Hillary Clinton looks on during a meeting on April 22, in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. | Getty 2016 Clinton plots swing-state ambush for Trump She's already organizing a shadow general election campaign.

Donald Trump all but claimed the GOP nomination Tuesday by routing Ted Cruz in Indiana. Hillary Clinton stumbled, failing once again to finish off Bernie Sanders' long-shot Democratic primary challenge.

But even in defeat, Clinton continues to execute a hard turn toward November — and the coming war with Trump. Over the past two weeks, Clinton has been quietly accelerating her swing-state operation, organizing what amounts to a shadow general election campaign at the same time she is fending off a rival who insists he'll continue to fight until the Democratic convention in July.


In recent days, the Clinton campaign has finalized a series of senior hires around the country, expanded the size of her central swing-state planning team in New York, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been transferred to strategically important state parties from the Democratic National Committee. She’s also scheduled a series of public speeches and private meetings in states that will be crucial to her general election campaign.

Many of the moves had been in the works since early spring, when campaign officials began the process of hiring swing state operatives and more closely coordinating with state parties — the building blocks of the fall campaign’s field organizing infrastructure.

According to operatives and elected officials in eight battleground states, the switch flipped after Clinton’s 16-point win in New York last month — and Trump’s own romp there. In the days after that April 19 victory, some of Clinton’s state directors — who had previously operated only informally and without the campaign’s imprimatur — started meeting with local political leaders and planning the fall fight.

Clinton staff and allies have been careful about the public side of the pivot, wary of angering Sanders and his legions of liberal supporters by seeming to dismiss his chances of winning the nomination. But behind closed doors, the swing state teams are snapping out of what former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan called the “holding pattern,” after weeks of internal grumbling about the amount of effort and resources dedicated toward fending off Sanders’ increasingly long-shot bid.

Campaign finance rules have complicated the situation. Until the convention, the campaign is limited to using only money designated as primary election dollars, and the campaign has yet to start raising general election dollars.

“They have to be careful, because it’s a fine line between gearing up for the general and offending Bernie Sanders voters,” explained John Morgan, an Orlando attorney and longtime Democratic donor supporting Clinton. “You cannot start running, because if you start running and acting presumptuous, you alienate people who are 18 to 30'' years old.

Still, in recent days the campaign has tapped state directors in a series of swing states, according to local Democrats: Brian Zuzenak, director of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s PAC, in Virginia; Troy Clair, chief of staff to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, in North Carolina; and Chris Wyant, Barack Obama’s 2012 Ohio director, in that state.

In addition, Clinton’s campaign has hired Meg Ansara, a former regional director for Obama working in the Midwest and the South, to work with Marlon Marshall, a top political staffer, on the battleground state team in Brooklyn.

These moves come alongside four more state-director hires announced in recent days in the key swing states of New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

After months of keeping top surrogates and supporters abreast of the campaign’s progress with periodic conference calls, the campaign has begun setting up its new state directors with local political leaders as they start formally organizing. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told POLITICO that he met with new Colorado director Emmy Ruiz on Saturday, one day after her name was publicly announced.

Meanwhile, Clinton has already started returning to swing states whose primaries have already passed, even as she has maintained a brisk travel schedule in the upcoming primary states. She spoke in Ohio on Tuesday during an Appalachian tour after delivering an NAACP address in Detroit on Sunday. In recent weeks, she also visited Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado and Michigan for closed-door campaign fundraisers. Her husband, Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea Clinton, have also had events in Florida and North Carolina on their schedules, according to fundraiser invitations reviewed by POLITICO.

The Clintons make private political stops with party officials and influencers on these trips, note local Democrats, who say that’s in addition to regular phone calls between top political staffers in Brooklyn and state party operatives to discuss their field organizing and financial operations.

Those moves fit with the campaign’s intention to rely heavily on coordinated campaigns with the state parties, a plan first mapped out by Marshall to local leaders at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minneapolis in August.

Some state operations — particularly those in states where a Senate seat is up for grabs, such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have already built up large teams, even before they are further expanded with campaign staffers moved over from primary states.

“The conversation has really begun already in New Hampshire,” explained New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, whose home state also has a House seat and the governor’s mansion up for grabs. “I think there will be coordinated campaign offices that will be opening throughout the spring, so people will be hired, and that will be done with the party, but — with the focus on the presidential race — the campaign will weigh in."

In Florida, over 50 field staffers are already on the ground, said state Democratic Party Executive Director Scott Arceneaux — and more are being hired by the day. In Ohio, which started ramping up its field program last fall, roughly 60 organizers are spread around the state, with more joining this week. And in Colorado — where the coordinated campaign has been up and running for over a year, and where a number of staffers, including coordinated campaign director Lisa Changadveja, are former Clinton aides, noted party chairman Rick Palacio — roughly 60 workers are expected to be up and running by mid-May.

In Nevada, local Democrats expect to see an extra emphasis on driving turnout among the growing Latino vote there, especially with the possibility that Catherine Cortez Masto — running to replace retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid — could be the first Latina elected to the Senate.

“The last election, two years ago, there was a bad voter turnout among traditional Democratic constituency groups, [and] I don’t anticipate that that would be the case in this particular election,” said former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller. “The level of interest will be heightened [among] Hispanic and other ethnic voters, and other constituency groups that Mr. Trump has seemed to criticize, or have positions that are not appealing to them. I expect they will turn out in larger numbers."

In Colorado, where Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is up for reelection, Hickenlooper said he, too, is watching for a high Hispanic turnout.

“We’re pretty moderate in the way we vote, and [we support] somebody like Hillary Clinton, who has, over the last 30 years, laid out a moderate position" — for example, "she’s pro-business but wants the highest environmental standards,” the governor explained.

To fund the operations, the DNC in April transferred roughly $200,000 each to the committees in Ohio, Virginia and Florida, and chipped in to other states, too — using money raised by the controversial Hillary Victory Fund — according to a person familiar with the transfers.

That kind of investment comes on top of the $125 million in swing-state ad reservations that have already been made by the main pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA — $90 million in television ads and $35 million in digital efforts. The first $20 million worth of television reservations in the target states is scheduled to run immediately following California’s June 7 primary.

The Sanders candidacy, however, looms over these efforts.

Clinton’s challenger, whose path to the nomination has all but disappeared, has re-sharpened his anti-Clinton rhetoric in recent days, including in a Tuesday night speech in Kentucky before the Indiana race was called, apparently bristling at her pivot toward the general election as she’s all but stopped talking about Sanders on the campaign trail.

While Clinton has said she wants to start bringing Sanders’ backers more solidly into the fold, some of her more prominent supporters are beginning to worry that the campaign isn’t turning quickly enough toward Trump.

“Bernie Sanders, especially in light of this week, is now becoming the new Ralph Nader of 2016, he’s now talking about a contested convention,” said Morgan, the Florida donor. “Every day that goes by when [Clinton] has to appease him and his supporters is a great day for Donald Trump."

