Chasing Hillary

by Amy Chozick

  “My goodness!” Hillary said, turning her head right and left to examine the scenes of curvy women in blue-and-black cotton uniforms loading their pillars of terry cloth and seven-hundred-thread-count cotton into wheeled plastic containers the color of an orange traffic cone. They lifted cupped hands to open mouths, blown away with the luminary in their midst. This wasn’t Wayne Newton or the delicate acrobats in leotards and eastern European accents who wrapped their legs over their heads and contorted themselves into human bicycle wheels each night in the Cirque du Soleil, all of whom essentially belonged to the same casino ecosystem as the lower castes. This was Hillary Clinton and despite the drumbeat from Democrats that her campaign was joyless and a sentiment that even some supporters had summed up as “I’m With Her . . . I Guess,” Hillary’s impromptu visit—hair messy, makeup untouched up—moved these women, on hourly wages and tired feet, to tears.

  “Ay, Dios mio!”

  “Mira!”

  “La Hillary!”

  She reached both arms out in a wide embrace, one woman under each arm as if they were aunts lined up for a Quinceañera portrait around a fifteen-year-old in a tiara. They screeched and dug into deep pockets pulling out Android phones to snap photos. “I flew in from Chicago, so before I went to my room, I said, ‘Well, who is still working?’ The answer? A lot of people!” Hillary said as she made her way through the windowless room with its lemony, antiseptic scent of industrial-strength detergent. “Good to meet you. Thank you all. How’s it going?”

  She asked about the women’s hours. The 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. shift, they replied, as they kept folding towels, afraid to get behind. Hillary asked what they did. “So, it’s just towels and linens every day?” They chuckled politely at this question. Yes, towels and linens every day. For a second, I wondered if Hillary, who had lived her life tethered to the daily uncertainty of the inevitable next crisis, felt some longing for this tedious, predictable work. Towels and linens every day.

  Hillary did this night after night before the Nevada caucuses. She met workers at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino (“How does it work?” she said to a woman who loaded dirtied sheets into an industrial washing machine.) and snuck up on a couple of tattooed cooks on break at Harrah’s. At La Flor de Michoacan Ice Cream Shop in North Las Vegas, she eyed the Mexican flavors, tamarind and guava and chocolate. (“LIME!” Brown Loafers yelled when the Travelers asked what flavor ice cream she’d ordered. Hillary laughed.) And at a children’s soccer game in Henderson, she pretended to be a goalie, shifting left and right on the synthetic grass and yelling, “Oh no, no, oh no!” as a runt of a six-year-old in a glowing yellow jersey kicked the ball through the nets. Goal!

  She embraced all Nevada’s eccentricities, including the endorsement of five hundred sex workers, mostly from Carson City brothels, who formed the “Hookers 4 Hillary” group. Even when there were only a couple of hours to go before the caucuses, Hillary tacked on a stop to Harrah’s casino. “I need your help this morning, in the showroom at eleven a.m.,” she told the Spanish-speaking hotel staff.

  Hillary’s style was so ripped from her husband’s handbook, we might as well have been watching Bill Clinton work the crowd at the Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival in Arkansas. Despite what everyone (including Hillary) said about Hillary’s political shortcomings, she dazzled at it . . . when she wanted to.

  The weekend before the caucuses when a ten-year-old girl teared up and said she was scared that her parents would be deported, Hillary pulled her under an arm and held her close. “I’m going to do everything I can so you don’t have to be scared and you don’t have to worry about what happens to your mom, your dad, or someone else in your family,” she said. “Let me do the worrying. I’ll do all the worrying. Is that a deal?” The campaign turned the moment into a shaky-cam ad that ran throughout the primaries.

  It was this scrappy, downtrodden Hillary that Democrats had in mind after she left the State Department, and every other capable Democrat including the sitting vice president had decided they didn’t stand a chance against.

  “She was a very good candidate in 2008 after she got knocked back,” David Axelrod, who was no fan of the Clintons, had to concede. “Instead of a battleship, she became a speedboat, and she got down on the ground and really, I thought, really connected to the middle-class voters and people who were struggling. People who were struggling connected with her when she looked like she was struggling.” But that Hillary had hardly shown herself on the campaign so far. That fall, the pollster Peter Hart concluded that Hillary appeared to be behind a “glass curtain.” Many voters, he said, “feel they can see her and hear her, but they do not think they can relate to or touch her . . . In their words, she is distant and remote.”

