Shows Signs of Disquiet

Emerging Hillary Clinton Team Shows Signs of Disquiet

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and AMY CHOZICK

Lingering tensions between Hillary Rodham Clinton’s loyalists and the strategists who helped President Obama defeat her in 2008 have erupted into an intense public struggle over who will wield money and clout in her emerging 2016 presidential campaign.

At issue is controlling access to the deep-pocketed donors whose support is critical to sustain the outside organizations that are paving the way for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. It is a competition that has been exacerbated, many Clinton supporters said, by Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to formally enter the race and establish a campaign organization with clear lines of authority.

The dispute broke into the open on Monday after David Brock, a Clinton ally, accused Priorities USA Action — a pro-Clinton “super PAC” whose co-chairman is Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s 2012 campaign manager — of planting negative stories about the fund-raising practices of Mr. Brock’s organizations. Mr. Brock resigned from the super PAC’s board in protest.

Mr. Messina is one of the half-dozen top veterans of Mr. Obama’s campaigns that Mrs. Clinton’s tightknit circle of advisers has hired or courted, vexing some longtime Clintonites seeking more prominent roles for themselves. Other former Obama aides are working with pro-Clinton groups to organize grass-roots volunteers or to fend off attacks on her record, efforts that some Democrats view as the first step toward a place in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign when it finally gets off the ground.

All recognize that Mrs. Clinton’s political operation could dominate the Democratic Party for the next decade, controlling the flow of commissions, consulting work and political appointments. But the marriage between the two camps — based to a large degree on mutual interest, if not love — now appears more uneasy than at any time since Mr. Obama asked Mrs. Clinton to serve in his administration after the 2008 election.

“It is ‘The Dream Team,’ but only five can start,” said John Morgan, a Florida lawyer who has raised money for Mr. Obama and hosted fund-raisers with former President Bill Clinton. “Who do you put at guard? Jordan, LeBron, Kobe, Magic, Bird, Derrick Rose? That is where it is.”

The list of Obama veterans now working in “Clinton World” includes the New York-based pollster Joel Benenson, whom Mrs. Clinton has settled on as chief strategist over several pollsters with long Clinton ties. A consulting firm founded by two Obama voter-turnout specialists, Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird, is being paid $20,000 a month by Ready for Hillary, a super PAC focused on organizing grass-roots Clinton supporters. Jim Margolis, whose firm handled lucrative media-buying contracts for Mr. Obama’s campaigns, will also advise Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign will probably raise and spend over a billion dollars in the next two years.

But Mr. Brock’s path to the Clinton inner circle is perhaps the most convoluted. Once a conservative journalist whose reporting on President Clinton prompted Paula Jones’s 1994 sexual harassment lawsuit against him, Mr. Brock has since emerged as a prominent liberal organizer and one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief defenders.

With the tacit blessing of both Clintons, Mr. Brock has maneuvered his $28 million network of media-monitoring and opposition research organizations into the center of the emerging Clinton effort, establishing a new project, Correct the Record, that has defended Mrs. Clinton in the news media and even issued daily emails explaining her positions.

His successful fund-raising has been led by Mary Pat Bonner, whose firm has been paid millions of dollars by Mr. Brock’s groups to court donors — some of whom have criticized the arrangement as well as Mr. Brock.

“He is a cancer,” said Mr. Morgan, who is close to Mr. Messina.

“If you care about your party and our country, you just do what you are asked,” said Mr. Morgan, referring to Mr. Brock’s public resignation from Priorities USA, which immediately reignited tales of infighting from Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “If you care about yourself, you take your toys and go home.”

Mr. Brock declined to comment.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s and a donor from San Francisco who is close to Mr. Brock, said he “is an incredibly important part of the Democratic Party” whose work “protects us from the onslaught and destruction of the Republican attack machine.”

Ms. Buell added: “Certain people are trying to destroy David through off-the-record conversations with reporters. They are spineless and devious.”

Mr. Messina, now a consultant with a significant roster of corporate and political clients, became co-chairman of Priorities early last year, charged with helping the advertising-oriented super PAC secure hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions. But with the campaign season still a year away, Mr. Messina and his team have encountered some difficulty getting commitments, according to several Democrats involved in helping the group.

Mr. Brock, in turn, has been reluctant to cede turf — or pre-eminence — to Obama veterans like Mr. Messina. “He was never accepted” by the Obama camp, said one Clinton loyalist, who like most people interviewed for this article declined to speak on the record for fear of angering either the president or the woman who hopes to replace him.

Months ago, Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers encouraged the three pro-Clinton super PACs — Ready for Hillary, Priorities USA and Mr. Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century — to combine efforts. Mr. Brock’s organization would provide opposition research to Priorities, which would eventually raise high-dollar donations to pay for attack ads. Ready for Hillary would dissolve after Mrs. Clinton officially declared her candidacy.

But Priorities is the only one of the groups founded by Obama operatives, making it the least easiest to fit into the emerging Clinton apparatus. And all outside groups are facing increased competition from official party organizations, like the Democratic National Committee, which are now free to solicit their own million-dollar commitments from big donors, thanks to new campaign finance rules inserted into December’s federal spending bill.

In a statement, Mr. Messina suggested there was little tension with Mr. Brock or his organizations. “Priorities USA Action works closely and cooperatively with progressive champion David Brock and American Bridge,” he said. “Both organizations have clear and complementary missions, and we look forward to continuing to work together to build on our shared success.”

Several donors approached by Priorities in recent months, including some advised by Ms. Bonner, said they had already given generously or otherwise committed to Mr. Brock. Mr. Messina’s allies worry that Clinton loyalists will seek to replace him with another strategist closer to Mrs. Clinton, perhaps Guy Cecil, previously a contender for the job of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager.

When the Priorities board issued a statement on Monday evening asking Mr. Brock to reconsider his resignation, it was signed not by Mr. Messina but by his co-chairwoman, Jennifer M. 

In an interview, Mr. Messina denied a report in BuzzFeed that he had used the controversy around Ms. Bonner’s fees to try to rally donors around a pledge to hold back checks from any organizations paying fund-raisers on commission. Such a campaign could cripple Mr. Brock’s groups, which rely entirely on Ms. Bonner’s firm to raise money.

“I’ve never heard of a petition, I don’t know anything about it, no one has talked to me,” Mr. Messina said. “It’s not true.”