2 Arkansans keep Clinton's A-list supporters visible, on message

Mary Sixbey (from left), Adrienne Elrod and Mary Rutherford Jennings, all of Arkansas, are working seven days a week at Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters in New York.
Mary Sixbey (from left), Adrienne Elrod and Mary Rutherford Jennings, all of Arkansas, are working seven days a week at Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters in New York.

NEW YORK -- If singer Cher wants to highlight Hillary Clinton's climate policies, she has some Arkansans who are happy to hand her the talking points.

Siloam Springs native Adrienne Elrod, 40, helps place A-list supporters on television and in other high-visibility venues. Little Rock native Mary Rutherford Jennings, 32, helps them stay on point and on message once they get there.

The pro-Clinton roster includes elected officials and retired military brass, former Cabinet members and titans of industry. It also includes Grammy winners and Oscar recipients, teen idols and Olympic champions.

Elrod, who grew up on a steady diet of Hollywood gossip, said her reservoir of pop culture knowledge is suddenly an election year asset.

"My dad told me that my obsession with People and Us magazine is finally paying off. My lifelong obsession with reading celebrity tabloids is actually like working in my favor now," said Elrod, Clinton's director of strategic communications and surrogates.

Cher is, in fact, one of the big-name campaign volunteers.

Asked during an interview to list some of the others, Elrod said: "We have so many celebrities, I don't even know where to start. I mean, Katy Perry, Barbra Streisand, Lena Dunham, Kerry Washington, Mary Steenburgen and Ted [Danson] have been very active on the campaign trail," she said. (Steenburgen was born in Newport and raised in North Little Rock. She is married to Danson.)

There's even a celebrity on Elrod's staff. Michelle Kwan, the two-time Olympic medalist, serves as the campaign's surrogate outreach coordinator.

With Election Day just a month and a half away, Elrod and her colleagues are working seven days a week, every week, between now and Nov. 8.

Another Arkansan at headquarters, Mary Sixbey of Little Rock, is putting in long hours as a member of vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine's scheduling desk.

Sixbey, 24, started as a member of Clinton's advance team, traveling across the country, but jumped at the chance to labor nonstop at the campaign's headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"I wanted to work literally every minute," she said. "I wanted more responsibility, and I got it. Those 80-hour weeks are feeling good," she said with a laugh.

For Elrod and Jennings, the day starts with a pre-dawn conference call that is followed by a flurry of emails, text messages and phone calls. After a 12-hour day in Brooklyn, they head home and work some more.

"You're constantly on email, you're constantly on the phone, you're constantly in meetings, but that's exactly what we should be doing," Elrod said Thursday. "We've got 46 days left, there's a lot of work to be done, and Hillary Clinton's 1,000 percent worth it."

In Clinton Country, things don't slow down on weekends.

"We have ... a lot of surrogates out on television on Sundays, so we're always extremely busy on Saturdays," Jennings said.

Elrod helps line up and prepare the Clinton surrogates who appear on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, State of the Union and the other Sunday news programs.

"You want to make sure you thoroughly cover every topic that could come up on a Sunday show, especially our surrogates who are maybe doing day-side cable during the week but are not engrossed in the minutiae of every single topic that has come up. You want to make sure that they're completely briefed and ready," Elrod said.

Jennings focuses entirely on the message.

"Thank God I have Mary because she handles all the communications side of things for surrogates. She's in charge of getting out the daily talking points ... writing them and doing a lot of briefings with surrogates" before they face the cameras, Elrod said.

Surrogates must know "what messages we're pushing proactively that day" as well as how to respond to "the latest partisan attack," Jennings added.

Today's lineup was still being finalized at lunchtime Thursday, Elrod said. "I think you'll see some really high-profile internal surrogates out this Sunday. You might see [Clinton campaign chairman and former White House Chief of Staff] John Podesta. You might see [campaign manager] Robby Mook."

There won't be any chance to relax once today's talk shows wrap up. With the first presidential debate set to air Monday, Elrod and Jennings will be thinking about the spin rooms; who should be there and what they should say about Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

While unable to reveal the debate surrogates' names, Elrod promised there'd be "a good mix of folks."

"We'll have a couple of folks who are really keen on foreign policy, who can really articulate where she stands on a variety of foreign policy issues. We'll have a couple of folks that can speak about the economy, various aspects of the economy. We'll have one or two military folks ... who can really talk about why she is ready on Day One to be commander in chief," she said.

On Tuesday morning, the presidential debate will be history, but the campaign's workload won't let up.

Asked when their next day off will be, Elrod and Jennings answered simultaneously and emphatically: "Nov. 9."

Questioned about Trump, the two Arkansans took turns delivering a one-sentence talking point.

"We think that he is ..." Elrod began.

"... dangerous, divisive and temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States," Jennings concluded.

They're more complimentary of Clinton, whom they have known since her Arkansas days.

"The great news is, we actually have a wonderful, exceptionally qualified person running for president who has a lot of bold, smart ideas to continue to move this country forward," Elrod said.

"And knows how to get them done," Jennings added.

SundayMonday on 09/25/2016

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