McAuliffe’s campaign says his message is focused on Virginia, not the Clintons. | AP Photos Hillary Clinton's first test

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign begins this year in Virginia.

She hasn’t said anything about 2016, but Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 gubernatorial campaign is serving as a testing ground for Clinton’s clout, operatives and donors.


In fact, McAuliffe and some of his top allies have suggested to big donors and consultants that supporting his campaign is a way to get in on the ground floor of Hillary 2016, several donors and operatives told POLITICO.

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He’s stocked his campaign with top-tier talent likely to be involved in any Hillary Clinton presidential effort, including campaign manager Robby Mook, senior adviser Patrick Hallahan and bundlers such as Jonathan Mantz and Jackson Dunn.

And McAuliffe raised nearly $2 million in March alone at a half-dozen out-of-state fundraisers featuring former President Bill Clinton or other Clinton insiders including James Carville, Harold Ickes and Dee Dee Myers, according to figures provided by bundlers.

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The success or failure of McAuliffe’s campaign is a chance to measure Clinton’s strength and organization in a critical state that now rivals Ohio as the pivotal swing state for winning a presidential election.

McAuliffe’s campaign and most of its surrogates have officially discouraged the perception that he’s running a Hillary Clinton farm team, while some Clinton insiders privately bristle at suggestions by McAuliffe’s allies that his campaign will pave the way for her potential run.

It’s also unclear whether Clinton has privately endorsed the McAuliffe team’s fundraising pitches; thus far, she’s left the campaigning and fundraising to her husband.

Talk of 2016 could also muddle McAuliffe’s message in his tight race against Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. McAuliffe has sought to portray himself as a moderate Virginia businessman, rather than the legendary Washington money man who co-chaired Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2008 effort, ran the Democratic National Committee in the early 2000s and mentored a generation of Democratic fundraisers.

“I don’t know how to break this to you, but Terry and the Clintons are very, very close. It’s not a secret,” said James Carville, the longtime political strategist and Clinton loyalist, when asked whether McAuliffe was using his entree into Clinton World to build his campaign.

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Carville — who last month hosted a lunch at his New Orleans home for McAuliffe with Bill Clinton that he said raised as much as $250,000 — said he hadn’t heard McAuliffe or his team pitch his campaign as a Clinton effort-in-waiting, and stressed that McAuliffe has his own political base.

“He was very close to the president and very close to the first lady and, in the world I live in, he’s got a lot of friends,” Carville said.

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Another McAuliffe fundraiser in Georgetown last month raised $170,000 from a group of longtime allies and protégés that looked a lot like a Clinton kitchen cabinet-in-waiting.

Held at the Washington home of Ickes, a top strategist on her 2008 campaign, it was co-hosted by his lobbying partner and fellow Clinton White House veteran Janice Enright, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and his lobbying partners, as well as Mantz, and Clinton loyalists Rep. Doris Matsui, Steve Elmendorf and Kiki and Joe McLean.

The invitation called McAuliffe “ a mentor to all of us … now it is time to elect him governor.”

McAuliffe’s campaign says his message always focuses exclusively on Virginia, not the Clintons or national politics.

“Terry asks people to support him because he is running for governor to bring a bipartisan approach and mainstream ideas to create jobs and opportunity in Virginia,” said spokesman Josh Schwerin.

But Hillary Clinton’s 2016 plans sometimes seem to cast a shadow over McAuliffe’s campaign — especially when her husband is in the house.

McAuliffe himself made a veiled reference to a Clinton 2016 campaign at a New York reception last month, and the issue kept coming up at a subsequent event in the South Carolina resort town of Kiawah Island.

“A number of people at this event asked President Clinton about whether or not she was planning on running,” said former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, who hosted the fundraiser, which he said raised about $100,000 for McAuliffe. “And the things he said privately are the same things he said publicly — that he doesn’t know.”

Hodges added, unprompted: “I don’t think the fact that he came to South Carolina for this event had anything to do with our early primary,” saying that Clinton had other business in the state.

Bill Clinton and his allies are pushing supporters to give to McAuliffe as a personal favor, said one big Democratic donor who attended the New York reception, which — together with a dinner later in the evening — raised $750,000, according to a source with knowledge of the events. At the same time, the donor said, McAuliffe and his campaign are trying to create the impression that a check to him is a show of support for the Clintons, generally, and also for a potential 2016 run.

“They aren’t mutually exclusive at all,” said the donor.

Some Clinton loyalists resent McAuliffe’s efforts to bank on his Clinton ties by suggesting his campaign could help position folks on any Hillary Clinton 2016 effort.

