'I hope she will run. She would be a wonderful president,' Haim Saban says. Tycoon vows 'full might' for Clinton

Mega-donor and Hollywood figure Haim Saban, a longtime Hillary Clinton backer, on Friday said he’d “pitch in with full might” if she launches a likely 2016 campaign, describing a growing consensus that she is President Barack Obama’s “natural successor.”

The remarks to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper came several months after the media tycoon privately commissioned a movie about Clinton upon her departure from the State Department, featuring international figures including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama singing her praises as Secretary of State.


“I hope she will run. She would be a wonderful president,” said Saban, who gave $1 million last year to a super PAC that raised money for Priorities USA and other groups. Priorities backed Obama in 2012 and is in the process of morphing into a pro-Clinton endeavor.

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“If it happens, we will of course pitch in with full might,” Saban added. “Seeing her in the White House is a big dream of mine.”

Saban’s comments about Vice President Joe Biden were also noteworthy.

“I think that if Vice President Biden decides to run, Obama will stay neutral, but if Biden does not run and she does, he will support her,” Saban said. “The general feeling is that Hillary is Obama’s natural successor.”

Biden has made clear he wants to be taken seriously as a potential 2016 hopeful, but he was was depicted in the 2012 retrospective “Double Down”as a nuisance to Obama’s aides, who engaged in loose talk about replacing him on the ticket with Clinton.

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The early signal from Saban is a reminder that Clinton will have plenty of outside cash to help her in a potential campaign. And unlike Obama, who had an uncomfortable relationship with Priorities USA that kept a number of donors at bay, the Clintons have historically had no such worry. Bill Clinton provided a major boost to Priorities in mid-2012 at a time when it was struggling.

As for Biden, the question of whether Obama campaign manager Jim Messina will join Priorities USA has been delayed, according to multiple sources, because of the dust-up over “Double Down.” The central figure in that episode was former White House chief of staff William Daley, and Obama has said he himself never considered such a thing, but the information in the book has left a bad taste in the mouths of Biden allies.