Source: Time
The former president is also opening up Hillary’s campaign to a new line of Republican attacks
Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail for his wife in New Hampshire for the first time this election season on Monday, boasting of Hillary’s record as an activist and organizer before reaching elected office.
The former president’s reentry into politics during an organizing event in Nashua, New Hampshire, marks a new phase of the campaign. Bill touted his wife’s devotion to the common good in Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina and as First Lady, even while exposing himself and Hillary to criticism from Republicans.
“She hadn’t been elected to anything, but everything she touched she made better,” Bill told the crowd, recounting Hillary’s early days as a legal activist for minority children and dealmaker in the White House.
“There she was at Yale Law School. She could have written her ticket to go anywhere she wanted all she was really interested in was providing legal services to poor people.”
The former president’s emergence on the campaign trail comes with all the risks and messiness of the 2016 campaign season. Republicans have already assailed Bill Clinton for being a blast from the 1990s past, and Donald Trump has begun dredging accusations of sexism against him for the Monica Lewinsky affair and other scandals.
Campaigning in New Hampshire on the same day as Clinton, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey mocked the former president’s appearance on behalf of his wife. “Are we going forwards or are we going backwards?” Christie said at a campaign event in Manchester about Bill. “We’ve seen this act before.”
The Republican Party leadership also targeted Clinton on Monday. “With new reports about conflicts of interest and favoritism toward donors at the Clinton State Department, the deployment of Bill Clinton to the campaign trail only reinforces the fact the Clintons are untrustworthy and have used public service to enrich themselves and reward their friends,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short said.
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