President Bill Clinton, is the only first lady ever elected to public office. She represented New York in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009. Mrs. Clinton also sought the presidency in 2008, but she failed to win her party’s nomination.
Clinton’s rise to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination followed a long career in public service. As a law student, her research helped lead to reforms in child welfare. As a young lawyer, she advised her husband’s campaigns for Arkansas governor and helped shape state policies on education reform.
Arriving in the White House in 1993, she became one of the most active first ladies in history. She was the administration’s chief architect of a plan meant to extend health care coverage to all Americans. The plan did not become law, but Clinton’s efforts demonstrated her commitment to public service.
In the contest to win the 2016 Democratic nomination, Clinton outlasted Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont. Clinton selected Tim Kaine, a U.S. senator and former governor of Virginia, as her running mate.
In 2000, Clinton became the only first lady ever elected to public office when she won a race for a New York U.S. Senate seat. She won reelection in 2006. In 2007, when she began a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, many political observers considered her the race’s front-runner. In the campaign, she won primary contests in many states but trailed Barack Obama—then a U.S. senator from Illinois—in the race for delegates. In June 2008, she withdrew and declared her support for Obama. After he became president, Obama named her secretary of state. In the position, Clinton worked to repair U.S. relations with allies and to confront international terrorist groups.
Following the Clintons’ earliest political successes, the couple became the subjects of close examination by political opponents and various media outlets. Authorities launched a number of investigations into their business dealings, personal relationships, and professional conduct. Hillary Clinton would later acknowledge that the relentless examination of her life had made her prone to value privacy and secrecy over transparency. During the 2016 campaign, she faced an investigation into her communications practices while serving as secretary of state. In that position, she had handled official business while using a private, unsecured e-mail server. The investigation—like those that preceded it—resulted in no criminal charges. Officials, however, labeled her conduct “negligent” and provided additional arguments for opponents who questioned her judgment.
Although both Clinton and Trump were wealthy white New York residents born in the 1940’s, the 2016 general election opponents sharply contrasted in policy, tone, and experience. Clinton had lived in the White House as first lady, served in the Senate, and managed the nation’s international relationships while heading the U.S. Department of State. Her campaign sought to build upon a political base consisting of women, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans. Despite her experience, Clinton’s march to the presidency was far from easy. Friends and colleagues regularly described her as brilliant and thoughtful, with a quick sense of humor. On the campaign trail, however, Clinton often appeared stiff, and her banter seemed scripted and rehearsed. Friends said that—unlike many politicians—she was a far better listener than speaker. Though even some opponents admitted that Clinton was tough and deeply qualified, she polled low on measures of trustworthiness.
Trump, on the other hand, had held no elective office. During his campaign, he used particularly blunt language to attack his opponents and to describe his policy proposals. He frequently attacked his detractors with off-the-cuff pronouncements on the social media site Twitter (now called X). He made headlines with his promises to build a “huge” wall on the Mexican border. He drew protests after broadly categorizing Mexicans as criminals and Muslim immigrants as terrorists. Opinion polls showed that Trump’s campaign, with its slogan “Make America Great Again,” appealed most strongly to working-class voters, particularly white males. He drew crowds of people who opposed the “political correctness” of modern society and believed that “free trade” agreements had denied ordinary Americans an opportunity to fairly compete with lesser-paid workers overseas. In this context, political correctness refers to policies and language that critics believe reflect attitudes that are overly tolerant, permissive, and sensitive. Free-trade agreements reduce barriers to trade between countries.
Throughout the general election campaign, the candidates attacked each other’s positions on such issues as trade, immigration, taxes, terrorism, and civil rights. On Nov. 8, 2016, Trump defeated Clinton in a stunning upset.
Early life and family
Family background.
Mrs. Clinton’s father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham (1911-1993), was born to a working-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Hugh’s father had immigrated there from England with his family as a young child and later worked at a lace-manufacturing mill. Hugh’s mother had been born to Welsh immigrants. Hugh Rodham attended Pennsylvania State University, where he graduated with a degree in physical education. He would later start a small business making and selling draperies. Rodham proved to be a hard-working and successful businessman. His daughter would describe him as “tough and gruff” and an outspoken supporter of conservative political ideas. (Conservatives tend to have views favoring tradition and security.) Her father, Hillary later said, “thought Democrats were one step short of Communism —but that I might be o.k.”
Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Emma Howell (1919-2011), was born in Chicago to a poor, troubled family. Her parents divorced in 1927. Her father then sent 8-year-old Dorothy and her younger sister to live with his parents in southern California. The Howell grandparents were especially strict. They discouraged Dorothy from social activities with friends, once seriously punishing her for “trick-or-treating” with her friends on Halloween. By the age of 14, Dorothy decided to leave home. She went to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny. In 1937, after graduating high school, she returned to Chicago. There, she met Hugh Rodham, who was then working as a traveling fabric salesman. The couple married in 1942.
Hillary remained especially close to her mother throughout her life. Clinton marveled at her mother’s warmth and steadiness, considering Dorothy’s difficult childhood and early separation from her parents. In Clinton’s 2014 memoir Hard Choices, Hillary recalled her mother’s answer when asked how she managed to emerge from her “lonely early life” to become “such a loving and levelheaded woman.” Dorothy replied, “At critical points in my life somebody showed me kindness.” Clinton has often cited her mother’s inspiration as the source of her own concern for children’s welfare.
Girlhood.
Mrs. Clinton was born Hillary Diane Rodham on Oct. 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, in the Midwestern United States. At that time, her family lived in the Edgewater neighborhood in the northern part of the city. When Hillary was 3 years old, the Rodham family moved to the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. Hillary had two younger brothers, Hugh, Jr. (1950-…), and Anthony (1954-2019). The family attended First United Methodist Church in Park Ridge. Hillary became active in the church’s youth group. In 1962, she went with the youth group to hear the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., preach in Chicago. The experience helped inspire her lifelong interest in social justice issues.
Hillary became interested in politics at an early age, when she was influenced by her father’s conservative views. While in high school, she worked for Republican Barry Goldwater 1964 campaign for the presidency.
College and early career.
Hillary attended Maine East High School and Maine South High School, both in Park Ridge. She graduated in 1965 and enrolled at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in the eastern United States. She was initially active in a young Republican organization, but she gradually began a political transition to the Democratic Party. In 1968, driven by a commitment to civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War (1957-1975), she campaigned for Democrat Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy, a senator from Minnesota, strongly opposed the Vietnam War and was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Hillary was elected student government president at Wellesley in the spring of her junior year. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1969 and was a speaker at the graduation ceremony. The summer after graduation, Hillary traveled with friends, working a variety of jobs to pay her way. She even briefly worked for a fishery in Alaska, gutting and cleaning the day’s catch. She would later joke that the job was the “best preparation for being in Washington that you can possibly imagine.”
Hillary then enrolled in Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. In the summer of 1970, she worked for the Washington Research Project, a child-welfare organization that later developed into the Children’s Defense Fund. She helped collect research data for a Senate subcommittee addressing problems faced by migrant workers. The experience helped to focus her interest on how laws affect children. While at Yale, she conducted research on child development at the Yale Study Center.
In 1971, she met fellow law student Bill Clinton after the two repeatedly exchanged glances at Yale’s law library. “Look, if you’re going to keep staring at me, and I’m going to keep staring back, I think we should at least know each other,” Hillary told Bill. “I’m Hillary Rodham. What’s your name?” The pair soon began dating.
In the summer of 1971, Bill drove Hillary from Yale back to Park Ridge. “I really liked her family,” Bill said at the 2016 Democratic convention. He especially praised Hillary’s mother, saying “Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me.”
During the summer of 1972, Hillary and Bill both worked in Texas on the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Democratic Senator George McGovern. They both received their law degrees in 1973. Hillary then worked in Boston as a staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund.
In January 1974, Hillary was invited to Washington, D.C., to join the staff of a House of Representatives judiciary committee that was exploring the impeachment of President Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. This scandal included a break-in at the Democratic Party’s national headquarters and other illegal activities by employees of Nixon’s 1972 reelection committee and members of his executive staff. Nixon’s attempts to cover up these crimes became a major part of the scandal. Faced with certain impeachment, Nixon resigned in August 1974. Hillary then joined her future husband on the faculty of the University of Arkansas, Law School in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Marriage and family.
Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton on Oct. 11, 1975, in the living room of their modest brick home in Fayetteville. She remained known as Hillary Rodham until she adopted her husband’s last name in 1982. The Clintons have one daughter, Chelsea (1980- …).
Lawyer and adviser.
While serving as a law instructor, Hillary helped set up the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas. The clinic provides middle- and low-income families with routine legal services at reduced rates. It also provides an opportunity for law students to practice law in the real world while under the supervision of professors.
The Clintons moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, after Bill was elected state attorney general in 1976. The attorney general is the state’s chief law officer. In 1977, Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. She also helped form the Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children, a group that worked to improve children’s access to state-provided health care and educational resources. She remained with the Rose Law Firm until 1992, when her husband was elected president.
Mrs. Clinton became a key adviser in all of her husband’s political campaigns. She helped him develop some of his major programs while he was governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and from 1983 to 1992. In the early 1980’s, for example, Mrs. Clinton played a leading role in reforming the public school system in Arkansas.
The Clintons had a modest income during their early years in Arkansas. In 1978, Hillary pursued investments recommended to her by politically connected friends. She traded in cattle futures—that is, contracts between buyers and sellers that arrange for a certain quantity of a product to be delivered at a specified price and date. Her trading brought the Clintons enough money to make a down payment on a home in Little Rock.
The Clintons lost money, however, on investments in a real estate project known as Whitewater. After her husband lost his 1980 campaign for reelection as governor, Hillary became the family’s main breadwinner. She worked to bring new business to the Rose Law Firm. She later joined several corporate boards, including Wal-Mart (now Walmart), an Arkansas-based national discount retailer.
During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, reporters closely examined Hillary’s investments and career choices. To some observers, her pursuit of personal wealth seemed to be at odds with her public image as a lifelong public servant. Bill Clinton boasted of his wife’s policy influence, quipping that voters would get “two for the price of one” if they elected him to the presidency. Clinton and his running mate, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, defeated the Republican ticket of President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle.
First lady of the United States
Mrs. Clinton’s interest in crafting policy only grew once she had national exposure as first lady. She headed a task force to bring about universal health care. In 1995, she visited Beijing, China, to champion women’s rights. In a speech to the Fourth World Conference on Women being held in Beijing, she called attention to the abuse of women around the world. She declared, “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”
Health care reform.
In 1993, Clinton led the administration’s health care task force. In that role, she was the chief author of a plan to guarantee low-cost health care to all Americans. Republicans in the Senate used a tactic called a filibuster to delay action on the plan. Eventually, Congress chose not to act on the plan. Critics thought it would give the government too large a role in the health care system. Nevertheless, Clinton began working on legislation that included some of the plan’s key features.
In 1996, Congress passed a bill that included elements of the 1993 plan. The bill allowed workers to change jobs without losing their medical insurance coverage. The bill also ensured that workers could not be denied medical insurance coverage because of a preexisting illness. In 1997, Congress passed a bill ensuring that millions of children would gain health insurance.
Investigation and scandal.
In 1994, interest grew in Mrs. Clinton’s past handling of the Clintons’ personal finances. Critics questioned whether she—or her husband—had taken part in any illegal or unethical acts while helping to manage their investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation. From 1994 to 2000, federal investigators probed the Clintons’ role in the Whitewater development. The final report of the investigation was issued in 2002. It stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that either of the Clintons had committed a criminal offense.
Mrs. Clinton received additional unwanted attention after Whitewater investigators unearthed evidence of her husband’s pattern of marital infidelities. The evidence dated from his time as Arkansas governor.
In 1998, prosecutors widened their investigation, seeking to discover whether President Clinton had lied under oath when he denied having a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Prosecutors also wanted to find out whether Bill Clinton had urged Lewinsky to lie to lawyers in an earlier sexual harassment case. Their report suggested that he might have committed impeachable offenses in trying to conceal his relationship with Lewinsky.
The House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry and, in December 1998, voted to impeach President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice. In February 1999, the Senate found Clinton not guilty, and he remained in office.
Bill eventually told his wife that he had, in fact, had intimate relations with Lewinsky. Hillary later wrote that she had felt “heartbroken and disappointed” with her husband and was angry with herself for having believed his denials. Hillary was also criticized by some supporters of women’s rights for remarks she had made challenging the accusers’ believability.
