Getty Clinton rolls out special character witness

DES MOINES — She is the campaign’s antidote to the attacks that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy.

Betsy Ebeling, 68, Clinton’s close friend since sixth grade at Eugene Field Elementary School in Park Ridge, Illinois, has been held up throughout the campaign as living proof that Clinton is an honest broker despite cutting attacks on her character.


“She’s still got the best friends that she had in grade school,” Bill Clinton has said while stumping for his wife. That makes her “by definition a trustworthy, reliable good person unless they had a toy theft gang going.”

On Sunday afternoon, the woman who is one of Clinton’s best personality validators showed up in the flesh after arriving by car from Chicago to help her oldest friend. Dressed in a full-length puffy North Face jacket and a pair of slip-on Tom’s flat shoes, Ebeling and her husband, Tom, were greeted by an organizer at a field office in precinct 78 on the south side of Des Moines.

“You guys are gonna be the most effective messengers,” the organizer told them. “We want those personal stories. What’s terrifying to us is people who say, ‘I like Hillary Clinton, I’ll vote for her in November.”

The Ebelings were part of a group of 50 friends from high school who had driven from Chicago to attend a Sunday night rally for Clinton and door knock for her in the final hours before the Iowa Caucus. The Ebeling relationship is important for Clinton -- unlike many of her wealthy donor friends, Ebeling lives a low key life in her hometown of Chicago where she works on human rights issues for the state of Illinois.

She is a grandmother and a former Spanish teacher. She wears her gray hair in a blunt cut, no makeup and represents a much more relatable image of Clinton's personal life than her summers in the Hamptons, where she watches movies in Harvey Weinstein's private screening room.

Yet it’s also been a personally defining relationship for Ebeling. “It’s just been part of my fabric of my life, probably even more so for my children,” she said. “They realize they’ve had unbelievable experiences because of this relationship – staying in the White House and going to inaugurations. When Bill was governor, we went every two years for the inauguration. That was pizza in the mansion with Chelsea.”

Like a family member, Ebeling said it’s sometimes hard for her to watch the attacks on her friend. “It’s the blessing and the curse at the same time,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see her doing this, but it’s very hurtful. I find this campaign very mean. More so than the other one.”

What really got under her skin, she said, was a question at a televised town hall last week, when a young man asked Clinton why young people didn’t like her and thought she was a liar. “I really got pissed off,” she said. “I thought, what did your mother teach you? She taught you no manners? If nothing else, this is your elder.”

As for Donald Trump’s attacks on Bill Clinton’s scandals from the 1990s? “It goes in here and goes out here,” Tom Ebeling said, pointing to one and then the other of his ears. Betsy Ebeling shook her head. “Tom’s much better about it than I am.”

Over the years, she said, email has helped her stay in close touch with Clinton – although at the mention of email she laughed and admitted “emails have been wonderful, although that can be a curse also.” In fact, Ebeling emerged as a regular character in the emails released by the State Department. In her frequent correspondence with Clinton, she often referred to her by a nickname, “Gert.”

The nickname, she explained, exists thanks to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. “In 2008, in Denver, the day she had to turn it all over, I was a delegate for Illinois for her,” Ebeling explained. “Gov. Blagojevich comes up to me, he goes, ‘Nancy! Your friend is just amazing, she’s so good.’ I saw her later and said, I’m Nancy now.' She said, ‘well, I’ll be Gert.”

After a brief training session on how to remind people where and when they need to be caucusing Monday night, Ebeling and her husband set out with a packet of information and addresses just after 2 p.m.

“This is one of Hillary’s friends from sixth grade,” Tom told Annette Guessford, who answered her door Sunday afternoon and said she planned to caucus for Clinton.

“We live in Chicago,” Ebeling said. “We came today because she’s a good girl. We need a mom in there.”

Guessford was shocked to get a personal call from a close childhood friend. “I’m honored!” she said. “It’s giving me kind of goosebumps. If ever get to shake Hillary’s hand I’m going to say, I met your best friend, Betsy.”

“Tell her I promised you a picture,” Ebeling said, and her husband cut in. “Don’t forget Betsy’s husband Tom -- I’ve been friends with her since high school. We were all the same grade.”

The Ebelings said they were hoping to spend some personal time with Clinton before Monday's caucuses.

Ebeling's personal story, however, seemed wasted on supporters who were already set to caucus for Clinton and didn't need any convincing that she has the character to be president.

Walking to the next address, Ebeling reminisced about her days growing up as a Goldwater girl with Clinton, and said their political views were both changed by the Vietnam War. Despite her conservative upbringing, she said she can't make sense of where Republican Party is today. “Barry Goldwater wouldn’t recognize it,” she said.