Stress about family finances propelled Clinton into corporate world

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Losing the governor's race here in 1980 so shattered a young Bill Clinton that he couldn't face his supporters, so he sent his wife around to thank campaign workers instead. He later gathered with close friends for dinner but quietly sulked, playing the country song "I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling" on the jukebox.

But his wife had a more pressing concern: money. The ousted governor needed a job, the family needed a place to live, and moving out of the governor's mansion meant losing the help they had as they raised their 9-month-old daughter, Chelsea.

The morning after the election, Hillary Clinton worked the phones from the mansion, calling wealthy friends and asking for help.

"The world changed. There was a tectonic shift," said Thomas F. McLarty III, a friend of Bill Clinton's who served as his White House chief of staff.

Bill Clinton was of little use as he fixated on voters' rejection. And for the first time, friends said, Hillary Clinton glimpsed fragility in the future she had moved to Arkansas to pursue. She worried about saving for Chelsea's college, caring for her aging parents, and even possibly supporting herself should the marriage or their political dreams dissolve.

"It was up to her to just keep holding things up," said Nancy Pietrafesa, a college friend of Hillary Clinton's who moved to Arkansas to work for Bill Clinton in the 1970s.

Hillary Clinton's relationship with money has long puzzled even some of her closest supporters: Despite choosing a life in government, she has appeared eager to make money, driven to provide for her family and helping amass a fortune of more than $50 million with her husband.

But Hillary Clinton can seem blind to how her financial decisions are viewed, and has suffered repeated political damage and accusations of conflicts of interest as a result — from serving on the corporate board of Wal-Mart while her husband was governor to initially accepting a $1.35 million mortgage personally secured by a top fundraiser for the family's Chappaqua, New York, home.

Her collection of more than $21 million in speaking fees from a range of groups, including Wall Street firms and other interests, led to one of the most potent attacks against her in this election cycle, given voters' anger about economic inequality. Half of all voters said it bothered them "a lot" that Clinton gave numerous speeches to Wall Street banks, according to a Bloomberg Politics poll conducted in June.

Donald Trump has called Clinton "totally owned by Wall Street."

Trump, whose own finances have drawn extensive scrutiny, may be an imperfect messenger, but "Republicans can say, 'This undercuts everything she is saying about what she wants to do to regulate Wall Street and her economic populist stance,'" said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

Even some of Clinton's allies privately say they are mystified by her choice to make the Wall Street speeches, given the likelihood that they would become an issue in a presidential campaign. And to some of them, her financial moves clash with the selfless Methodist credo to do good for others that she so often says guided her toward a life of public service.

But her longtime friends say the contradiction is rooted in Clinton's practicality and the boom-and-bust cycles that have characterized her life with Bill Clinton.

At no time did those stresses fall more squarely on Hillary Clinton's shoulders than in the difficult two-year period in Arkansas when she and her husband found themselves cast out of office, financially strained and deeply uncertain about the future. And the memory of that time shaped her desire to be free from financial burden.

"Hillary had a couple years of the taste of what it means to be a working mother, without any help, to have to take care of a small baby and care for your job," said James B. Blair, a close Clinton friend and lawyer who offered Hillary Clinton investment advice in the 1970s.

The Clintons' unexpected ouster from their comfortable life occurred at a time when Arkansas was swirling with new money and get-rich-quick schemes as companies like Tyson and Wal-Mart minted millionaires and new savings and loan institutions were spreading throughout the South.

A generation of Ivy League-educated young people, like Bill Clinton, had returned to their home state to make their mark. Money seemed to be all around the Clintons, but they did not have much of their own. And unlike Hillary Clinton, a worrier by nature, Bill Clinton, consumed with his dreams of a political career, seemed indifferent to securing a financial future.

"He was never interested in money, ever," Blair said. "She is the one who had to be sure Chelsea was going to be able to afford college."

People close to Hillary Clinton don't begrudge her desire to provide generously for her family, and certainly many presidential candidates and public servants acquire vast personal wealth. Asked in an interview whether earlier financial stresses had prompted her to pursue the lucrative speechmaking, Hillary Clinton said, "I really think it's much simpler than that," adding that it is typical for secretaries of state to share their views in speeches after leaving office.