It Takes a Village.
Efforts to promote the well-being of children had long been a focus of Mrs. Clinton’s. From 1986 to 1992, she had chaired the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that promotes child welfare. While serving as first lady, Clinton wrote the book It Takes a Village (1996). The book called for community participation in helping children develop. Clinton said that the book was inspired in part by her mother’s difficult childhood, and by how schoolteachers and other community members had helped care for and inspire Dorothy Howell.
Entry into politics
The Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, during the closing years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 1999, New York Senator Daniel P. Moynihan announced that he would not seek reelection. Mrs. Clinton, after choosing to campaign for Moynihan’s Senate seat, embarked on a statewide “listening tour” to learn about issues affecting New York residents. In 2000, she won the election. She was reelected in 2006. In 2003, her autobiography, Living History, was published.
U.S. senator.
As a senator, Clinton served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She worked on issues related to veterans’ health care and sought to bring economic development to rural areas of her state. She also worked on legislation to address the health needs of emergency personnel who worked in New York City in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. They flew two of the planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. They crashed one plane into the Pentagon Building near Washington, D.C. Another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
In 2002, Senator Clinton cast a vote in favor of giving President George W. Bush the authority to launch a U.S. invasion of Iraq—an invasion that led to the unpopular Iraq War (2003-2011). Clinton would later face scrutiny about the vote during her campaigns for the 2008 and 2016 Democratic nominations for president.
2008 campaign.
In January 2007, Clinton began a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination as the race’s clear front-runner. Early in the process, she won the broad support of elected officials and party leaders who vote as superdelegates at the party’s nominating convention. Clinton won 2008 primary contests in many states. She failed, however, to blunt the growing momentum of Senator Barack Obama’s campaign. Superdelegates who had supported Clinton began changing their allegiance to Obama.
In June 2008, Clinton withdrew from the race, in which she had won about 18 million votes, and declared her support for Obama. In a speech to supporters, she hailed her campaign’s progress against sexism. She addressed the notion of the glass ceiling—that is, an invisible barrier preventing women from advancing to the highest levels of their professions. “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time,” she said, “thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”
Secretary of state
Following the election, Obama asked Clinton to serve as secretary of state in his administration. Clinton, who served in the position from 2009 to 2013, traveled to 112 countries—more than any previous secretary of state.
As secretary, Clinton worked to confront international terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to limit Iran’s nuclear programs. She led U.S. efforts in response to popular uprisings in Syria, Egypt, and Libya. She worked with Russia to reduce arsenals of nuclear weapons. She also worked to gain commitments from China and India to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Clinton’s book Hard Choices (2014) discussed the challenges she faced as secretary of state.
Bengh āzī.
On Sept. 11, 2012, Islamic militants launched a mortar attack on the American mission in Benghāzī, Libya. The American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed. The terrorist attack coincided with protests over an anti-Islam video produced in the United States.
The House of Representatives, controlled by a Republican majority, soon launched five investigations into the Bengh āzī attacks. The Senate also formed two panels to investigate the attacks. In 2014, the House established the Select Committee on Bengh āzī. Its two-year investigation cost more than $7 million.
In her testimony before the committees, Clinton acknowledged that the government could have provided better security for its diplomatic corps, but she admitted no wrongdoing. Clinton claimed that political interests had driven the investigations. Her supporters compared the investigators’ approach to Bengh āzī with the lack of inquiries into earlier attacks on diplomatic posts. They noted that Congress had not launched similar investigations into at least 20 attacks on embassies or embassy personnel that had taken place during the administration of President George W. Bush.
E-mail controversy.
The Bengh āzī hearings led to no charges against Clinton or any members of her staff. However, the hearings did reveal that Clinton used private, unsecured e-mail servers during her time as secretary. Using such a server violated established State Department practices and made some classified information vulnerable to access by hostile governments or organizations. In July 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, following an extensive investigation, recommended that no charges be brought against Clinton for her unauthorized server usage. The bureau’s director, James Comey, however, called her conduct “extremely careless.” Many people called Clinton’s judgment into question.
