Infighting among senior campaign operatives wasn’t the only debilitating aspect of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Her friends undid her too.

The vast landscape of “FOHs” (“Friends of Hillary”) and “FOBs” (“Friends of Bill”) — a network the Clintons have cultivated since their 20s — was excluded from the campaign, but its members were driven to act like insiders, talking without the benefit of insight and creating trouble for her campaign.


“We were kind of swimming on our own. We didn't know who to call, we rarely got briefed, and didn't have access to the facts,” recalled Lanny Davis, a friend of the Clintons from their Yale Law School days. Davis, an attorney and a ubiquitous television talking head, admitted that he “sometimes screwed up” when appearing on TV to discuss Clinton’s candidacy “because I wasn’t quite sure of her position on an issue.”

Bringing those freelancing friends back into the fold — while keeping them far from the daily 7:30 a.m. senior staff strategy conference call — was one of the changes Clinton vowed to make after taking stock of everything that went wrong in 2008.

And that starts with a “friends and family” list that exceeds 1,000 Clinton “insiders” — a group whose activities and access is overseen by an entire department at the Brooklyn headquarters.

It’s a diverse club that includes everyone from the Democratic nominee’s kindergarten playmates, to Bill Clinton’s Rhodes Scholar chums, to former White House, Senate and State Department aides and longtime allies, many of whom would like to become future advisers. The list is so big there are groups within the group: alumni of Clinton’s advance teams, 2008 alumni, Arkansas friends, Wellesley classmates, New York allies — and more.

The group receives regular telephone and email briefings from campaign officials, as well as arm’s length access: The entire network was credentialed by the campaign to attend the Democratic National Convention, and at times, the candidate’s team has brought “Friends and Family” members backstage to surprise Clinton and give her boosts of support on the trail.

“It was Huma [Abedin] who locked eyes with us and gave us a nod to come backstage,” Davis recalled of the evening of the South Carolina primary last February. “Eight years ago, that would not have happened.”

The aim is to make these friends feel like insiders and help them disseminate the talking points and campaign messages while keeping the decision-making center firmly rooted in a tight group of senior campaign staffers. And it’s another sign of the campaign’s discipline that for the most part, the sprawling social and political network has been kept on a message crafted in Brooklyn.

The organization of the chatterers has been a huge innovation for Clinton, whose last presidential campaign was plagued by what David Axelrod called “open mic night, and anyone could grab it.”

Indeed, the 2016 campaign has been virtually leak-free. (When one of the few bits of unauthorized inside information found its way into the press — the vetting of former Admiral James Stavridis for VP was revealed by The New York Times — campaign chairman John Podesta exploded in a sternly worded email sent to the small circle of staffers clued into the vetting process, castigating them for breaking the campaign's trust.)

Certainly, most presidential campaigns have a large donor network that requires regular upkeep to make its members feel like players. But when the candidate is one half of a political power couple that collects people like an ever-thickening avalanche trundling down a mountain, there’s a second layer of individuals who expect to have a role of some sort on the campaign — and in a potential administration. And the Clintons’ tendency is to try to keep everyone happy.

“They have a unique set of circumstances,” said Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, who unlike the Clintons, doesn’t keep in touch with everyone he’s ever met in his life. Asked whether Obama’s 2008 team had a friends-and-family operation, Axelrod said: “I don’t think we had anything like that.”

But it’s essential to how the Clintons function. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the first couple were famous for hosting guests in the Lincoln Bedroom, or for movie nights, at the White House — and even installing their most faithful Arkansas allies in top White House jobs. Hillary Clinton hinted Thursday she plans to once again make the White House a social destination for her vast network if she wins.

“I know some people raise questions about people in the White House, presidents, first ladies, spending time with your friends,” Clinton said on the latest episode of her campaign’s podcast. “They’re not afraid to say, ‘Hey, I walked to kindergarten with you and I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ I relish times with my friends. I think it’s so easy to get isolated when you’re president.”

Managing relationships the Clintons have been cultivating since young adulthood requires State Department levels of diplomacy — for many, a bond with a former and a potential future president is one of the defining relationships of their lives. The effort is run by the campaign’s “director of engagement” De’Ara Balenger, who previously worked under Cheryl Mills at the State Department, and now reports directly to the ultimate keeper of the Clintons’ little black book, Abedin.

The goal is to make them feel included in the project of electing Clinton — but also to protect the main campaign message by making sure nobody starts talking off of their own script.

On the list are people from all phases of the Clintons’ lives: former CIA Director Leon Panetta; Laura Hartigan, an operative-turned-friend who first met Clinton as a fundraiser on her 2000 Senate race; Kirk Hanlin, who served as special assistant to Bill Clinton in the White House; Clinton’s childhood friend Betsy Ebeling; Karen Williamson, a college friend from Wellesley; former White House aide and close friend Capricia Marshall; former White House aide Kris Balderston; former speechwriter Lissa Muscatine; along with hundreds and hundreds of others.

Some names are notably absent from Balenger’s list: Mark Penn, Clinton’s overbearing 2008 campaign manager, is not kept in the loop by the campaign. And Sidney Blumenthal, of Clinton’s private email inbox infamy, is not involved directly with the campaign, even as a “friend,” aides said. He does, however, maintain a connection to Clintonland through David Brock and his web of pro-Clinton organizations. And nobody can control who the Clintons choose to consult on their own time.

But as much as possible, the friends and family network is kept busy with tasks such as phone banking and door-knocking in battleground states, where they can share personal stories and help illuminate “the real Hillary.”

Certainly, the Clintons are known for their loyalty to the network, but it was the Democratic nominee’s decision to venture outside her regular circle that is credited for a campaign that has been more functional than most Democrats expected it could ever be — one where the expected factions and infighting and anticipated layering of staff never bubbled over into a crisis.

After all, the major traumas of the campaign — the email and Foundation's controversies that have damaged Clinton — preceded it.

Clinton’s top campaign officials this time around include Obama-world operatives, such as strategist Joel Benenson and ad maker Jim Margolis. And the 2008 veterans who signed up for another tour of duty, said one insider, “were aware they just didn’t want to live through that kind of environment again. And they want to do the right thing by her.”

“One of the primary differences between this team and the 2008 team,” said one Clinton veteran, “is that you didn’t have a group of people walking into the door who had an enormous amount of animus toward one another.”

Campaign aides also attribute their more stable ship to the fact that Clinton moved her headquarters from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to Brooklyn, where they feel quarantined from the hangers-on.

And notably, Clinton has stuck with her original campaign management team, even through the darkest days of the primary, while her opponent has hired and fired multiple campaign managers and shaken up his staff in key battleground states.

Inside the campaign, operatives still credit campaign manager Robby Mook with team-building exercises that gave staffers a greater sense of loyalty to the candidate and the cause. And winning always helps: rather than leaking about a dysfunctional campaign, aides are silently positioning themselves for potential jobs in the White House.

“Ironically, Donald Trump has created the campaign everyone feared Clinton would run, even having the family set strategy,” said Jonathan Cowan, a former White House aide under Bill Clinton. As far as the day-to-day management of the campaign goes, Cowan said, “she’s defied expectations.”