Inside the World of Hillary Superfans
David Freedlander
Theyre ready to do more than just volunteer if Clinton runs in 2016. A Hillary tattoo? Her face on their car? Thats just the tip of the iceberg.
One sees them whenever Hillary Clinton arrives in town. Without the means to afford the often hefty ticket price to see her speak, they stand outside with homemade signs, chanting,
Hil-Lar-Ree! They have replaced the background photograph on their Twitter profile to a simple picture of the former first lady; their bio lists Hillary Clinton alongside their favorite sports teams. For seven years, they have tracked her every move on social media. And the moment Hillary Clinton shoots the starter pistol on the
2016 campaign, they will leave behind jobs, families, and responsibilities, and go where she needs them.
To be clear, these arent the operatives and fundraisers and Clintonistas and Friends of Bill who are
already hosting high-dollar fundraisers or angling for administration jobs. Some of them are, by their own admission, apolitical. But in Hillary Clinton they feel something beyond the usual kinship with a political figure who shares their ideas. It is more like a spiritual connection, one they describe in near-rapturous terms.
I was never political whatsoever, like at all, but I always loved Hillary Clinton, and I always said that if she was ever going to run for president, I was going to do whatever I could to make that happen, said Gretchen Baer, a 50-year-old artist from Brisbee, Arizona.
In 2008, that meant buying a number of Clintons famous pantsuits, on which Baer stenciled portraits of the candidate, à la Andy Warhol, and wore every day for months, she said. It meant making a HillCar, an art car covered with Clinton portraits, and traveling around the country like, she acknowledges, a Deadhead, to meet Clinton ahead of her campaign stops.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/23/inside-the-weird-world-of-hillary-superfans.html