Hillary Clinton initially told Mayor Bill de Blasio she didn’t need him campaigning in Iowa for her as a surrogate — but she eventually relented when he said he’d do the lowliest grunt work, he admitted Sunday.
“What I said was, I want to go do whatever’s needed,” de Blasio told The New York Times. “And the first response was, they don’t need more surrogates in Iowa, they’ve got plenty.”
De Blasio, who managed Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign and had taken heat for being slow to endorse her, said he persisted, telling her camp that he was willing to do “whatever kind of work” she needed, including basic duties like knocking on doors, normally assigned to volunteers.
Their response was, if you want to show up, knock yourself out.
“I said, fine, you know, I’ll go wherever you want,” Hizzoner recalled. “Then the answer was, ‘We need all the people we can get.’ Not in a bad way, in a normal way. Like, we need people who want to really do work in Iowa, because, of course, Iowa is about direct voter contact.”
Looking to woo fellow progressives enamored with Bernie Sanders, the mayor stressed Clinton’s ability to accomplish goals as he greeted visitors in the small town of Indianola.
Team Hillary was “absolutely happy to have that kind of work on the ground,” de Blasio said. “That’s what they needed.”