PATERSON, N.J. — Bill Clinton’s name was splashed across the front page of the New York Post Friday morning. “Blonde Bombshell,” the sneering headline read, detailing how the former president steered $2 million of Clinton Global Initiative funds to a company of a very attractive “friend.”

He was more than an hour late to a rally at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, because he got stuck behind a truck accident on the Tappan Zee Bridge.


And when he finally arrived at the organizing event where he dutifully touted his wife’s record and the significance of winning the June 7 New Jersey primary, he was heckled by a Bernie Sanders supporter for his passage of the 1994 crime bill.

“Why did you put more people in prison?" the heckler yelled out from the crowd.

It wasn’t an easy day — and it hasn’t been a smooth ride — for the Big Dog. Over the past few months, Bill Clinton has kept up a frenetic, cross-country campaign schedule almost as packed as Hillary Clinton’s. Along the way, he’s drawn huge crowds in small towns unaccustomed to seeing a former leader of the free world. But he also has been criticized for having lost his "magic" on the stump, knocked by loyal foot soldiers for talking more about his own record than about his wife, and left by his wife’s campaign to defend himself against a steady drumbeat of criticism of the 1994 crime bill, a significant part of his legacy. He’s also emerged as a prime target for Donald Trump, who has branded him an "abuser" of women.

Yet for all his drawbacks, Clinton is still viewed by his wife’s campaign as an inimitable surrogate, one who allies believe will be second only to President Barack Obama in his ability to get out the Democratic vote in a general election.

“Bill Clinton has a towering favorable rating among Democrats,” said his former aide Paul Begala, now an adviser to the super PAC backing Hillary Clinton, Priorities USA.

President Clinton had a 53% favorability rating in a January Washington Post poll.

While allies said he is frustrated at the focus on his past and concerned about how to take on Trump, he acknowledges he is going to be a lightning rod. “Some of those right-wingers were sending videos accusing me of murder,” he told a crowd of 550 in New Jersey of his own campaign in their state in 1992. “They’re just replaying the same old ‘92 playbook.”

“The key is for him to be an asset under the radar screen,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton surrogate. “These public appearances are great, particularly in areas that don’t get the candidates themselves. He does a great job of moving the base, of jacking turnout. When he’s disciplined, he’s a tremendous asset, and he will be disciplined because he understands the stakes.”

Rendell added that the key for the temperamental former president will be “not rising to take the bait.”

For now, Clinton seems keen to avoid that scenario at all costs. He has not sat down for an interview since 2015, and aides said he plans to "keep his head down" at least until the Democratic National Convention in July. He has avoided attending any of the Democratic debates for fear of creating a distraction from his wife.

In his speeches across the country, he steers clear of taking on Trump directly, focusing instead on finishing off the primary election fight. “It sounds good to say ‘free tuition’ at all public schools but there are two problems with it,” he said, hitting the Vermont senator for touting unachievable ideals.

Despite his downsides, he remains a critical surrogate in a state like New Jersey, where Clinton allies want to end primary season with a decisive victory. “We have to win convincingly enough in New Jersey and California that all but the most extreme Sanders voters will say, ‘We lost fair and square,’” Rendell said. “If we lose, the Sanders people will say, ‘It was stolen from us, we had all the momentum.’”

On a dreary Friday afternoon — Friday the 13th — Clinton tried to show off his famous optimism, even while acknowledging some of the criticism that has been thrown his way.

“Whenever I give this speech east of the Mississippi,” he said while touting Hillary Clinton’s proposal to install half a billion new solar panels, “I can see people going, you know, Bill Clinton’s still a nice guy, but he’s kind of losing it, he thinks he’s in California.” His punchline was that he’s all there and fully informed: New Jersey is second only to the Golden State in the number of solar panels installed, he said.

But he was quick to engage with a lone heckler who interrupted his speech, defending the positive aspects of the crime bill’s legacy while noting that he apologized last year for sentencing laws that were “way overdone.”

“You don’t have anybody you can vote for who didn’t have anything to do with this,” he said with a note of amusement, pointing out that Sanders voted for the bill. “Nobody’s right all the time.”

His reaction was more measured than last April, when Clinton spent 10 minutes sparring with protesters from the stage in Philadelphia, waving his finger angrily at naysayers who held up signs accusing him of destroying African-American communities.

But as Clinton took the stage Friday in New Jersey, his foundation was busy putting out fires. The foundation pushed back on the report that the Clinton Global Initiative had awarded money to a for-profit company that was part-owned by a Clinton friend, saying the original Wall Street Journal report — the one that sparked the tabloid headlines — “misleads readers.”

Clinton did not address the unflattering headlines. Instead, he tried to find a bright side to the ragged day. “I left right on time and a truck fell over on the Tappan Zee Bridge,” he explained to the crowd. “But if you go over the Tappan Zee, you see our biggest new construction project, the new Tappan Zee — that’s what we need in America.”