October 17, 2016

A Confident Clinton Campaign Directs Resources to Arizona and Texas

The campaign is reaching beyond the states it needs to win the presidential election.

Lucy Nicholson/ZUMA

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With Donald Trump tanking in polls across the country, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is broadening its ambitions, redirecting money and effort to states beyond the typical battlegrounds that she’d need to secure the 270 electoral votes to get to the White House.

During a conference call with reporters on Monday, campaign manager Robby Mook announced that the campaign intends to spend more time and energy bolstering down-ballot Democrats in hopes that Trump’s cratering poll numbers could lead to success for Democrats in House and Senate races. “Donald Trump is becoming more unhinged by the day, and that is increasing prospects for Democrats further down the ballot, because of higher-than-expected turnout and enthusiasm,” Mook said, citing internal campaign tabulations that indicate more people will vote in 2016 than in any prior presidential election.

Mook announced that the campaign would be adding $2 million in new spending in Arizona on TV ads, digital ads, and direct mail. It is also dispatching Sen. Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Clinton, and Michelle Obama to campaign in the state this next week. Mook said Clinton herself might start stumping in the state in the final three weeks before Election Day.

Arizona was not generally considered a competitive state at the beginning of the year, but polls have shown a close race there, with three polls this month giving Clinton a small lead. It’s hard to fathom a path to Electoral College victory for Trump without Arizona, but FiveThirtyEight gives Clinton a 54.6 percent chance of winning the state if the election were held today.

“Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and deeply disrespectful remarks about Sen. John McCain have made Arizona more competitive,” Mook said. “This is a state that would really foreclose a path for Donald Trump to win the White House.”

Just how confident is the Clinton campaign feeling that Trump’s support has bottomed out so deeply that new territories are up for grabs? The campaign is even going to start airing a short burst of ads in Texas, a state Barack Obama lost by 16 percentage points in 2012.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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