“McAuliffe’s people are saying that to try to recruit staff and to make donors think they’re getting in on the ground floor of Hillary 2016,” said a political operative with deep ties to the Clintons. “But there is no ground floor, and she doesn’t need him to build it. It’s just another example of Terry being Terry.”

But the surge of cash from Clinton backers for McAuliffe should be considered a signal that donors are ready and eager to dig deep for Clinton, asserted John Morgan, a Florida lawyer who hosted Bill Clinton at his Orlando mansion for a fundraiser that he said pulled in $400,000.

“No question about it. It is Hillary’s if she wants it,” said Morgan, who met McAuliffe in the mid-1990s when both raised money for Bill Clinton’s reelection. “ I did tell President Clinton that if she ever decided to run, I would like to help. I think most people at my event would enthusiastically support her. Me, especially.”

The result of the 2013 gubernatorial election could be critically important to the 2016 presidential race, regardless of who the nominees are, McAuliffe backers point out.

“The last two elections have shown that Virginia is now a bellwether state for the direction of the country,” said Mantz, who was Clinton’s national finance director in 2008 and is helping McAuliffe raise money.

Some Clinton insiders assume Hillary will eventually publicly endorse McAuliffe, while other Democrats urge her to keep her distance.

“If it’s seen as a stalking horse for Hillary for 2016, that distracts from the focus on his campaign, and the same thing with Hillary’s campaign,” said Dick Harpootlian, who as South Carolina Democratic Party chairman during the 2008 campaign, backed Barack Obama over Clinton early and crossed swords with the Clintons. “If she’s seen out there moving around this early in a very aggressive way, I think that would not be good either.”

It may be a better sign for Clinton that early Obama backers like Harpootlian — who attended the Kiawah Island event — are getting behind McAuliffe and making nice with the Clintons, said Hodges, who also backed Obama over Clinton.

“If there’s anything to be particularly happy about if you’re Hillary Clinton, it’s that, at least that night, you had most of the Democratic establishment in South Carolina in the room, many of whom had thrown their support behind Obama early, but were here for an event with President Clinton,” Hodges said.

“There is a bit of Clinton nostalgia out there in the country, and Terry does benefit from that,” he added. “But in his own right, he has established himself as a very successful business person beyond his political credentials.”

Then there’s the risk for Hillary Clinton if she’s seen as a major driver of McAuliffe’s campaign, and he goes on to lose to Cuccinelli. That could undercut the perception of her inevitability and possibly embolden prospective Democratic rivals.

Republicans have seized on the Clinton connection to try to cast McAuliffe — who lost badly in Virginia’s 2009 Democratic gubernatorial primary to a longtime state senator with a much lower profile — as a carpetbagging Beltway insider using Virginia to further his national ambitions.

After POLITICO reported McAuliffe’s veiled joke about Hillary Clinton running for president, Cuccinelli’s campaign emailed reporters calling McAuliffe’s campaign “A Test Run For Hillary 2016.”

Cuccinelli spokeswoman Anna Nix on Monday swiped McAuliffe, a Syracuse native who has lived in Virginia for two decades, for his high-dollar out-of-state fundraising with Clinton, saying that McAuliffe “is raising the bulk of his money where he is most comfortable: outside the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

And the Republican Governors Association this year emailed reporters reminding them of top McAuliffe contributors’ links to Clinton-era fundraising scandals, including inviting big donors to sleep over at the White House. “Terry McAuliffe’s greatest strength as a candidate — his ability to raise money — may also be one of his most fatal flaws,” the RGA email concluded.

Cuccinelli actually reported a slightly larger campaign bank account than McAuliffe — $1.2 million to $1 million — at the end of last year. But that will most likely change when new fundraising reports are due April 15.

In addition to McAuliffe’s haul, Cuccinelli’s ability to raise money was restricted for much of the first quarter by rules barring state officials from fundraising during the legislative session.

McAuliffe’s fundraising will be substantial, but it won’t come close to scratching the surface of Clinton’s potential in a super PAC-fueled presidential race, despite the absence of campaign contribution limits in Virginia, said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

“There are plenty of people who would give to Hillary who wouldn’t give to Terry because they’re less interested in state races,” Rendell said. “The sky will be the limit.”

Rendell gave $10,000 to McAuliffe’s campaign in conjunction with a fundraiser in Philadelphia hosted by Clinton loyalist Ken Jarin last month that a source said raised $200,000.

“Terry had a personal relationship with almost all of the donors to Hillary in 2008 because almost all of them were donors to Bill Clinton and the DNC when he was chair, so he naturally went back to them,” said Rendell. “Terry has benefited enormously from his connection to the Clintons.”

Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.