Thrift store décor

It was one of the smallest houses on the block in Little Rock's Hillcrest section, and Hillary Clinton largely bought it with her own money, the month after that devastating 1980 election loss.

She filled the rooms with mismatched furniture bought at thrift stores and borrowed from her flamboyant mother-in-law. She converted the windowed attic into a bedroom for Chelsea, parked her Oldsmobile Cutlass in the weedy driveway, and chased after the family's cocker spaniel, Zeke, who liked to chew through the fence.

The Clintons had stretched their finances to afford the $112,000 home, which was down the hill from the city's old-money mansions. The sprawling estate of Winthrop Rockefeller, the celebrated former governor, was so close that it practically cast a shadow on the Clintons' grassy backyard.

Friends described the décor as unsightly, a jarring departure from the governor's mansion.

"That couch just jumped out at me," said Bobby Roberts, a former aide to Bill Clinton, describing a scarlet-colored Victorian chaise that Bill Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelly, had lent them. "It was in some bright, violent color."

And with no parents or in-laws in Little Rock, Hillary Clinton turned to friends and neighbors for help. She persuaded Carolyn Huber, who had helped run the governor's mansion while Bill Clinton was in office, to continue to help care for Chelsea, who had grown fond of her.

A neighbor, Manuel J. Lozano, recalled: Hillary "was running around, and my wife took care of Chelsea here and there whenever she needed help."

Bill Clinton had turned down out-of-state job offers in academia and Democratic politics, and instead took the only offer he had in Arkansas, to serve "of counsel" for $55,000 a year at the Wright, Lindsey & Jennings law firm, where Bill Clinton's longtime adviser Bruce R. Lindsey was a partner.

But he spent most of his time on the road, often accompanied by Lindsey, trying to win back the hearts of voters.

"He had to go all over that state, touch base and apologize, and listen to why he lost," Pietrafesa recalled, "and every one of those visits was a two-, three- or four-hour ordeal."

Hillary Clinton had become a partner at the Rose Law Firm in 1979, and during these lean years she balanced her work there with caring for Chelsea, who celebrated her first birthday and learned to walk in the Hillcrest house, on Midland Street. She often felt on her own as Bill Clinton crisscrossed the state, friends said.

She increased her hours to bring in work for the firm, with business not as easy to come by now that she was no longer the governor's wife.

"The whole time period was a point of learning, after the defeat," Jerry C. Jones, Hillary Clinton's colleague at the firm, remembered.

Friends said she would have focused on public service and charitable work and not gone to work at the firm — an old line practice known for representing the business and political elite in Arkansas — had it not been for her concern about her family's finances. Ann Henry, an Arkansas friend, described Hillary Clinton as an "oddity" there, where other women, mostly secretaries and paralegals, gawked at her curls and thrown-together clothes.

(Hillary Clinton worked at the Rose Law Firm for roughly 15 years, the longest she has worked at any job, though it is not on her official campaign biography.)

"I'm not sure she ever planned to be a corporate lawyer," said Lissa Muscatine, a friend and former chief speechwriter to Hillary Clinton. But she did the work because "she had the earning capacity that he didn't have as governor."

A frugal father

Growing up in the upper-middle-class suburb of Park Ridge, Illinois, Hillary Rodham — whose mother had been raised in poverty and whose Depression-era father preached frugality — babysat and held summer jobs beginning when she was 13. Her father, Hugh Rodham, taught his only daughter fiscal responsibility and how to read stock tables in the newspaper.

But he was not one to shower his children with material things.

"Her mother came from nothing and her father was self-made, so there's always been an awareness of working hard to earn a living," said Lisa Caputo, a friend and former White House aide.

There was anxiety, too. The family was never comfortably affluent, and even as Hugh Rodham bought himself a Cadillac, he insisted that his wife and children live modestly. Hillary and her brothers helped out at his drapery business, which eventually closed after sales slowed.

By the time she was a student at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton and many in her generation were expressing skepticism about the pursuit of money. In her 1969 commencement speech, she denounced materialism and corporate greed. "We're searching for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating modes of living," she declared.

