Aga Khan Fatimid Imam Caliph : Patti Solis Doyle Winning for Hillary Bringing Forth New Life

12/08/2007 | Patti Solis Doyle Winning for Hillary Bringing Forth New Life

Patti Solis Doyle is bringing forth new life, winning for Hillary an ABC News/Washington Post presidential poll with 41 percent of all Democratic support.

The gray, nondescript building in Arlington, Virginia, where Patricia Solis Doyle runs Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was a district office of Citizenship and Immigration Services until 2004. It's a fitting space for Patti, 42, the first Latina to run a U.S. presidential campaign. Her corner office is furnished with Clinton hand-me-downs, including an old kitchen table and daughter Chelsea's armoire. But one thing stands out: a Diego Rivera painting, Los Sembradores. It shows two Mexican men toiling in the soil, bringing forth new life—the perfect metaphor for Patti's current task.

After managing Hillary's two triumphant races for New York Senate and heading her political action committee and fund-raising efforts, Patti has become Clinton's single most important political adviser. "I can't imagine running for president without her by my side," Hillary has said of Patti, who confirms she'll never run for office and is content being a behind-the-scenes player. But what a player she is: At press time, Hillary was leading an ABC News/Washington Post presidential poll with 41 percent of all Democratic support. Hillary never even officially asked Patti to run the campaign, where she manages approximately 250 people and millions of dollars in funds. "It was more like, 'Of course Patti's the campaign manager,'" explains Patti, who coined the now-ubiquitous term "Hillaryland" back when Hillary was the first lady.

"I love that my job is unpredictable," Patti says. "At any point someone can say the building's burning, and I get to pull out the fire extinguishers." Whether it's a meeting with supporters or a briefing on the Hispanic vote, her strategy is the same: "Play out every possible scenario and have a game plan for each."

The incendiary nature of this campaign has Patti operating on about four hours of sleep a day. She rises at 6 a.m., gets her kids (9-year-old daughter Lee and 5-year-old Joseph) ready for school, then conducts her first conference call at 7:30 a.m. She speaks to Hillary several times daily, updating her on everything from budgets to polls. Three days a week, she relieves her husband, Jim (a handsome Harvard Law grad), in time for "bath and story time." Once the kids are tucked in, she works until 2 a.m. Perhaps Lee put it best in a drawing that sits in her mom's office: "My mom hops off to work every day, she hops back home."

That's what Patti has been doing since she became Hillary's first hire as a scheduler 16 years ago. At the time, Patti, a Northwestern University graduate (she attended on a merit scholarship) was working on Richard M. Daley's successful Chicago mayoral bid. It was an unexpected move for a woman who studied communications and dreamed of becoming an on-air reporter, but her oldest brother, Danny, alderman of Chicago's 25th Ward, had encouraged her to get into politics. When Daley's campaign manager, David Wilhelm, was tapped to head Bill Clinton's first presidential run in '92, he took along some young, hard-working staffers. "The day I landed in Little Rock was the day Hillary decided she needed help," Patti rem-inisces. "David said, 'I've got this great girl from Chicago,' and Hillary said, 'I'm from Chicago.' The rest is history."

And unlike most in her field, Patti has stood by the same player since day one, in part because they've become close friends. "She came to the hospital when my kids were born, read at my wedding and called my father when he was dying of lung disease," Patti says of Hillary. "So this race is very personal. I'd do anything for her."

That dedication is paying off, particularly with Hispanic Democrats. Current polls indicate that 59 percent of them support Hillary. That's her strongest showing among any major demographic group and a huge asset in California, Florida, Nevada and other states with early primaries. Patti also keeps a close eye on Hillary's national Hispanic outreach team—the first of its kind assembled by any candidate, says Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, Hillary's director of Hispanic communications.

As a native of Chicago's predominantly Mexican Pilsen neighborhood, Patti cares deeply about immigration, an issue she's brought to the fore in this campaign. "It's very personal for me," she says. "As a community and as a culture, we provide so much richness to this country." To understand her passion, one need only know the story of her parents, Santiago and Alejandrina. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, Santiago came to the States in the early 1940s and was deported twice; after his third immigration, he got his visa and eventually brought over his wife and their four children. They moved to Chicago, where Patti was the sixth and last child born. Santiago worked three jobs to pay for his children's private, Catholic schooling, earning no more than $18,000 a year. Alejandrina labored in an industrial Laundromat, while Patti worked at a cowboy boot store. "He always said, 'Hazte valer'—make yourself valuable," says Patti of her father, her greatest mentor. "To me, it meant work hard, get a good education and never embarrass yourself or your family." Watching Patti, you know Santiago is smiling.

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