The secretive team tasked with preparing for a possible Hillary Clinton presidency is ramping up big time.

With polls pointing to the likelihood of a Clinton win, her transition team is hiring staff, culling through the resumés of possible Cabinet nominees and reaching out to key Democrats for input, according to people familiar with the process.


The heightened activity signals a strategic shift for the Clinton team, which had until recently kept a low profile amid fears that the campaign might be accused of overconfidence. The team's goal is to develop short lists of candidates for the most important administration positions so that top Clinton officials can move forward with nomination announcements quickly after Election Day. Word of Barack Obama's first nominations began leaking within weeks of him being elected.

Sources briefed by members of the Clinton transition say team members are developing short lists for key Cabinet positions. Clinton aides have also reached out to Senate committees to get their recommendations for nominations.

While the initial vetting of possible nominees has begun, members of Obama's 2008 transition team said Clinton officials are likely limiting their direct contact with their top picks.

"You can’t do too much before the election because if you do, it’s going to leak out," one person close to the 2008 transition said.

Like the Obama transition team before it — which was also overseen by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — secrecy is the byword. "They're not really telling people much," says one policy expert who has spoken with members of the tight team. "It is more about gathering information than telling people what they are doing."

The next president will make more than 4,000 political appointments to fill out the executive branch, a daunting task for any new president, but one made slightly easier when one Democrat passes the baton to another.

"It’s going to be a whole different feel because it’s a Democrat-to-Democrat transition. So it’s not going to be such an extensive team," one Democrat told POLITICO.

Clinton campaign officials insist that the nominee and her staff remain laser-focused on the election. "Our singular focus right now is mobilizing our supporters in order to win 270 electoral votes and elect Hillary Clinton as the next President. No decisions on personnel in a potential Clinton administration would be made until after the election, and any speculation about possible names is premature," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in an email.

"Maybe people are worried about jinxing” the outcome, said James Joseph, a tax law expert at Arnold & Porter, who said he's hearing less than he did with the Obama transition. “By September, when the economic crash hit eight years ago, people were fairly confident [that Obama would win], and my sense was that the Obama campaign also started collecting their names and doing some vetting."

Indeed, Clinton's two-dozen-person-strong transition team — chaired by former Interior secretary and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, with the help of longtime Clinton confidants including Ann O'Leary and Ed Meier — is still dwarfed by Donald Trump's operation, which has ballooned to more than 100 people. While Trump's team has had to grapple with filling in the many policy blanks in the Republican nominee's agenda, the Clinton group has the luxury of relying on the work of the campaign's massive team of informal policy advisers and policy working groups, who have fleshed out her positions for more than a year and given the campaign a structured way to funnel new ideas into its orbit.

People close to the transition expect that many of the Clinton campaign's policy advisers will shift to the transition team as the election gets closer.

In recent weeks, the team has made a number of hires, according to people familiar with the issue. They include Matt Lee-Ashley, a former top Interior official during Salazar's tenure at the department, who is acting as something of a chief of staff to his former boss. Lee-Ashley is taking a leave from his role as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank with close ties to Clinton World.

Michael Ettlinger, the director of the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School of Public Policy and a former CAP official focused on economics policy, is also working with the team on a volunteer basis, POLITICO has learned. Ettlinger is focused on economics-related issues and working closely with Heather Boushey, the transition team's chief economist. Also working on the transition team, according to sources, is Danny Schwaber, a former CAP intern and son of U.S. Global Leadership Coalition chief Liz Schrayer, a deeply connected and influential advocate for international engagement.

POLITICO previously reported that the Clinton transition operation hired the Rev. Leah Daughtry, the CEO of the 2016 and 2008 Democratic National Convention committees, to help lead the operation’s personnel team; and Carlos Monje, a top Transportation Department official and a veteran of Obama's White House, to help lead the teams focused on federal agencies. Michael Linden, another former CAP official, is focused on labor issues for the transition team.