  I asked Brooklyn why Hillary wasn’t running like she did in 2008 when she was losing to Obama. Jen answered pointedly, “Because she’s not losing.”

  29

  “You Should Be So Pretty!”

  Las Vegas, February 2016

  Working on Pacific time meant New York only needed me at 5:00 a.m. PT when editors were heading into the office and usually wanted to know what the mood was on the ground.

  “Are they nervous?”

  “What are the Clinton people saying?”

  “Do their internals show Bernie ahead?”

  To which I replied, with varying degrees of politeness, “It’s five a.m. here. Let me check on that when people wake up, and get right back to you,” and went back to sleep until the sun came up over the Las Vegas Valley, turning my tenth-floor hotel room at the Wynn into an explosion of peachy nude tones. The tufted sofa and its ottoman, the floor-to-ceiling curtains that swung open at the flick of a bedside switch, the lampshades that glowed pink on top of marble bases, the circular table with the in-hotel magazines fanned out on top, the checkered carpet, and the leather office chair on its silver swivel base, all bathed in peach. This color scheme could only exist in a high-end hotel in a city where winter boots meant thigh-high Christian Louboutins. I squinted at the reflection that bounced off the gold edifice with the word trump stamped in Chinese aluminum from the Trump hotel just outside my window. The T on the tower’s white rim practically cast a Batman shadow on my California king bed. In the other direction stood the Treasure Island where I’d stayed with my Grandma Rose on a trip to Vegas for my twenty-first birthday.

  Everything I saw in Vegas reminded me of my dad’s mom, an artist and card shark who slept in silk negligees, traveled with a miniature wet bar, and had the misfortune of being born a world-weary woman in 1920 in a dry, heavily Baptist county in Waco, Texas. This affliction, of being trapped in an era before her time, gave Grandma an underdeveloped maternal instinct and almost nonexistent brain-to-mouth filter. When I was eleven, I propped my head up on bent elbows lying on the shag carpet in the living room of her pink ranch house. Wheel of Fortune was on, and I committed the unspeakable faux pas of saying I didn’t think Vanna White was that pretty. Grandma nearly choked on her gin martini. “You should be so pretty!” she said from the sofa and then patted her lap as she yelled, “A Change of Heart!” completing the puzzle when the lineup of TV contestants were still mulling whether to buy another vowel.

  Widowed twice, Grandma had, in her twilight years, a stash of untouched savings that provided her with a comfortable-middle-class life that included a Lexus and regular Southwest flights to Vegas. On my twenty-first birthday trip, I hardly saw her despite our sharing a room at the Treasure Island.

  “You’re asleep already?!” Grandma said when she turned on the lights in our room and rummaged around for her checkbook so she could get back down to the tables. On the last day of the trip, she woke me up early and offered to buy me a Bloody Mary at the tables. “Grandma, they’re free,” I said, pulling a pillow over my head.

  Grandma Rose had been dead and buried for ten months when I felt her resurrected in Vegas. I couldn’t walk by a blackjack table without thinking about Rose in the sequined boleros with matching ea
rrings and handbags that she’d painted on with hot glue and glitter bought in bulk at the Hobby Lobby and that she wore daily in Waco but that really only made sense in Vegas.

  I remembered the Treasure Island being swanky when we’d stayed there. But when Bobby, who came to visit me for a weekend during the pre–Nevada caucus stretch, and I went back to play the five-dollar blackjack tables, the lobby felt worn in, neglected. The casino reeked of cigarette smoke. The retail offerings included a Krispy Kreme, a Gilley’s Trading Post with embellished Western-themed denim jackets, and an accessories store that sold rhinestone-studded purses and gold lamé pashminas, all for under ten dollars. It was all so Grandma. We lost a hundred dollars in less than forty-five minutes and left cranky and swearing off the Treasure Island altogether.

