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The built-in benefits of Hillary Clinton's candidacy—immense name recognition from years in the Senate and as first lady, plus the Secret Service protection that smoothes some logistical snafus—are also, at times, liabilities for an advance person. It's Iowa, after all, where retail politics reigns, and shaking hands with a citizen over a velvet rope or amid a mob dilutes ever so slightly the connection between candidate and voter. Veteran advance people know the time will come during the campaign when party nominees and their running mates are confined largely to wholesale tactics of persuasion: downtown rallies, auditorium speeches, and the tightly scripted photo op. In Iowa, in contrast, a premium is placed on intimacy.
Clinton's advance people did what they could to bridge the gap. In Council Bluffs, Justin Schall, 34 (top left), took a last lap around his site at the Iowa School for the Deaf before a crowd topping 1,000 streamed through the door. For a rally site, it had an intimate feel. The next day, in Waukee, advance man Nick Merrill, 24 (lower left), checked the microphone a few minutes before Senator Clinton arrived. Shortly thereafter, a fan wearing his heart on his back craned over the crowd to snap a photo. Midway through the event, Clinton left her podium to mix with the crowd—many of them seniors—and take questions.
Merrill is a rookie in national politics—he returned to the U.S. after a year with an HIV prevention program in South Africa called loveLife. Calmly juggling three events over two days, he showed the poise of a veteran site guy. Merrill's Waukee site was presidential quality—lit for television, briskly paced, a bit formal—designed to complement the airing of Clinton's first national ad, called "Invisible", which synthesizes heartland images and a subdued soundtrack as Hillary narrates a script salted with the key word: "Americans…across our country may be invisible to this president, but they're not invisible to me, and they won't be invisible to the next president of the United States!" The White House lashed back. "Outrageous," cried spokeswoman Dana Perino, upping the ante. Clinton, eyeing notes, delivered her Waukee remarks using words and cadence synchronized with the ad copy. The gambit: Serve up a live version of the ad rhetoric to raise the antennae of evening-news producers. To play to the cameras, Merrill outfitted Clinton's setting with a backdrop wallpapered with white-on-blue verbiage so small only a lens can capture. As long as Clinton remains center stage, every camera angle will deliver the "READY FOR CHANGE—READY TO LEAD" visual mantra to the viewer's subconscious, no matter how brief the sound bite.
At the next stop, the Iowa State Fair, intimacy finally gave way to the reality of working amid a horde of photographers and thousands of fairgoers. Advance man Lane Kasselman deployed two campaign volunteers, Stephanie and Adam, to unfurl a quadrupled-up yellow nylon rope to enforce a buffer between the candidate and the press, or try to. Most shooters adapted, grudgingly, to the restriction.
