In early November, with her party on the eve of an electoral walloping, Democrat Mary Tetreau had had enough. The Londonderry, New Hampshire activist was sick of the constant emails begging for money for a candidate who wasn’t even running for office yet.

When another plea landed in her inbox the day before the election, she unsubscribed.


“I’m not going to be ready for Hillary until she announces she’s running for president,” said Tetreau, a three-decade veteran of New Hampshire primary politics, who called Ready for Hillary’s early-and-often email approach “annoying.”

Three months later, Hillary Clinton remains officially undeclared, but her campaign-in-waiting’s emails continue to flood inboxes of Democratic activists in early voting states. Though it amounts to little more than a nuisance in the grand scheme of the 2016 election, it does point to a downside of Clinton’s strategy of staying out of the public eye while her supporters campaign on her behalf. Namely, that it could create Clinton fatigue among activists and fuel concerns that she’s taking the Democratic nomination for granted.

“I’ll be ready for Hillary when Hillary’s ready for Hillary,” said Bill Verge, a Democratic activist who played a key role in John Kerry’s 2004 New Hampshire campaign. Like Tetreau, Verge, who said he has been “inundated with emails daily,” counts himself a likely Clinton supporter — but one turned off by the aggressive fundraising on behalf of a candidate who appears intent on postponing an official entry into the race possibly until July.

Clinton is conducting a charm offensive from afar: Democrats in both early states report receiving handwritten notes from her. In the meantime, Ready for Hillary, a super PAC formed on Clinton’s behalf in April 2013 that has no formal ties to the former secretary of state, will keep laying the groundwork. One of the group’s main purposes is to rebuild Clinton’s list of supporters, dormant since 2008, which it would rent or sell to an eventual Clinton campaign.

“People are tired of people asking for money every time they look at their email,” said Pat Sass, chairwoman of the Blackhawk County Democrats in Iowa. “They feel the election is far away.”

A spokesman for Ready for Hillary did not respond to requests for comment.

The delay of an official presidential campaign puts more pressure on Ready for Hillary to raise money in order to continue operating longer than initially planned. Tension over fundraising in Clinton’s political apparatus spilled out into the open this week when Clinton loyalist David Brock resigned from the board of the pro-Clinton Priorities USA.

Brock claimed that Priorities’ leaders had planted a critical story in the New York Times about a fundraising consultant — used by Brock’s pro-Clinton groups and Ready for Hillary — who charges commission, a controversial practice. POLITICO reported this week that Priorities is having trouble meeting its fundraising goals, in part because many wealthy donors have already given to other groups in Clinton’s orbit.

As frequently as Ready for Hillary sends its solicitations — recipients say they arrive daily — experts say barraging inboxes has become the new norm.

“The best practice used to be that you would only send a couple per day at max,” said Michael Whitney, an email campaigning specialist at the progressive communications firm Revolution Messaging. But in recent years, he said, email campaigners have become more aggressive without registering any meaningful backlash.

Supplied by John Deeth

The new consensus is that constant emailing “might annoy a lot of people, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to unsubscribe and it doesn’t mean they’re not going to donate in the future.”

“Three years ago, the idea of sending more than two emails a day was considered abusive,” he added. “That’s gone out the window.”

As for the distaste among the grass roots, Iowa City activist John Deeth said there’s one obvious way to dispel it.

“The grumbling isn’t so much about hearing so much from Ready for Hillary and is more about not hearing anything from actual Hillary,” said Deeth, who is eager for the nominating process to kick into gear. “I don’t think anybody would mind if an email landed in their inbox that said, ‘Hillary’s going to be in Des Moines next week.’ That would be fine. Everybody would love to get that email.”

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