Posted on 07/16/2015 7:07:48 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters is finally ready for its close-up.
On Thursday, the campaign ended a three-month period during which its HQ was considered “off the record” to visitors and allowed POLITICO to tour and photograph the space.
“It has great views,” said communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who on Wednesday posted online that “tweeting, photos, visits now welcome!” Her proclamation came after New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich dinged the campaign for trying to keep its actual, physical workspace “off the record.”
After POLITICO asked for a tour, the campaign delivered on its promise the following morning, part of a new effort to engage with the national media that follows on the heels of Clinton’s first national television interview last week.
“We want to make sure people can do their work, but otherwise we’re happy to have people come check it out,” Palmieri said. View Photo Gallery
Also on POLITICO Inside Hillary’s campaign headquarters
ANNIE KARNI
The original policy of prohibiting journalists from reporting on the campaign headquarters, she said, was misinterpreted as overly controlling. “When people come in for meetings, you want the operation to continue to function and that if something is overheard, or a memo is seen, it’s not going to get reported on,” Palmieri said. “It seems like that was received the wrong way.”
The Clinton campaign signed a lease on the 11th floor of 1 Pierrepont Plaza in Brooklyn Heights last April, and the campaign will expand to occupy a second floor in October.
Visitors are required to sign in on an iPad, and sign a confidentiality agreement. “You agree not to disclose any Confidential information or any information derived therefrom to any third person” and to “take all reasonable precautions to protect the confidentiality of such Confidential Information with the highest degree of care,” the statement reads.
By 10 a.m. Thursday, the open-plan office was teeming with staffers, volunteers and interns, many wearing official Clinton campaign apparel. Campaign manager Robby Mook and other senior officials were in their daily senior staff meeting when POLITICO arrived to photograph the office.
Interns and staffers work in cubicles, many on Apple laptops provided to them by the campaign. Each team has come up with its own slogan, which flies above the team’s seating area. The communications team, for instance, calls itself “sources close to the campaign.” The policy team is known as “wonks for the win.”
The senior staffers who occupy individual offices keep them spare.
Campaign chairman John Podesta’s office is decorated with a printout from the Drudge Report with the headline “PODESTA IN DRAG FOR HILLARY.” The lead photograph on the printout from the conservative news site shows Podesta posing in the “pantsuit T-shirt” the campaign sells online.
His bookshelf remains relatively empty — a few boxes of business cards and some binders, but few books. The most striking piece of wall art is a dark painting of two suited men holding plates and silverware in preparation to eat another man, who appears to be dead. POLITICO was not allowed to document the memos and papers on his desk.
Mook’s corner office, next to the communications team’s cubicle area, featured a standing desk and a cheerful flowering plant, as well as a small table that seats three. In this July 13, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at a campaign event in New York. The 2016 presidential contest is barely underway, and already donors have poured some $377 million into it, an Associated Press review shows. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has raised $45 million in checks of $2,700 or less for her campaign. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that counts on seven-figure donors, raised an additional $15 million. Jeb Bush’s money looks different. Before he officially declared his candidacy he spent the first six months of the year raising huge sums of money for Right to Rise, a super PAC that’s boosting his bid to win the Republican nomination. That group says it has raised a record $103 million. Bush’s presidential campaign, which officially began on June 15, collected $11.5 million from contributors. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Also on POLITICO Hillary's not-so-cheapskate campaign
GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI and ANNIE KARNI
Campaign vice chairman Huma Abedin also occupies a prime corner office, on a more desirable side of the building than Mook’s, overlooking the East River. But her office was bare — her mostly empty bookshelf was filled with a few copies of Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices” and a few framed family photographs. There were no papers to be seen on her desk. Abedin was also not there; she is traveling with Clinton in New Hampshire.
View Photo Gallery Inside Hillary’s campaign headquarters
Palmieri shares a small office with top communications adviser Kristina Schake, who was also on the road Thursday. Decorating Palmieri’s desk was a gift she received from President Barack Obama when she left her job as White House communications director to work on the campaign: a recipe box with a personal message, “You’ve been an amazing ingredient in my administration — Barack.”
Clinton herself does not keep an office at the Brooklyn HQ — she typically works out of a separate Midtown office and so far has visited the Brooklyn office just once.
There were some signs the staffers are prepping for long nights ahead cooped up together — the office is equipped with ping-pong and air hockey tables. Staffers were also seen working in solitary corners on their laptops, or on beanbag chairs.
The conference rooms where staffers meet are named after the four early voting states, and one is called “Chappaqua,” after the New York town where Clinton lives.
In the mailroom, POLITICO discovered a few foreign-language copies of “Hard Choices.” The digital ad team was also in the process of using the mailroom as a conference room.
Palmieri said anyone is now welcome.
“I think it is mildly helpful for reporters who cover us every day to have a sense of this is what it looks like, when we’re calling them, this is where [we] are,” she said. “It probably does give a better sense of what the operation is like.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/hillary-clinton-office-brooklyn-inside-look-120230.html#ixzz3g6vFXPpt
They’re all going to get raped and mugged.
I have news for the tools in the press - if hilliary doesn’t go there regularly it is NOT headquarters.
It is s stage/ worker hive.
I have news for the tools in the press - if hilliary doesn’t go there regularly it is NOT headquarters.
It is s stage/ worker hive.
Headquarters is wherever Hillary and Humma Weiner go.
The world would be better off if Brooklyn and all of its inhabitants were conquered by ISIS. It is the center of evil.
Hey!!My mother lives in Brooklyn and she’s a real nice lady. The place (Brooklyn Heights) is totally crawling with liberals though, I’ll give you that.
Mrs. AV
Let's do some more FAWNING over her Politico. Please, Please Please.
/Sarcasm OFF
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