Hillary Clinton, formerly Hillary Rodham, was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 26th, 1947. Her parents were Hugh and Dorothy Rodham. She was raised in Park Ridge, a nearby suburban town, and was largely privileged growing up. Clinton has said that as a young girl she wanted to be an astronaut. She wrote a letter to NASA in 1961, inquiring on how to go about doing this. She was told in response that women were not accepted into the astronaut program. It was her first real experience with sexism, and the limitations placed on women by society.
She has often stated that her family was conservative and that she was raised as such. Clinton was originally registered as a Republican. Late in high school, she's known to have volunteered for Barry Goldwater's presidential election campaign in 1964. After high school, she attended Wellesley College as a Political Science major, where her views began to shift. In her first year she served as the President of the Young Republicans club, but by her third year found herself supporting Democrats in the presidential election. She did attend the Republican National Convention in 1968, where Richard Nixon was nominated, but she has described it as an event that she felt was racist in its message. She left the Republican Party after that and registered as Democrat, a political party with whom she has remained ever since.
After graduating from Wellesley, she attended Yale Law School. She was highly ambitious during her time there, doing work at the Yale Child Care Center, volunteering free legal advice to the poor, and tackling child abuse cases at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. These are just a few of many activities. After completing her studies at Yale she spent a year doing postgraduate studies on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center and was the staff attorney at the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge. Without question, much of Hillary Clinton's early career was spent aiding children, a passion which she has carried with her and a cause she has continued to pursue to this day. It was during her time at Yale that she met Bill Clinton, a man who eventually would go on to serve as both Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas, and eventually President of the United States. After initially turning him down, Bill Clinton and then Hillary Rodham were married in 1975.
As Arkansas's First Lady, Hillary Clinton was able to get funding to support and grow medical facilities in Arkansas's rural and poor areas. Interestingly, as a partner of Rose Law Firm - the first woman, no less - she earned a higher salary than her husband, breaking the mold and changing the image of an Arkansas First Lady. She did the same as First Lady of the United States, helping to pass the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, securing an increase of research funding for childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health, and was chair of an unsuccessful task force seeking to reform health care, the proposed plan being dubbed "Hillarycare" by opponents and failing to garner enough support. Her strong role as the U.S. First Lady and her influence within Bill Clinton's administration led critics to sometimes refer to them publicly as "co-presidents" or as "Billary."
As Bill Clinton's presidency began coming to a close, Democrats in New York urged Hillary to consider running for a Senate seat that would be open in the 2000 election. They bought a home in Chappaqua and ran against Republican Congressman Rick Lazio. Her campaign was managed by Bill de Blasio, current Mayor of New York City. She conducted a "listening tour," visiting every county in the state and engaging with New Yorkers in small group settings. She sought to improve the economic situation of the upstate region, though this endeavor was mostly unsuccessful throughout her time in the Senate. After the September 11th, 2001 attacks, she was a supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan. In 2002 she supported the proposed war in Iraq and voted in favor of it. She later expressed regret for that decision, and it became a leading point of criticism both in her current presidential campaign and her 2008 run. Though she herself did not at the time support same-sex marriage, repeatedly stating she believed it to be the union between a man and a woman, she voted both in 2004 and 2006 with the interests of her state against a Federal Marriage Amendment that would have constitutionally banned same-sex marriage.
In 2007, she announced her run for President of the United States. She strongly led early polling, but two viable competitors emerged: former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and then-Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. The race tightened considerably leading up to the first primary contest in Iowa. To everyone's surprise, not only had Obama won the Iowa contest, but Clinton had come in third. She managed a surprise win in New Hampshire, a contest which Obama had been expected to win, and the primary contest went on back and forth between the two all the way to the end. While both Obama and Clinton ran successful campaigns, Obama's strong sweeping victories of the south secured his nomination. Clinton conceded the race to Obama on June 7th and endorsed him for President. She campaigned for him throughout the 2008 election. After his victory, Clinton was picked to be Obama's Secretary of State, a position she served in until she decided to step down after Obama's first term. She was the first former U.S. First Lady to serve at Secretary of State. Her time as the Secretary of State has largely been marred by controversy, from improper use of a private email server (for which she later expressed regret) to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya on a U.S. consulate. These controversies, right or wrong, has led to a negative narrative of her.
In 2015, she announced her second run for President of the United States. Again, Clinton strongly led all of the early polling. By late summer, it was clear her strongest competition was Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but she was still expected to have the nomination secured fairly early. This did not come to pass, and it became apparent after she won a narrow victory in the Iowa contest and lost New Hampshire that the primary contest between Clinton and Sanders would go on for some time. While the race continued until June and was much closer than anyone had anticipated, Hillary Clinton managed to secure the nomination, declaring victory on June 7th: eight years after conceding to Barack Obama in her previous run. She became the first woman nominated for President in a major political party on July 26th at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton's chosen running mate is Virginia's former Governor and current Senator Tim Kaine. Her remaining major opponent for President of the United States is the Republican Nominee for President, Donald J. Trump. She also faces a number of third party candidates, the most successful two being former Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, and Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.
Whether Hillary Clinton wins or loses the election come November, it is impossible to argue that she hasn't made her mark on history. She has twice broken the mold of a First Lady, supported children's causes consistently throughout her career, and has become the first female nominee for President of a major political party. She's no natural politician, but for better or worse she is one of the strongest women that has ever been seen on the American political landscape.