  By day three, I’d turned the word Grandma into an adjective I used so frequently it’s shocking it didn’t find its way into my Times copy. The Sinatra-themed Italian steakhouse Bobby and I ate at, with its red tablecloths and matching red-lacquered chairs and menu items like “Osso Buco My Way” wasn’t bad, but it was definitely Grandma. On day nine, I came close to splurging on a pair of royal-blue satin flats with a mirrored, diamond-lined spinner affixed to the toe like a roulette wheel, displayed behind glass in an indoor walkway on the way to the Wynn’s free parking garage. But were they too Grandma? I sent a picture to Michael Barbaro in the New York newsroom asking for his opinion. He wrote back immediately, “Come home. Right now. Your judgment has been compromised.”

  There is a photo of Hillary, sandwiched between Grandma and me after a rally in Waco before the Texas primary in 2008. A week earlier a Dallas policeman, Victor Lozada-Tirado, a forty-nine-year-old father of four, was accompanying the Hillary motorcade when his motorcycle hit a curb and spun out of control. I was looking out the window when it happened. In an instant, the skid of a tire on the cement, his bike flipping behind him. The motorcade kept moving. By the time we got to the Dallas rally, we heard he’d been killed. Hillary said she was “greatly heartsick over the loss of life in the line of duty.” The alt-right website Infowars added the officer to the list of “The Clinton Body-Count.” A CNN reporter asked if Hillary would still be taking questions from the press. “Somebody just DIED!” Jamie, the ’08 campaign press wrangler, yelled, the only time I’d ever heard her lose her temper.

  Seeing someone die out the window of the bus doesn’t go away. I was washing my hands in the bathroom and drying them with a soggy roll of stiff brown paper towels at the Waco event when I decided to do something for Grandma that I’d never done for anyone else in my family: I asked her if she wanted to meet Hillary after the rally. Grandma was reapplying her Miami Vice–red lipstick in the mirror when she replied, “And why would I want to do that?” I don’t remember ever talking politics with Grandma. She wasn’t one of my relatives who watched Fox News all day or had the car radio set to Rush Limbaugh. I don’t remember her ever saying who she voted for or if she voted at all. I replied with the one reason I thought would sway Grandma: “Because she’s the former first lady and is famous and everyone wants to meet her.”

  “Oh, all right,” Grandma said, tossing her lipstick back into her handbag.

  The second Hillary saw Grandma in her charcoal suit with black piping along the collar and an onyx pendant that matched her earrings, she said the only thing that could’ve turned Grandma into a lifelong Hillary devotee. “Oh, I love your suit! That’s gorgeous,” Hillary exclaimed before we crowded around her for a quick photo. Grandma melted. That photo booted pictures of all her other grandchildren and both of her deceased husbands off the TV mantel and gave me, the you-should-be-so-pretty granddaughter, the most prominent position in her house until she died. I have at least two chins in the picture and am stretching out a corduroy blazer to within an inch of its life. I’m standing to Hillary’s left, lopsided, my shoulder weighted down by my suede leather satchel with my ThinkPad and my notebooks and my multiple water bottles. Grandma stands to the right, and in the middle is Hillary in a coral blouse and a matching coral choker (color coordination after Grandma Rose’s heart). Hillary looks so young, a good twenty years younger than she did by the end of the 2016 campaign.

  The day of Grandma’s funeral, I was in the middle of closing a story and needed to explain why I’d be late with the fact-checking. Trying to buy time and a little sympathy, I told The Guys my Grandma died and sent the photo of the three of us in Waco in 2008.

  A couple of weeks later in New York, I received a letter with a post-office box return address. I ripped it open, not thinking much of it.

  Dear Amy:

  I was so sorry to learn of the loss of your beloved grandmother, Rose; please accept my heartfelt condolences. At this difficult time, I hope you are comforted by the love she shared for you, the many lessons she imparted, and the memories you cherished together.

  I am so grateful that I had the chance to meet your grandmother on the campaign trail in 2008; [The Guys] shared the lovely photo of us from that occasion. As you mourn her passing and celebrate her life, please know that my thoughts and prayers are with you, your family, and all of those whose lives she touched. Your grandmother was loved by many, and she will be dearly missed.

  With deepest sympathy, I am.

