Clinton campaign plans to hire as many as 40 staffers in Iowa at the start of April, sources tell Guardian

Hillary Clinton is closing in on April 1 as the operational start date of her long-awaited presidential campaign, multiple sources with knowledge of Clinton’s growing operation in Iowa have told the Guardian.

With plans to hire as many as 40 staffers in the battleground state around the beginning of April, the sources said, there is essentially no turning back on Clinton campaign expenditures – nor on the starting gun for the 2016 election.

The alignment of Clinton’s Iowa team, all but guaranteeing a declaration of her official campaign before the end of next month, was coming into view amid reports that she was due to address by the end of the week controversy over her use of a private email account as secretary of state.

Clinton had been rumored to be moving up her announcement of a campaign launch after the email scandal broke last week, but sources in Iowa familiar with staffing decisions insisted that the hiring process campaign staffers was well under way.

US federal election rules give a candidate 15 days after either raising or spending at least $5,000 on a national campaign to declare her candidacy. The candidate then has 10 days to register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The hiring spree would give Clinton significant latitude about when in April to announce her campaign, but she would be required by federal law to follow that timeline.

Clinton’s investment of resources in Iowa, where nine potential Republican presidential candidates campaigned this weekend, will dwarf the hiring planned by the Clinton campaign in the other early primary battleground of New Hampshire, the sources told the Guardian.

By waiting to hire campaign staffers in the key swing state until April 1, when a new quarter of campaign-finance reporting begins, Clinton will be able to maximize the amount of money that she raises in her first quarter as a declared candidate.

“It’s not uncommon for people to structure their activities around when FEC reports are due,” David Mitrani, an election lawyer for the firm Sandler Reiff, told the Guardian.

Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill did not respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, Clinton again avoided commenting on the brewing email controversy at her second public appearance in three days on behalf of her family’s charitable foundation. The White House acknowledged that Barack Obama had exchanged emails with his secretary of state on her private account, and CNN and Politico reported that Clinton was expected to address the scandal directly in the coming days.

As described to the Guardian, the Clinton campaign will divide Iowa into a number of regions, each with its own regional field director. Past Iowa caucus campaigns have usually featured seven to 10 regions; Obama’s Iowa campaign in 2008 had eight.

A number of top-level Clinton hires already in the works in Iowa have been previously reported. These include Matt Paul, a longtime aide to secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, to run Clinton’s operation, as well as veteran Iowa operative Brenda Kole as political director and DNC deputy communications director Lily Adams.

The Clinton campaign’s goal in staffing up in Iowa would represent an attempt not only to lock up a Democratic party nomination in next January’s Iowa caucuses but also to use the swing state as a training ground for its field staff in the general election.

Clinton and her husband Bill have had a problematic track record in Iowa. Bill Clinton did not compete in the 1992 Iowa caucuses against senator Tom Harkin, Iowa’s favorite son; in 2008, Hillary Clinton suffered a disappointing third-place finish in the caucuses behind Obama and John Edwards. Her poor performance in Iowa haunted her throughout the rest of the Democratic primary, which she eventually lost to Obama.

Clinton would be the first Democratic presidential candidate to declare for the 2016 election – and certainly the immediate frontrunner.

Former Virginia senator Jim Webb has created an exploratory committee, while former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders have yet to take any formal steps towards running.