After leaving her post as secretary of state, Clinton gave dozens of paid speeches. She also prepared for another run for president.
The 2016 election
In April 2015, Clinton announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Many observers believed that Clinton’s experience and popularity among Democrats again made her the front-runner for the party’s nomination. Her opponents included former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, former Virginia U.S. Senator Jim Webb, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Sanders proved to be Clinton’s strongest rival. Their contest became a battle between the establishment and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. Sanders, representing the progressive wing, started his campaign essentially as a “message candidate”—that is, he entered to help steer the party’s debates to address issues of income inequality. He and his message proved popular with the Democratic electorate, however, and the front-runner found herself in another bruising primary fight.
Sanders and his supporters criticized Clinton for her ties to Wall Street banks, her changing positions on trade agreements, and what they called her questionable judgment in handling international crises as secretary of state. Sanders’s backers questioned Clinton’s receipt of more than $20 million for delivering speeches, several of them for financial institutions, and for declining to make the transcripts of such speeches public.
Clinton countered that, as a senator from New York, she naturally had connections to the finance industry. She noted that she had also spoken to a wide variety of business and interest groups. She also pointed to her record on women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights, her decades-long fight for universal health care, and her broad support among party leaders. The elected officials and party leaders known as superdelegates backed Clinton early in the primary election cycle by a margin of 45 to 1.
During the nominating process, the candidates competed in 57 nominating contests in U.S. states and territories. Sanders won 23 contests, including a number of caucuses that tended to favor antiestablishment candidates. Clinton carried 34 contests and finished with about 17 million votes to 13 million for Sanders. In July 2016, Sanders acknowledged his campaign’s defeat and endorsed Clinton for president.
Democratic nomination.
The Democratic National Convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 25 to 28. Delegates nominated Clinton for president and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for vice president. On the convention’s final night, Hillary Clinton took the Philadelphia stage following a warm introduction by her daughter, Chelsea. Clinton praised the country’s founders and the spirit of compromise that brought the individual American colonies to unite against Britain’s king in 1776. She spoke of her plans should she be elected president. They included raising the federal minimum wage; defending the rights of workers and minorities; protecting the environment; passing immigration reform; and reforming the criminal justice system, which many people considered flawed.
Clinton also spoke of her historic achievement—becoming the first woman to be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States. “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” she said. “I’m happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. I’m happy for boys and men, because when any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone. After all, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”
General election.
Clinton exited her convention with a healthy lead in many public opinion polls. She led her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, in fundraising and stood to benefit from the disciplined campaign apparatus she inherited from President Obama. Supporters wore pins that declared, “I’m With Her” and “She’s With Us.” Clinton’s campaign used the slogan “Stronger Together.”
More than once before Election Day, Trump’s campaign seemed to be unraveling. Trump’s near-daily stream of provocative comments kept media from focusing on stories that could have been damaging to his opponent. Many Americans shuddered as he engaged in a war of words with the Pakistani-American parents of a U.S. marine who had been killed in combat. Trump also faced criticism for not releasing his tax returns, and he blasted fellow Republicans who took issue with a campaign style they called undisciplined. As early as August, many Trump supporters feared that their candidate would lose by huge margins, and some gamblers placed bets that Trump would even drop out of the race. In September, however, Trump began to narrow the gap in the polls. Many poll respondents said that they doubted Clinton’s honesty and appreciated Trump’s promises to shake up Washington.
During the fall of 2016, the two candidates participated in three debates. Clinton’s strong debate performances, together with media reports detailing graphic statements Trump had made about women, helped restore her polling lead in October. In the November election, however, Trump defeated Clinton. Polls had given Clinton a high chance of winning the presidency, but Trump won narrow victories in each of the swing states (states that do not vote predictably Democratic or Republican) en route to victory in the Electoral College. Clinton captured the popular vote, however, by nearly 3 million votes.
Later years.
Following her loss in the 2016 election, Clinton spent several months away from public life. In May 2017, she announced that she had formed a political group called Onward Together. In September, Clinton’s book What Happened was published. In the book, Clinton took a critical look at her presidential campaign and discussed ways she coped with the election loss. Clinton later co-wrote, with author Louise Penny, the political thriller State of Terror (2021).
