Hillary's Grassroots Campaign of 'Free Help'

Experienced, adult political operatives who want to do grassroots work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign currently have no choice but to work as unpaid, full-time interns, raising new questions about how the White House frontrunner runs her own labor force as she prepares to double down on young people’s role in the American economy.

The Clinton campaign is currently in the midst of what multiple Democratic sources described as a “hiring freeze” for paid organizing positions in the early campaign states where the former Secretary of State is laying the foundations of a massive national staff, with few if any paying jobs available for field operations.

Clinton’s camp has made headlines about its frugality and a hard sell on its fellowship program, which allows aspiring politicos between the ages of 18 and 24 to spend this summer as full-time campaign volunteers. The result, however, is the human-resources reality of a campaign – one scheduled to hold at least 26 fundraisers this month alone – that isn’t just taking on college students with political science degrees but expecting political veterans to gamble their careers on her without pay.

Clinton, according to her would-be employees, has left full-time organizers with little choice but to criss-cross the country and work as “free help”.

The Guardian has identified at least five “Organizing Fellows” on Clinton’s current field team in Iowa alone who held paid positions on national political campaigns during the 2014 midterm elections.

A veteran Democratic strategist unaffiliated with any presidential campaign said he thought Clinton was sending a mixed message by hiring hundreds of advisers to focus on a policy message around income inequality, only “to hire people as interns and treat people as free labor who have already done the job before”.

“It is a really terrible way to treat the most vulnerable people on campaign staff and makes me question their leadership on everything else,” the strategist told the Guardian.

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