Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s eventual campaign manager said the “Clinton’s won’t forget what their friends have done for them” in an email to Democratic power-broker John Podesta regarding moving the Illinois primary date.
“The key point is that this is not an Obama ask, but a Hillary ask,” Robby Mook wrote to Podesta in a November 2014 email with the subject line “Urgent: IL call.”
“And the Clintons won’t forget what their friends have done for them,” Mook added. “It would be helpful to feel out what path, if any, we have to get them to yes. This will probably take some pushing.”
Mook and Podesta discussed getting Daley — likely former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley — to call Speaker of the Illinois House Michael Madigan’s staff to introduce a bill to push back the Illinois primary before the legislative session ended.
“The overall goal is to move the IL primary out of mid March, where they are currently a lifeline to a moderate Republican candidate after the mostly southern Super Tuesday,” Mook wrote. “IL was a key early win for Romney in 12.”
“Our preference would be for them to move all the way to May, but if they at least move to April 12 or April 19 they will have the day to themselves and presumably garner a lot of coverage,” he wrote. “They will also be influencing a big northeast primary day on April 26. They will receive a bonus of 10% extra delegates if they move to April and 20% if they move to May.”
“Mapes has said repeatedly they don’t care about that,” he wrote. “As we discussed, they don’t really care about being helpful and feel forgotten and neglected by POTUS.”
Tim Mapes was Madigan’s chief of staff. Mook eventually became Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, and Podesta would become Clinton’s campaign chair. Podesta was working at the White House at the time of his email discussion with Mook.
The email was released by WikiLeaks, which obtained thousands of messages from Podesta’s hacked Gmail account. WikiLeaks has released six tranches of emails so far.
Illinois lawmakers have proposed two different bills to push back the state’s primary since Mook sent his email to Podesta. One proposal would have moved the primary from March to June, and another would have moved it to July.
The Illinois primary was held in March 2016, and Clinton won 50 percent of the vote, securing herself 79 delegates.
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