I could almost see Mom again, standing on the floor of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, waiting for Geraldine Ferraro to take the stage. That night Ferraro would become the first woman ever nominated as vice president on a major party ticket. Susan Stamberg from NPR, with her wonderfully curly hair and an enormous grin, walked up to Mom carrying her ubiquitous microphone. “How does this feel, Ann?” she shouted above the screaming delegates. Mom was not a sentimental person; life hadn’t afforded her that luxury. But at that moment she was overcome, teary-eyed, as Ferraro’s name was announced over the speakers. “I wasn’t sure I would ever live to see this day,” she said. “Finally, one of us.”
Thirty-two years later, as Americans waited for Hillary Clinton to announce whether she would run for president in 2016, I remembered the look on Mom’s face back then: full of hope, expectations, and wonder at how far we’d come.
The first inkling I had that Hillary was in was a call from my daughter Lily. She was working at the Democratic National Committee as deputy communications director, and like a lot of young people in politics in 2015, she was waiting to see how the presidential race shaped up.
“Mom, Joel called me and said he wants me to start thinking about the campaign,” she said. Joel Benenson was a friend of our family and a pollster for President Obama. Rumor had it he was looking around for talent in case Hillary ran. “Do you think that means she’s going to do it?”
“You tell me!” I answered. Up until then, everything was speculation. Even though Bill Clinton had been close to my mom, and Hillary had spoken at Mom’s memorial service, I was not in the “Friends of Bill and Hillary” circle. I figured Lily was going to be my best inside source.
“I’d do anything to work on the race, so I’ll let you know,” Lily said, and hung up.
I knew Lily was ready for a new job, and after all, in her heart she’s a campaign rat, so I was almost positive it was only a matter of time before she got involved. Sure enough, a few weeks later Jen Palmieri, who everyone was guessing would be Hillary’s communications director, called Lily and asked if she would consider moving to the Midwest to head up communications for the Iowa caucuses “should she decide to run.” Jen made her case, explaining that being in Iowa would put Lily at the heart of it all, with the responsibility and action that came with being in a must-win state on a national campaign. Next thing I knew, Lily had quit her job and was packing to move to Des Moines.
When Lily called to tell me the news, I cheered, and then got down to business. “Okay, if you’re going to work for Hillary, you have to get some new clothes. She dresses really nice, and Huma—my God!—so why don’t you come to New York before you head out, and we’ll get you ready.” Who did I sound like now?
Lily came up for the day, and we bought her two perfect navy blue suits and a kind of embroidered brown dress that she pushed for. Of course the dress was the only thing from that shopping trip that she ever wound up wearing. Just like my mother’s fantasies about what women wore in the Ivy League, I had some nutty thoughts about a presidential campaign wardrobe.
Right as Lily was packing up to leave, I went to an event in New York where Hillary was speaking. Before the program I made my way over to her table to say hello and tell her I hoped she would run. As I leaned in to shake her hand, my proud mother instincts kicked in. “Lily’s moving to Iowa,” I told her. “She is my firstborn, so I’m doing my part to help you get started!” She burst out in her infectious laugh. “Well, having Ann’s granddaughter on the campaign couldn’t be better,” she said.
It was March 2015, and Hillary still hadn’t announced. Lily was headed off as a volunteer, without an official job, uprooting herself for the fourth time in five years for yet another campaign. I suppose some mothers might have been hesitant, but I was ecstatic, and I knew Mom would have been too.
• • •
It would be almost a year between Hillary’s much-awaited announcement in April 2015 and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s official primary endorsement in January 2016. Before the endorsement we held meetings across the country with our staff and supporters. Just as in 2008, patients and leaders interviewed all the Democratic candidates in the race. Yet again none of the Republicans running responded to our invitation to meet.
The Democratic primary was heated, and supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were active on social media. There was a lot of ugly trolling on Twitter and Facebook—and of course, knowing what we do now, it could have been Russian bots as well. Senator Sanders had been a consistent vote for women’s rights, but Hillary had been leading the fight her entire career. After we watched her listen to the stories of patients and activists at the endorsement meeting, it was clear she would bring compassion, bold ideas, and a deep understanding of Planned Parenthood’s work to the White House.
The endorsement itself was a production, since we’d never endorsed in a primary before. We were breaking with precedent because we knew this election would have enormous consequences for Planned Parenthood patients and women everywhere, so we did it up right. Waiting backstage at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester with dozens of our staff and patients, I saw Hillary come in through the back of the kitchen. Wouldn’t you know, we were in matching navy blue pantsuits. The second we saw each other, we both burst out laughing.
The audience was packed with Planned Parenthood supporters in pink T-shirts, and they were roaring to make history. Kicking off the event was a Planned Parenthood patient, Natarsha McQueen, who had been on the endorsement screening committee. Hillary stood close to the monitor backstage, listening intently. When Natarsha told her story of how a screening at Planned Parenthood detected breast cancer when she was just thirty-three years old and may have saved her life, Hillary put her hand over her heart. “Wow,” she said.
When she took the stage, Hillary got straight to the point. “I have stood with you throughout my career, and I promise you this: as president, I will always have your back. I’ve been fighting for women and families my entire life. I’ll go anywhere, meet with anyone, and work my heart out to find common ground. But I’ll also stand my ground. I’m not going to let anyone rip away the progress we’ve made.”
