Hillary Clinton takes White House bid on the road

WASHINGTON // Hillary Clinton was on a campaign road trip deep into the US heartland on Monday after launching her bid to become the first woman to win the White House with a pledge to champion “everyday Americans”.

With an eye to putting behind her the jet-set image of a former first lady, secretary of state and global charity director, Mrs Clinton boarded a simple minivan as she headed from New York to Iowa.

A few hours into the surprise 1,600 kilometre journey, the 67-year-old Democrat tweeted a picture of herself meeting a family at a Pennsylvania gas station.

“When Hillary first told us that she was ready to hit the road for Iowa, we looked at her and said: ‘Seriously?’ And she said: ‘Seriously’,” senior aide Huma Abedin said.

“This was her idea and she has been really excited about it. We’ve been driving for a good part of today,” she said on Sunday.

Long assumed to be the frontrunner for her Democratic Party’s presidential nomination for the 2016 race, Mrs Clinton’s formal entry unleashed her formidable fundraising machine and social media operation.

Mrs Clinton, who lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, put an end to the pantomime surrounding the worst-kept secret in US politics by posting an ad on her new Facebook page and website and sending links to her three million Twitter followers.

“I’m running for president,” a beaming Mrs Clinton said in a slickly produced video that went viral. “Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.”

The two-minute clip featured upbeat middle-class families from a variety of backgrounds sharing their aspirations. Her campaign will spend the next six to eight weeks building a grassroots organisation and “engaging directly with voters”.

Her first major rally and the speech that kicks off her campaign is not expected until May, but Mrs Clinton’s road tripwill take her to meet small groups of voters in Iowa.

Confirmation she is running has sparked a fierce Republican response.

The Republican National Committee said Mrs Clinton “has left a trail of secrecy, scandal and failed policies that can’t be erased from voters’ minds”.

“We must do better than Hillary,” tweeted former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a likely Republican opponent, foreshadowing the intense back-and-forth expected to play out on social media in the run-up to the November 2016 election.

* Agence France-Presse