Former President Bill Clinton will reemerge as a surrogate for his wife’s presidential campaign next week at a high-dollar fundraiser in Chicago that Hillary Clinton was previously scheduled to attend, a campaign aide told CNN.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, canceled her appearance at the fundraiser to add a day of campaigning in New Hampshire, where Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is surging as he looks to topple Clinton’s front-runner status.
Bill Clinton has been largely absent from the 2016 campaign trail, but Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign insists the Sept. 17 fundraiser will not be an outlier, instead marking the beginning of the former president’s reappearance on the fundraising circuit, the aide said. The aide added the former president would appear at more fundraising events, but declined to provide dates.
Hillary Clinton has a full fundraising itinerary coming up, including several this week and seven more in California later this month, according to campaign aides, but her advisers believe she needs to start spending more time campaigning and less time raising money. That could open up a path for Bill Clinton to play a larger role in the campaign’s fundraising operation.
The New York Times first reported Bill Clinton’s scheduled appearance at the fundraiser.
Eight years after his presence on the campaign trail was both an asset and a liability to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign — at times overshadowing his wife or steering the campaign off message — Bill Clinton has been a relatively rare presence on the campaign trail.
The former president appeared at his wife’s side early this summer as she kicked off her campaign with a rally in New York. But he did so quietly, waving at her side without taking to the podium as he often did during her 2008 bid.
While Bill Clinton has kept a lower-profile this time around, he remains a powerful and popular figure in the Democratic Party. His return comes amid new concerns surrounding her use of a personal email server and the potentially classified nature of emails she exchanged during her time as secretary of state.