Listening to her, I felt a sense of wonder. When Planned Parenthood was founded, women didn’t even have the right to vote. Yet after a hundred years we were endorsing a woman for president, and she was standing there thanking us. After her speech she stuck around, shaking hands and giving hugs. As young women stood patiently waiting, cell phones in hand, Hillary grabbed them right up and took selfies with them like the pro she is.
Afterward Hillary headed backstage and graciously took a group photo with the team that pulled the event together. (That photo is one of my favorites; several of the young women in it would spend the rest of the year working day and night to help elect her.) I introduced her to everyone as fast as I could, certain she would have to run. But she wasn’t in any rush to get out of there. Rather she made a point of thanking everyone, one by one. This wasn’t her first election, and more than anyone she knew that these women—and millions like them—were going to be the heart and soul of her campaign.
• • •
By the time the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Hillary, the Iowa caucuses were only weeks away. Iowa is psychologically important in the Democratic primary. It’s the first state contest, and the way it’s organized is so complicated, people spend their entire life mastering the process. Which is why, when Lily made a quick trip home for Thanksgiving, so many of us asked her to explain how it works that she finally cleared a space on the dining room table and set up a demonstration. “Imagine these salt shakers are Hillary Clinton supporters. These pepper grinders are Bernie Sanders supporters. And these candles are Martin O’Malley supporters.”
I was excited about the caucuses, but I was even more excited at the prospect of traveling to Iowa to see Lily. I had enough vacation time saved up and had managed to organize my life so that every spare weekend or day off could be used to campaign for Hillary. After our last-minute shopping trip, when I walked into campaign central in Des Moines all those months later, Lily was in ripped blue jeans, Converse All-Stars, and a shirt I swear we bought her in junior high. The campaign office was a joyful wreck. My first thought was, Can’t we invent a more easily disposable pizza box? There must have been a hundred of them scattered over the floor.
One of the things I loved about the Hillary campaign, much like Obama’s earlier, was the creativity of the volunteers, who had hung up yard signs and posters on every wall, in the shape of Iowa. I took a picture of Lily’s desk; aside from press releases, it was littered with various treasures I’d gotten her over a series of campaigns: the sushi stapler, a small statue of Ganesha for good luck, desk monkeys, a photo of Lyle Lovett, and a bottle of generic ibuprofen.
Eventually we left the office and made our way to Lily’s home-away-from-home in downtown Des Moines. Her apartment was a first-class disaster. I swung into action.
First, I washed all the dishes, then tried my best to gather up all the dirty clothes. (There’s that skirt I’ve been looking for!) I did the laundry and threw out the dead flowers along with, yes, more pizza boxes. Just for laughs, I made the bed, knowing it would make not the slightest difference. But like all the other times when life feels out of control, doing the little things was enormously satisfying. I looked at her leather boots, which she wore daily—it was Iowa after all—and I just had to do something.
“I’m taking your boots to get polished,” I announced.
“Ah, okay, Mom,” Lily answered, sounding like, Do you seriously think anyone cares how my boots look? I went online and found Stan’s Shoeshine Stand, right down the street from the campaign office. It was buried in an indoor mall in a bank building, like much of Des Moines. The next day I walked in and set the boots on the counter. “Do you think you can rescue these boots?” I asked the elderly gentleman in the one-man shop, presumably Stan.
“Ma’am, I’ve polished the shoes of every presidential candidate since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, so I imagine I can get these in good shape! Just give me twenty minutes.” I decided to go get coffee, and asked if he’d like some. “Black with two sugars, if you would,” he answered. Like the rest of Iowa, he was “midwest nice.”
When I got back to headquarters, Lily had a phone in each hand and someone waiting to talk to her. Her sneakers up on the desk, she was in her element. I waited my turn.
“I’m finishing an event for Hillary late this afternoon, and then I’ll get back to Des Moines by nine. Want to get dinner?” I asked.
She looked doubtful. “No way I’ll be done by then, but maybe we can get coffee in the morning?”
I had forgotten the insanity of a campaign: eating whatever you could, whenever you could, and having no other life. I managed to keep my worries to myself—about how little sleep she must be getting, the constant stress I knew all too well. But her boots looked great!
The key to the Iowa caucuses is that every county matters, which means you get to see a lot of places that are really out there. Suzanna de Baca, the leader of Planned Parenthood Voters of Iowa, agreed to go on the road with me, and I’m forever grateful. I’m the kind of campaigner who will go anywhere—there’s no meeting too small, no location too remote. It comes from my labor organizing days, knowing that around every corner there were amazing people you had yet to meet, and the farther from the center they were, usually the more grateful they were for the visit. That’s how, just seven days before the caucuses, Suzanna and I found ourselves searching for a campaign headquarters in Conroy, Iowa, where the only landmark was an abandoned grain silo. Even the GPS couldn’t help. Driving in circles, we finally saw a truck coming the other way, so I jumped out of the car.
“Hey there, hold on! Do you know where the Machinist Hall is?” I yelled.
The driver rolled down the window. “Yep, sure do,” he replied. “Aren’t you Cecile, Ann’s daughter?”
How in the world? “Sure am! I’m out here campaigning for Hillary, and we’re supposed to be meeting up with some folks.”
“Well, me and the wife used to live down in Austin, and we retired up here a few years ago. I’m real glad for what you do—she’s not gonna believe I saw you. Maybe we’ll head over there, too.”