When she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and later married Bill Clinton in 1975, the Yale Law-educated couple lived happily earning about $18,000 a year each in their positions as professors. But several years later, as Bill Clinton planned his run for the governor's office and the couple worried about starting a family, Hillary Clinton grew increasingly uneasy about their incomes and started to think more seriously about how to build a nest egg.

"She had been the chief breadwinner and financial decision maker," her best friend, Diane D. Blair, wrote in notes she kept about the era.

Arkansas was a small state with overlapping circles of the politically and economically powerful — and many of the Clintons' contemporaries were getting rich.

"The smart guys who were politically active would make that interesting investment that would push them from the ranks of the upper middle class into the wealthy and powerful," said William K. Black, a former financial regulator and professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Hillary Clinton began seeking out investment opportunities, and in 1978 she made one of the most lucrative, if seemingly risky, financial decisions of her life.

Blair, the Clintons' close friend, had made several million dollars in the commodities market, and urged Hillary Clinton to begin trading, too. With an initial investment of just $1,000, she made nearly $100,000 trading cattle futures in a 10-month period, which helped pay for the down payment on the Midland Street home. But the move later haunted her when the investment became the subject of scrutiny in the early years of the Clinton presidency.

It still trails her occasionally: Trump raised it at a rally last month in North Carolina, as he attacked her for being "crooked." "Look at her cattle futures!'' he called out to the crowd.

Also in 1978, another friend, James B. McDougal, persuaded Hillary Clinton to invest in another venture: the Whitewater real estate development on a brush-covered plot of land in the Ozarks. The Clintons ultimately lost money on the deal, but the development led to an investigation when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

The deals were certainly tempting, given the couple's income at the time. In 1978, Bill Clinton became one of the youngest, and lowest paid, governors, in the country, earning $33,519.14 his first year in office. Hillary Clinton's income from the Rose Law Firm brought their combined wages in 1978 to $51,173.

Even though she reaped big rewards on the commodities market, the experience was unnerving. Shortly after Chelsea was born, Hillary Clinton told her broker she wanted out. "I couldn't take the stress," she said at a campaign stop in June.

She would, however, continue to shoulder her family's financial worries.

Not long after Bill Clinton won re-election in 1982, the Clintons sold the yellow house on Midland Street and moved back into the governor's mansion, where they once again enjoyed free housing and the assistance of a small staff.

Two years later, the state increased the governor's term to four years, and the Clintons' finances appeared more stable. Hillary Clinton went on to join the board of Wal-Mart, and she continued to work at the Rose Law Firm. By the time Bill Clinton was running for president, they reported $297,177 in total income on their 1992 tax returns, a sum that would put most Americans in the upper income tier, but seemed meager compared with the wealth of his opponents, George Bush and Ross Perot.

"When we moved into the White House, we had the lowest net worth of any family since Harry Truman," Bill Clinton has said.

The White House years offered a respite from financial worry. As first lady, Hillary Clinton wrote a book, "It Takes a Village," for which she did not accept an advance and donated the proceeds to charity. "HRC insists she will have time, wants it to have impact (of course, also wants it to make huge bucks)," Diane Blair wrote at the time.

Still, the couple's earlier financial decisions resurfaced in damaging ways. What started as an investigation into the Whitewater investment spun into revelations of Bill Clinton's relationship with a White House intern, which led to the president's impeachment by the House of Representatives.

When the Clintons left the White House in 2000 — the first time they were without the safety net of public office in 18 years — they owed $5 million in legal fees and once again felt financial uncertainty. In 2014, Hillary Clinton described her family's situation at the time in words that have bedeviled her candidacy: "Dead broke."

Once again, the Clintons needed a house, and once again they turned to the help of a wealthy friend. This time it was Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton campaign fundraiser, who offered to guarantee the mortgage on the home they would move into after leaving the White House.

But this time, the home — a $1.7 million, 11-room Dutch Colonial in the tony suburb of Chappaqua, New York — was not one of the smallest houses on the block. Hillary Clinton did not have to call the Roto-Rooter every time the old pipes clogged, or run to a neighbor's house to borrow milk and eggs, as she had done in the house on Midland Street.

And now it was Hillary Clinton, eyeing a Senate seat from New York, who left her husband at home as she hit the road, crisscrossing the state for her campaign.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting from Seattle and Steve Eder from New York.