long before it became a symbol of
The message was well received, but the big news on that day was Hillarys declaration that she was taking my name. From now on, she would be known as Hillary Rodham Clinton. We had been discussing it for weeks. Hillary had been convinced to do it by the large number of our friends who said that, though the issue never showed up as a negative in our polls, it bothered a lot of people. Even Vernon Jordan had mentioned it to her when he came to Little Rock to visit us a few months earlier. Over the years Vernon had become a close friend of ours. He was one of the nations foremost civil rights leaders, and he was a person on whom his friends could always rely. He was a southerner and older than we were by enough years to understand why the name issue mattered. Ironically, the only person outside our inner circle to mention it to me was a young progressive lawyer from Pine Bluff who was a big supporter of mine. He asked me if Hillarys keeping her maiden name bothered me. I told him that it didnt, and that I had never thought about it until someone brought it up. He stared at me in disbelief and said, Come on, I know you. Youre a real man. Its got to bother you! I was amazed. It was neither the first nor the last time that something other people cared about didnt mean a thing to me.
I made it clear to Hillary that the decision was hers alone and that I didnt think the election would turn on her name. Not long after we started seeing each other, she had told me that keeping her maiden name was a decision she had made as a young girl, long before it became a symbol of womens equality. She was proud of her family heritage and wanted to hang on to it. Since I wanted to hang on to her, that was fine by me. Actually, it was one of the many things I liked about her.
In the end, Hillary decided, with her typical practicality, that keeping her maiden name wasnt worth offending the people who cared about it. When she told me, my only advice was to tell the public the truth about why she was doing it. My TV ad carried a genuine apology for real mistakes. This wasnt the same thing, and I thought wed both look phony if we presented her new name as a change of heart. In her statement, she was very matter-of-fact about it, essentially telling the voters shed done it for them.
We opened the primary campaign leading in the polls but facing formidable opposition. At the outset, the strongest candidate was Jim Guy Tucker, who had lost the Senate race four years earlier to David Pryor. Since then he had made a good deal of money in cable television.
Processing your request, Please wait....