We got the directions, and sure enough, there was a tiny union hall just a few miles away, with a couple of pickup trucks with Hillary signs and “Proud to Be Union” stickers parked outside. We gingerly tiptoed through the ice. Though there didn’t seem to be any heat inside the hall, there were a couple of dozen people of all ages and walks of life, sitting on folding chairs, waiting expectantly. Like every other campaign stop I made over the next many months, I was struck by all the young women running around, getting folks coffee, handing out phone lists for the area, and making sure everyone left with something to do.
Within an hour we were back in the rental car, speeding down snowy country roads in Iowa. I was scheduled to introduce Hillary at a rally in New Liberty later that afternoon, where I would get to see Lily and Kirk. Kirk was working with the labor unions and Lily was working the press, so this was going to be a rare mini family reunion in a suburban Iowa elementary school.
For the next eight months I would do hundreds of events, from phone banks in Colorado to house parties in Nevada, some with a handful of volunteers and some with hundreds. But that day, with Hillary there in person, was something truly special. It looked like every red-blooded citizen in New Liberty had shown up. There were lines of folks trying to get into the school gym, as though the biggest playoff game of the season were about to begin. And backstage, as always, was the photo line. I’d never seen so many children, especially little girls, waiting to get their picture taken with the candidate.
After the rally in New Liberty, Lily, Kirk, and I made plans to meet up that night in Cedar Rapids. But first I was going to North Grinnell and then to a student rally at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, where Tony Goldwyn, the charming actor from Scandal, was meeting up with us. As you can imagine, fans of his were waiting. There are a lot of celebrities who campaign for their candidate of choice, but I’d put Tony up against any of them for knowing every single policy position and issue, as well as Hillary’s entire biography. Finally, he and I headed to Cedar Rapids for the last stop of the night, a phone bank packed to the gills, and then over to the hotel where the campaign was staying.
Lily was waiting in the lobby, as Hillary and her team had already arrived. “Hillary wants to know if you and Dad want to get something to eat?” she asked. There was no way I was saying no to that. Before I knew what had happened, we were sitting down to a family dinner with Hillary; Huma Abedin; Tony Goldwyn; Matt Paul, the Iowa state director; and Nick Merrill, her traveling press secretary—a great group of people with whom to dissect Iowa politics. The best part was seeing Hillary with Lily, especially since Lily had just learned that Hillary had gotten the endorsement of the Des Moines Register. In a state where every little bit helped, that was a big deal. Lily added, “And we just heard we got the Cedar Rapids paper too—the two biggest papers in the state.”
“We did?” Hillary said, shocked. “I didn’t even go to that editorial board!”
Kirk and I sat there beaming with pride. Suddenly my mind shifted gears: With fifty states and hundreds of towns, how in the world can Hillary Clinton remember she didn’t go to the Cedar Rapids paper? The woman astounds.
What made that dinner especially fun, besides the awesome company, is that it was in a teaching hotel, where they prepare students for careers in the hospitality industry, including culinary arts. Our waiter looked to be maybe nineteen, and here he was serving possibly the next leader of the free world. He was so nervous, we must have all gotten five forks and extra appetizers, but he did a wonderful job. If you ever get out to Cedar Rapids, I highly recommend the Hotel at Kirkwood Center.
Our dinner conversation covered everything from the Iowa caucuses to how much my mom would have loved being there. Kirk talked with Hillary about the labor unions and their plans for turnout. There was no detail too small—she wanted to hear everything. When dinner ended, I was beat. I couldn’t imagine how Hillary did it, especially since it was only January. My years of doing the same kind of schedule with Mom came rushing back, as did the protective daughter in me.
“Lily, you have to get her to bed,” I said. “She cannot stay up like this and go campaigning again all day tomorrow!”
“Oh, that’s nothing. She has to get up early for an interview with Stephanopoulos in the morning.” I was exhausted just thinking about it.
Though Kirk had to drive back to Des Moines, Lily and I stayed at the hotel overnight. As I was curling up in bed, completely spent, lights out, I saw the telltale glow of her cell phone under the covers. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I have to check any breaking news so she’s prepped for the morning,” Lily mumbled. The next morning her alarm went off at five, and she spent the next half hour scanning all the national and local news, trying to stay a step ahead.
The race was incredibly tight heading into the caucuses. I remember being at the state headquarters, looking at the stacks of hundreds of packets ready for caucus night. The team had planned what looked like a statewide invasion. They had caucus leaders in every polling place, and they’d even done a dry run, basically a dress rehearsal for the big day. There was no room for error. And the planning paid off: later that week Hillary won the Iowa caucuses by a nose.
“It was so close, but we won,” Lily said first thing the next morning. “Turns out every single thing we did mattered. And listen—I’ve already packed up my apartment and should be getting to New York by next weekend.” After nearly a year in Des Moines, my older daughter was going to work out of the Brooklyn campaign headquarters and live with us. The primaries were going to be a hard-fought battle, and Lily would be running press for the rest of the state contests, which were coming fast and furious.
• • •
By that point, I had a go-bag packed and ready at all times. For campaign travel, you need solid-color clothes (best for TV), whatever doesn’t wrinkle, the aforementioned hand steamer, and sensible shoes. Voters are not looking for you or the candidate to make a fashion statement, and you can easily wind up doing five events in a day. Marisa Feehan, a feisty, funny young woman from Colorado who manages my schedule and keeps me sane, joined me on the road whenever she could. And my trusty aide, a New Hampshire native and real political talent, Matt Burgess, became my traveling buddy for the next several months. He’d managed campaigns for governors and senators and knew the state of New Hampshire inside and out. Before our first trip together, I gave him a quick rundown.