  Sincerely yours,

  Hillary [signed the parallel scrawl of an ink-blue fountain pen]

  30

  Prince Harry

  Las Vegas, February 20, 2016

  Hillary needed to win Nevada—which by then I’d learned to always pronounce as “Nehv-ADD-uh,” and never “Ne-VOD-a.” Another loss would’ve crippled Brooklyn, already dumbfounded and dysfunctional after underestimating Bernie. (“He’s not even a Democrat!” was a refrain from Clinton hands, almost as popular as, “He literally knows nothing.”)

  Robby’s survival rested on Nevada, too. He’d been Hillary’s state director there during the 2008 caucuses where he pulled out fifty-one percent of the vote establishing his prodigy status (and some rowdy nights and bottle service at a nightclub named the Foundation Room).

  Back then, the Culinary Workers Union, the all-powerful labor union that represented sixty thousand casino and hotel workers, had endorsed Obama. Bill Clinton accused the union’s leadership of pressuring its members (“the hardworking people who wash their sheets and cook their food”) to caucus for Obama. “I haven’t seen tactics like that in a decade,” Bill told me at Caesars Palace. His proof? Chelsea. “My daughter is a scrupulously honest person,” Clinton said, as if to acknowledge that he wasn’t. “She heard them, she heard what they were saying.” Chelsea stood at a safe distance shaking hands, seemingly oblivious to her father using her as a pawn in this latest political fight. A little later, when she noticed I was wearing a LasVegas.com lanyard, she introduced herself to me. “Hi, I’m Chelsea,” she said, extending a hand. I introduced myself back, telling her I was a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. Awkward pause. “Oh, I thought you were with Vegas.com,” she said, and abruptly turned her back. That was the first time I met Chelsea Clinton.

  Eight years later, Hillary had the Democratic Establishment on her side.

  For months, Robby assured supporters that Nevada would be a “Western firewall.” The diverse population reflected the country’s changing demographics (i.e., young, Latino, Asian American) and would install Hillary in her rightful place as nominee in waiting.

  But after New Hampshire, panic set in. Bernie, now flush with cash from online donations from nineteen-year-old Bros in boxer shorts, had gained ground in Nevada. Suddenly, the state wasn’t diverse. On conference calls, Robby warned donors that Hillary could lose. Hired Gun Guy explained that “about eighty percent of caucus voters in that state are white,” giving Bernie the same advantage he had in Iowa and New Hampshire. In addition to this being a significant bending of reality (Iowa and New Hampshire are 86.2 percent and 90.8 percent white, respectively, and Nevada is 49.9 percent white) the campaign’s newfound portrayal of Nevada enraged Harry Reid
, the most powerful Democrat in the Senate and arguably the most powerful man in Nehv-ADD-uh.

  A decade earlier, Reid had lobbied Congress to give the state an early caucus precisely because of its diverse and booming Latino and Asian populations. Reid hadn’t endorsed either candidate in the 2016 primary, and he was exasperated with the Clintons, but he also wanted his beloved caucuses, still treated by the political elites as the ugly stepchild of the early-voting process (especially that year when the GOP primary in South Carolina attracted the media’s nearly undivided attention), to play a major part in choosing the nominee. And Reid, like most of the Democratic Establishment, worried that if Bernie continued to gain momentum, Hillary, who was their only shot at defeating the Republicans, would emerge from the primaries as damaged goods.

  So on the Thursday morning before the caucuses, Harry Reid, who had publicly remained neutral, made a phone call that tipped the Democratic primary in Hillary’s favor.

  After some small talk about my hair, Reid told me he’d called D. Taylor, the president of the parent union of the Culinary Workers. The union hadn’t endorsed either candidate and hadn’t signaled whether it would push to get its members—housekeepers and cocktail waitresses and short-order cooks who heavily favored Hillary—paid time off on a busy Saturday afternoon to participate in the time-consuming caucuses. “He’s been extremely cooperative,” Reid told me of his talk with D. Taylor. “Probably a hundred organizers will be at the caucus sites and in hotels to make sure people know what they’re doing.”

  And they did.

  Dozens of women in chocolate-brown uniforms took a break from their jobs as casino porters at the Bellagio to line up outside the Milano I ballroom on the promenade level of Caesars Palace. They told me they were from Honduras and Nicaragua and Guatemala and Mexico. They carried boxed lunches in one hand and American flags in the other. All of them said they were there to caucus “por La Hillary.”