“Okay, Matt, here are the rules. We never, never check a bag. Got that? And I’m always hungry, so your job is to make sure no matter what random town we end up at for dinnertime, we’re gonna have something decent to eat. Tacos are a five-star when you can pull that off, though north of Virginia it might be hard.” He nodded, a little dazed. And he went out and bought his own steamer that night.
We ended up eating fish and chips more than a few nights, since it seemed like the Hampton Inn specialty, but Matt is a foodie. As we drove through Nevada and Florida, we would fantasize about what we were going to cook when we finally got back home. His favorite was roast chicken, and he liked complicated recipes requiring hours of prep. I am more of a baker, so we had lots of discussions about the perfect pie and crust: lard or butter? Food processor or by hand? I’m a butter gal and swear by the recipe from my favorite bakery, Tartine—something we discussed at length during our many hours in the car.
Volunteering and traveling the country, I saw up close what a completely insane primary system we have and how challenging it is for voters in many states to participate. The states where voters go to the polls for the primary election have complicated enough rules, and to top it off, in states like Iowa that have a caucus system, people actually have to show up and literally stand and be counted for their candidate. That’s tough to do for anyone who works a night shift or needs someone to watch the kids—namely, women.
A crucial state for Hillary, despite having relatively few electoral votes, was Maine. I jumped at the chance to go, since it is almost an adopted home state for me. I’d gone to work in Maine as a nanny when I was a teenager, and I’ve been returning every summer. The kids were raised going to an island off the coast of Portland, and it is a place after my own heart. Give me a Maine woman any day. With so many cold months, they are scrappers, like my friend Sarah Meacham. They quilt, they crochet, they split wood. They can fix a tractor and know how to take wild apples and make thirty jars of sauce. Sarah taught me to make jam from wild raspberries and blackberries to last the year. Hillary reminds me of the Mainers I know, hardworking survivors who don’t complain.
One afternoon Matt and I drove up to Kennebunk, Maine, for a house party, right ahead of the caucuses. The host and hostess must have been baking all week; there were muffins and cheese sticks and stuffed mushrooms. After I gave my spiel about Hillary, the local organizer explained how the caucus would work. “You are going to need to be at the school by seven,” he said. “If you get there late, you can’t participate. Then you should plan to be there for at least a couple of hours. And you are going to need to be ready to publicly state that you are caucusing for Hillary.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, an older woman spoke up. “We have a lot of Bernie supporters in this area, and they are really adamant,” she said, sounding apprehensive. “I’m so excited about Hillary, but I don’t want to fight with my neighbors. We all have to get along here, it’s a small town.”
And so it went. A lot of our supporters didn’t want to fight—they just wanted to be for Hillary. The attacks were coming from all sides, and many women felt they just could not speak up. I had volunteered and campaigned for many less-than-perfect men running for president, and found it overwhelming to witness the double standard. Just like with Mom, the attacks felt personal because they were personal. I tried my best to give pep talks to the women I met, encouraging them to talk to their friends and neighbors about why they were for Hillary.
If I had to do one interview, I had to do twenty where the reporter asked, “Why aren’t young people for Hillary?” It was a narrative that was not supported by facts, but that didn’t stop it from becoming a trope of the media.
I was on enough college campuses during the primary to see how hard it was for a lot of the organizers and volunteers on Hillary’s campaign. I also saw it firsthand with my daughter Hannah. We went out for coffee on a trip through Denver, where she was running canvasses for Change Corps, a progressive organizing group based out of Colorado. Per usual, she had her laptop in tow. But now it had an enormous “I’m with Her” sticker plastered to the front.
“I just figured I’m getting it out there,” she said. Hannah was working with other young progressive organizers on environmental issues. “I get all these comments from the dudes in my office who are Bernie supporters, and I want to make a statement every time I flip open my computer. They aren’t going to intimidate me.” That’s Hannah. She had done her homework, and she knew Hillary was her candidate, with no encouragement from her sister or me. As it turned out, Daniel felt the same way. I was glad they were able to support each other through a primary that got pretty unpleasant at times.
The primaries were hard-fought, and in the end it all came down to California. If Hillary won the state, it would give her a decisive victory as the Democratic nominee—not to mention a critical boost heading into the general election. In the final week Lily had gone to Los Angeles to help for the home stretch. She flew back on a red-eye the night of the primary to get to New York in time for the California results. A Hillary event was planned that night to celebrate if she secured the nomination, and by that time Hannah was running a canvass office in New York City. I was in DC, in the middle of the Planned Parenthood national conference. That night, when it was announced that Hillary had won, Lily and Hannah were together at the Navy Yard in downtown Brooklyn, along with thousands of others, celebrating the victory. They snapped a photo and texted it to me, and I burst into tears. They looked completely worn out and ebullient at the same time. Kirk was in New York as well, so they found each other and we got on the phone, patched in Daniel, and celebrated.
Even then there was no time to waste. My thoughts immediately turned to the next day. Hillary had long been scheduled to speak to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington at a national meeting. We hadn’t expected then that the primary would go on for so long—which meant that now a routine campaign stop had taken on new meaning.
I was in touch with Lauren Peterson, who had written speeches for me at Planned Parenthood and was now working for Hillary. She was on deck to write that day’s speech and had called a few days earlier to check in. “It’s looking like she might clinch the nomination on Tuesday, which could make this her first public appearance as the presumptive nominee,” she said. “Everyone will be watching.”
That morning I’d asked for something completely out of hand: Would Hillary take a photo with every single Planned Parenthood CEO from across the country—fifty-eight and counting—before her speech? She would. I can’t remember a prouder moment, seeing everyone dressed and pressed and ready for success. I felt like the ultimate wedding planner, making sure we had a Planned Parenthood pink backdrop for the photos, watching as Hillary took her time with each and every one. The night before, the singer Kesha, who also happened to be a former Planned Parenthood patient, had performed. I never in a million years would have imagined I’d find myself introducing Kesha and her mother to Hillary Clinton, but there I was.
Soon we were at the main stage of the Washington Hilton before a thousand cheering members of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. I introduced her, and Hillary took the stage.
“Today I want to say something you don’t hear enough: Thank you. Thank you for being there for women, no matter their race, sexual orientation, or immigration status,” she began. “Thank you for being there for every woman in every state who has to miss work; drive hundreds of miles; endure cruel, medically unnecessary waiting periods; walk past angry protesters to exercise her constitutional right to safe, legal abortion. I’ve been proud to stand with Planned Parenthood for a long time. . . . Because I know for a century, Planned Parenthood has worked to make sure that the women, men, and young people who count on you can lead their best lives—healthy, safe, and free to follow their dreams.”
There were many firsts in the campaign, but one of them was that afternoon. It was the first time a nominee for the presidency had spoken without hesitation and without qualifiers about her support for women’s fundamental reproductive rights. By the time she finished, many people in the audience had tears in their eyes. National board member and lifelong Planned Parenthood volunteer Naomi Aberly turned to me and said, “I never thought I’d live to see a presidential candidate stand with us.” And they stood with her—a standing ovation to beat the world. For the next six months the women and men in that room worked their hearts out for Hillary—people who had devoted their lives to reproductive rights and young activists who had just begun. The one thing that united them was Planned Parenthood and, in that moment, the opportunity to elect the first woman president.
• • •
The rest of the summer went much as everyone had planned, organizing phone banks and canvasses and training volunteers. Except for one thoroughly unexpected development: it became clear that despite all their best efforts, the Republican Party could not stop the momentum of Donald Trump. He was about to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, setting the stage for the most unpredictable presidential election in memory.
As we had with President Obama’s campaign, we made the Democratic National Convention a family affair. Kirk and Hannah and I drove to Philadelphia, passing car after car with Hillary stickers and people waving and honking. Hannah had never been to a convention and had agreed to travel with me for the next few days. I had to prepare my convention speech, which was stressful, and I was still trading drafts with Lily and Lauren Peterson back in Brooklyn. I also had to find an outfit that would be suitable for television, my mother’s voice ringing in my ears: “Is that what you are planning on wearing?” Since, as has already been established, I’m not a fashionista, it was an enormous relief to find a navy blue suit that would do. Plus, as always, I had Mom’s gold sheriff’s badge pin with me, and it was going right on the lapel.
Even though Hillary clearly had the votes for the nomination, there were more than a few delegates who were not having it. When Hannah and I left the hotel for my first appearance, we walked by a gentleman who was covered with buttons saying “US Out of North America” and “Democrats Are Fat Cats.” Hannah turned to me as if to say, What is going on? I simply said, “Welcome to the Democratic Party!”
It seemed like the entire world was in Philadelphia, and we saw them all, including many of the volunteers I had met during the primaries. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund had organized hundreds of folks to help out, so every street corner had a pink-shirted canvasser signing people up to work on the campaign when they got back home. The excitement of young women was over the top, and they were there for Hillary.
On the day of my speech Hannah and I went backstage to do a run-through with the teleprompter and make sure we knew where to go. Meryl Streep was there with her three daughters; it turned out she was speaking right after me. We talked about my mom. “I can’t get her out of my mind,” I told her. “This is what she lived for, and believe me, her spirit is in this city this week.”
That night Hannah went with me backstage to the makeshift hair and makeup studio where speakers were getting ready. There were about a dozen raised canvas chairs, makeup lights, hair dryers, and women everywhere. And there, seated in a row, were the Mothers of the Movement. They were about to go onstage and testify about the loss of their children to gun violence and police brutality: Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin; Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis; Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner; Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland; and Maria Hamilton, the mother of Dontre Hamilton. These women could have been at home, silently grieving, but instead they had traveled to Philadelphia. I had heard them speak before, but to see them all gathered together was overwhelming. They were some of the most powerful storytellers in the nation.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing how else to convey how in awe I was of them. We joined hands, quietly acknowledging the importance of the reason we were there.
Once I’d been blushed and brushed, I went back to the greenroom, where all the speakers were cooling their heels, and who should I run into but Tony Goldwyn and his wife. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “Did you think we’d be here, all those months ago in Cedar Rapids?” It was like old home week.
There is nothing quite like speaking to thousands of people in a convention hall. It was impossible not to remember sitting on the stage, watching Mom deliver the keynote address in Atlanta to the same convention all those years ago. Unlike the convention floor in San Francisco when the women were cheering for Geraldine Ferraro, tonight everyone was cheering for the woman we hoped would become president.
As I was about to go out to speak, Jim Margolis, who had the thankless task of running the entire four nights of the convention, grabbed me. You could tell he was sweating bullets. “Oh my God, Cecile,” he said, “we are running so far behind! Don’t wait for the applause, don’t wait for anything, just barrel through!” I felt for him, even though that’s not exactly what you want to hear before your three minutes. But it didn’t matter. As I walked out onstage there was a lot of Planned Parenthood love in the room, and even though the red warning light telling a speaker “You are over time” was blinking the minute I started, I had fun. “When my great-grandmother was growing up, women couldn’t vote under Texas law,” I said. “Two generations later her granddaughter, Ann Richards, was elected governor. Tonight we are closer than ever to putting a woman in the White House. And I can almost hear Mom saying, ‘Well, it sure took y’all long enough!’ ”
The night Hillary made her acceptance speech you could not have fit another body into that hall. Every young woman I knew was there. We were all proud of her, and proud to be part of history.
• • •
That entire fall was a blur of crisscrossing the country, going to phone banks to encourage volunteers, and speaking at college campuses to get out the vote. Everywhere I went, I met women I will never forget. On the way from Silver City to Reno, a young woman from Chicago named Angelica Alfaro took us to a convenience store she swore had the best breakfast tacos in Nevada. She told me, “I ran for office last year, but the old boys network rallied behind the guy in the race. I’m proud that I did it, and I’m not giving up.” She had picked up stakes and moved to Nevada just to work for Hillary and get more political experience under her belt. I expect to see her in Congress someday. In Traverse City, Michigan, I met a young woman who ran a volunteer phone bank. She introduced me to the crowd, which is how I learned her story. “I was homeless in high school,” she stated. “Planned Parenthood was where I went for my health care, and with their help, I made it through school. And today I have a job working for Hillary. I’m on my way.” No matter how tiring the road was, these women made me want to work that much harder.
Despite all the good energy, no matter how well Hillary did, it seemed impossible to break away from Trump. Everything he’d done would have been the end of any other candidate. Like women (and men) across America, I felt sickened and disgusted by the Access Hollywood tapes—this was a presidential candidate bragging about sexual assault. But nothing seemed to dissuade his supporters. Many young women at Planned Parenthood had never known any president other than Barack Obama, and they were horrified that anyone would support Trump. I agreed that it was hard to imagine someone backing a man with such disregard for women, but after all, my mom had nearly been beat by Clayton Williams, so anything was possible.
My job was to remind women how strong Hillary was for them, and we knew that the Planned Parenthood Action Fund was the very best messenger for women voters. Which may be why the campaign asked if I could go to Las Vegas for the third and final debate, ready to work the press afterward. Both campaigns would have ten designated spokespeople to do interviews and rebuttals in what’s known as “the spin room.”
Since I was going to do press afterward, I sat right up front, with a perfect view of the candidates, so it would be easy to get to the press room right after the debate. I wound up sitting next to a longtime Hillary supporter and creator of the Power Rangers, Haim Saban, and his wife, Cheryl. We watched as the Trump family filed in. They were like automatons walking in a perfect line, no human contact, nothing.
Then Hillary and Trump took the stage, so close to our seats I could practically touch them. Until that night I’d never seen Trump in person. For the next hour and a half, my anxiety rose steadily. Haim and I looked at each other in horror. Hillary was brilliant. But Trump was a disaster! As he talked about foreign policy, it was obvious that if they pulled out a map and asked him to point to Syria, he would have been clueless. When he called Hillary a “nasty woman,” I thought, He is stark raving nuts.
When it ended, Hillary had clearly wiped the floor with him. I hustled past all the campaign folks, who felt the same way: she had performed spectacularly. I began my first interview and realized that I was flanked by two Trump “spinners,” his over-the-top former Republican primary opponent, Ben Carson, and Omarosa, from The Apprentice. You cannot make this up. It was another indication that his entire campaign was one big reality television show, which is how I felt minutes later when Katie Couric asked me about an unsettling moment in the debate. A question arose concerning abortion, and as always, Hillary had stood for every woman’s right to make her own personal decisions about her pregnancy. Trump had gone off on a rant about ripping babies from the womb and sounded completely unhinged. Katie was clearly disturbed, and I was worried she and other reporters were getting used to that level of discourse.
That was the night that Hillary really broke away. Trump was clearly not fit to be president, and voters had seen it on the debate stage. Poll after poll showed she was in the lead. But I knew from my own experience how unpredictable campaigns can be. So even though I felt good, I never felt sure. That creeping dread was reinforced when, back in New York, I went to Brooklyn to talk with Marlon Marshall, Hillary’s field director, about how best to spend the last two weeks of the campaign.
“We’d like you to go to Michigan and Wisconsin,” he said, which was worrisome, since those were two must-win states and ones I had assumed we had locked up. “Folks just need shoring up. Oh, and we are going to get the final women’s rally that Mini Timmaraju, head of women’s outreach, has been pushing. We’ll do it with Hillary ten days out, in Cedar Rapids.”
“Great,” I said. “We really have been needing to do something to energize women, and that sounds perfect.” I figured there was no better high note to end on.
The Cedar Rapids rally was going to be fun. My friends Ilyse Hogue, from NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Stephanie Schriock, leader of EMILY’s List, were coming. I had been campaigning all by my lonesome for months, so it was awesome to finally be with a crew. The three of us went to Raygun, my favorite Iowa T-shirt shop, and I bought all kinds of “Nasty Woman” and “Bad Hombre” gear, especially for Hannah and Daniel. We got into our best Hillary T-shirts and struck an obligatory Charlie’s Angels pose for a photo. Our spirits were so high I could actually imagine winning. It had never felt more tangible.
The whole town of Cedar Rapids turned out. There were vendors selling Hillary T-shirts, folks who’d made Hillary jewelry and pins, and young girls wearing pantsuits. As we got onstage, I spied Annie Leibovitz, with her trademark Hasselblad, in her olive green jumpsuit, shooting photos from every angle. There were hundreds of Planned Parenthood folks in pink—girls, women, boys, and men. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky—it was a perfect campaign day.
Each of the speakers had her turn; then Hillary gave it her all. I couldn’t figure out how she was still standing, with just ten days to go. After she began to say her trademark line, “If fighting for equality for women means I’m playing the woman card,” the entire crowd yelled along with her, “then DEAL ME IN!” The music played, everyone waved and cheered, and we went backstage to the holding area.
But while the mood onstage was energetic and upbeat, behind the scenes was another thing entirely. Lily was texting me, but by then everyone on the detail knew: the FBI director James Comey had just announced he was reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails. We were in disbelief: ten days away from a national election, he was jumping in, raising concerns about “new” emails that would later turn out not to be new after all. We had no idea that this story would manage to dominate the news for the crucial days to come, but that’s what happened. It was like watching all the helium leak out of a balloon. (A few weeks after the campaign ended, when I had a chance to catch up with John Podesta, Hillary’s campaign chair, he confirmed what I had sensed at the time: “Before the Comey letter, we had finally gotten the momentum we needed to push through in the key states. Folks had decided that Trump was unpresidential, and she had been masterful in the final debate. But the Comey blast just sucked the energy out, and there simply wasn’t the time to make it up.”)
During the next ten days we simply soldiered on. There was nothing to do but fight it out on the ground, while the national media was having a heyday. My traveling buddy Matt Burgess and I went to Michigan, as Marlon had asked. We may have felt down, but the volunteers remained full of energy and hope. At that point it was all about turnout and executing the plans that had been put in place months ago. We knew our voters; we just had to get them to show up on Election Day. Everywhere we went there were young women determined to leave it all on the field. Back at the Planned Parenthood offices, I knew everyone was trying to stay focused and calm.
At a staff meeting a few weeks before the election, a member of Planned Parenthood’s finance team named Julie Reyburn poignantly asked what everyone could do to feel better about “the world, the election, and humanity.” I sent out an email listing all the things that were helping me keep it together: my favorite Instagram accounts, consisting mostly of adorable animals like “Harlow and Sage” and “Chipmunks for Choice”; fiction—Elena Ferrante, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, and Haruki Murakami were all on my reading list; meditation, which I had appreciated ever since my congressional testimony; learning a new language (I was using the Duolingo app to learn Italian and fantasizing about a postelection trip to Rome); reading the inspiring stories Planned Parenthood patients posted every day on Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr; knocking on doors, which feels much better than worrying; and best of all, visualizing being on the Mall in Washington with hundreds of thousands of people to witness the inauguration of the first woman president of the United States.
On Election Day, Matt, Marisa from my office, and I headed to New Hampshire, where we needed to win not only the presidential race but Governor Maggie Hassan’s race for the US Senate. We had been to New Hampshire so many times during the campaign that ending up there just felt right. The day started out with James Taylor and his wife, Caroline, dedicated Planned Parenthood supporters who had been traveling all over for Hillary. He is a delightful man, and he had just the right air of serenity for a day that would turn out to be so tense. Matt and I worked polling places in Manchester, thanking volunteers and doing a bit of media. Late that afternoon I hopped a plane back to New York in order to be there when the voting returns started coming in. My sister, Ellen, had been volunteering in Philadelphia for the past week, so I was excited to see her and compare notes. Plus, Lily was at the Brooklyn office, and I hoped I’d get to celebrate with her before the night was over.
After I landed I ran home and dressed in suffragette white—a sleeveless dress with a gold buckle that had also been a staple on the campaign. I figured if anything had good karma, it might be that dress. I phoned Kirk, who was still working the polls in Tampa. Yet another thing to love about Kirk: he never leaves the field until every vote is cast.
“I think we’ve done it. We hit the turnout numbers we needed in Broward County,” he said. “And today’s votes seem to be solid. If we win Florida, this is done.”
Kirk is a crazy combination of realist and optimist. He’s the one who believes until there is absolutely no hope left. He sounded pretty confident on the phone, but we’d both been through a lot of close campaigns and knew it could be a long night.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m headed downtown to find Ellen, and then we’ll be at the Javits Center. Let’s stay in touch, since I know you can’t get a flight out tonight.” I ran for the subway and got to Penn Station in time to see hundreds of people in the streets, headed to the convention center. Polls hadn’t closed yet, so I texted Ellen and we met at a New York institution, the Tick Tock Diner on Thirty-fourth.
Ellen told me she had been on her own in Philadelphia, but, as is her custom, she had quickly made friends. Though she’d gone there just to work the phone banks, within two days the local organizers put her in charge of coordinating attorneys who had volunteered to protect the polls. “I’m not sure how they figured out that it wasn’t my first campaign,” she laughed. “But I was working twenty-four/seven. It was great!”
Ellen had left her husband, Greg, and daughter, Kate, back in Austin for the duration, because like so many women, she felt she had to run through the tape with Hillary. I was so glad to see her. Even though I was never alone out on the road, it could get lonesome. I was happy to see the last of the Hampton Inns for a while and excited to sleep in my own bed.
We met up with our friend Shamina, who had been volunteering as well, and her wife, Ashley, who had been doing advance work on the campaign. It was mayhem at the Javits Center, but fortunately one of the staffers recognized me and helped us get in. At this point the polls were beginning to close around the country, and the mood was excited but anxious. I hadn’t talked to Kirk again and didn’t tell anyone what he’d said about Florida. I didn’t want to jinx the numbers.
That night was like one big family gathering. I recognized phone bank coordinators from Iowa and folks who drove me around Colorado. Shuttling over to where all the media was set up, I ran into John Heilemann from NBC. “You must be feeling pretty good, Cecile,” he said. “This is a big night.”
Deep down inside, though, I wasn’t feeling all that good. And he obviously sensed it. “Yes, eager to see some returns,” I replied. “There are lots of big states out.”
There were microphones and cameras everywhere, and after a couple of warm-up interviews, I was scheduled to do Rachel Maddow live. Over at the MSNBC booth they wired me up and got me on the stool, and from my vantage point I was watching the reporting. I heard in my earpiece, “Cecile, thanks for being on,” from the control room. “We’ll be with you in about four minutes.”
“Got it,” I said, as I watched the map of the country, where more than a few states looked uncertain, including Florida. Even Wisconsin.
A couple of minutes later the control room was back on. “Listen, we are getting returns so fast, can you hold on a bit longer? There is a lot breaking.”
“Sure,” I said as I felt my heart sinking into my stomach.
I sat, wired into MSNBC, and watched the worst train wreck of my life, as states we needed to win, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, were now too close to call. After another five minutes or so, I knew this interview wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, and if it did, it was going to be miserable.
“Hey,” I called to the producer, “you have my cell. How about you all just call me if you want me to come back? There doesn’t seem to be much point in sitting here.”
“Yep, you got it. Thanks, and sorry about that.”
I’m not sure if he meant sorry about the interview, or sorry that the world we were expecting had just slipped away. In any case, I hopped off the stool and turned to Devon Kearns, Planned Parenthood’s media assistant, who was standing by.
“Devon, I just pulled down MSNBC—they were getting too many reports to stop and talk to me,” I explained. “And honestly, if this night is going the way it looks, no one is going to want to talk to me about the women’s vote.”
Devon, like thousands of young women, had busted her ass for Hillary. I couldn’t believe I was having to say this to her. “I’m going to go see if I can find my sister. So just text me if you need me.”
Devon held it together. “Got it. I think I’ll just hang around here a bit longer.”
By this point the ripples were going through the Javits Center. Politician after politician came to the mic to speak to the assembled volunteers. But it was not looking good. My sister had left, but I looked over and saw my friend Lisa Benenson, whose husband, Joel, had asked Lily to work on the campaign a year and a half earlier. Lisa looked pale.
“I just can’t stay around,” I told her. “Any chance you want to head uptown?”
“I’ve talked to Joel,” she replied. “He’s over in the boiler room. They are feeling like this is not going to break our way. Let’s go.” So Lisa, her son, Will, and I slipped out of the Javits Center, weaving through blocks of barricades, and finally hailed a cab uptown.
“I just can’t believe this,” Will said. Like every young person I knew, he was in a state of shock. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry Joel is having to go through this tonight,” I told Lisa as the cab neared our block. “Thank you for getting me out of there. I have to call the girls.”
They dropped me at my apartment, and I immediately called Lily. Her job that night was to be the main point of contact with networks that were getting ready to call states for one candidate or the other.
“It looks like we lost Pennsylvania,” she said. She was keeping her emotions in check—she had to, talking to every reporter in the country. “Hannah called me from Denver. She is in really bad shape. Can you call her?”
“Yes, of course—but are you okay? Can I do anything for you?”
“No, just have to get through these next few hours.”
I phoned Hannah, who was in fact sobbing. “Oh, honey, I am so sorry,” I said, now weeping myself. Nothing is more heartbreaking than trying to console your child, even if she is twenty-five.
“Mom, you have to call Lily!” she cried. “She’s so upset.” Each of my daughters was trying to figure out how to take care of the other.
The rest of the night we stayed on text, until finally it was clear it was over. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. Lily arrived at the apartment at 4:00 a.m. and got into bed with me, and we lay there and wept.
Kirk was on an early flight out of Miami, so he got home a few hours later. We had faced devastating defeats before, and knew the only thing to do was to get up and keep going. Running on a few hours sleep, I headed into the office. The night before, I had made a few phone calls to Planned Parenthood leaders out in the states. Today, there would be more calls to make, meetings to pull together, and intense planning to do. But most of all, I needed to make sure the staff were holding up.
When I got there, I walked by every desk on all three floors, checking in on people one by one. So many of the staff had worked their hearts out during the election, with some spending months out on the road. They were understandably distraught. I couldn’t promise anyone that it was going to be okay—it wasn’t. But I wanted them to know how much everything they had done mattered, to tell them we were going to get through this together.
To a person, they each said how relieved they had been that morning to have a place to go where they could be with others who believed in the same things they did. We talked about people’s partners and family members who had to go to work that day at a “straight” job and try to pretend the world had not just fallen apart. I was overwhelmed with gratitude that everyone had managed to get out of bed and come in. The work ahead of us was going to be as important as anything we’d ever done.