During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children

From 1985 to 1992, Clinton served on the Board of Directors for both TCBY ("The Country's Best Yogurt") and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.•

After Bill Clinton was elected to the White House in 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States in 1993. She was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree and the first to have her own successful professional career. She initiated the Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for those children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage. She also successfully sought to increase the research funding for illnesses such as prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health. The First Lady worked to solve the mystery behind the illnesses that were affecting veterans of the Gulf War. She initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady.•



Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences that related to children's health, including early childhood development and school violence. She fought for nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and supported an annual drive to encourage older women to seek a mammogram to prevent breast cancer, coverage of the cost being provided by Medicare. With Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped to create the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office. She was one of the few international figures at the time who spoke out against the treatment of Afghani women by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. One of the programs she helped create was Vital Voices, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to promote the participation of international women in their nation's political process.

Clinton performed many less-political activities in her role as First Lady. With a lifelong interest in regional American history, she initiated the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to rescue from deterioration and neglect, or completely restore, many iconic historic items and sites, including the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio. Clinton initiated the Millennium Project with monthly lectures that both considered America's past and forecasted its future. One of these lectures became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House. Clinton also created the first Sculpture Garden, which displayed large contemporary American works of art loaned from museums in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden on a rotating basis.

In the White House, Clinton placed the donated handicrafts (pottery, glassware, etc.) of contemporary American artisans on rotating display in the state rooms. She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room on the state floor, and the redecoration of the Treaty Room into the presidential study on the second floor. In a unique venue of large white tents on the South Lawn that could accommodate several thousand guests, Clinton hosted many large events such as a St. Patrick's Day reception, a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, and a contemporary music concert that raised funds for music education in public schools. For all the foods served in the White House, Clinton hired a chef whose expertise was in American regional cooking. She hosted a massive New Year's Eve party on the turning of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, as well as a state dinner honoring the November 2000 bicentennial of the White House, which gathered more former Presidents and First Ladies together in the mansion than had ever been present at any other time in its history.

Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton met at Yale Law School where both were students. On October 11 1975, when Hillary was 27 years old and Bill was 28 years old, the Clintons married in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Before he proposed marriage to Hillary Rodham, Bill Clinton secretly purchased a small house in Fayetteville that she had noticed and remarked that she had liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he revealed that they owned the house. They married and lived there, briefly, before relocating to the state capital of Little Rock, from which Bill conducted his first campaign, for U.S. Congress.

In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much speculation and gossip after the Lewinsky scandal, when the President admitted to a sexual affair (short of sexual intercourse) with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. During the Lewinsky scandal, Hillary initially claimed that the allegations against her husband were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".• After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she remained resolute that their marriage was solid. Both Bill's and Hillary's memoirs later revealed that the revelation of the affair was in reality a very painful time in their marriage.

For much of his political career, President Clinton was dogged by rumors of extramarital affairs. These rumors gained credibility following the Lewinsky scandal. In his memoirs, President Clinton confirmed a "relationship that I should not have had" with Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas lounge singer.• These revelations and rumors resulted in a mix of sympathy and scorn for the First Lady. While many women sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions by showing no interest in obtaining a divorce. In her book Living History, Clinton explains that love is the reason she stays with her husband. "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met. Bill and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971, and more than thirty years later we're still talking."•

When President Clinton required immediate heart surgery in October 2004, Clinton, the junior senator of New York, canceled her public schedule to be at his side at the Columbia University Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital.

When Clinton joined the Senate, she was widely reported to have kept a low public profile and learned the ways of the institution while building relationships with senators from both sides of the aisle, thus countering her polarizing celebrity.

Indeed when Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) joined the Senate in 2003 in somewhat similar circumstances, she modeled her initial approach after Clinton's (preview only),
as did the nationally visible Barack Obama (D-Illinois) in 2005.

Senator Clinton sits on five Senate Committees with a total of nine subcommittee assignments: the Senate Committee on Armed Services with three subcommittee assignments, on Airland, on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, and on Readiness and Management Support; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with three subcommittee assignments on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property, and Nuclear Safety, on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water and on Superfund, Waste Control, and Risk Assessment; the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with two subcommittee assignments, on Aging and on Children and Families; and the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Senator Clinton has made homeland security one of her top issues following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in downtown New York City, especially regarding obtaining funding for recovery from the attacks and for improving security capabilities in the New York City area. She was audibly cheered and booed in an audience of New York firefighters and police officers during her on-stage appearance at The Concert for New York City on October 20, 2001. Senator Clinton worked with Senator Charles Schumer to secure $21.4 billion in funding to assist clean up and recovery, to provide health tracking for first responders and volunteers at Ground Zero, and to create grants for redevelopment. In 2005, Clinton issued two studies that examined the disbursement of federal homeland security funds to local communities and first responders.

Clinton has used her membership on the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services to take a strong position in favor of U.S. military action in Afghanistan – with the additional benefit that it greatly improved the lives of women in that country, who had suffered terribly under the rule of the Taliban – and a somewhat weaker position regarding action in Iraq (her vote in support of the Iraq War Resolution was criticized for being equivocal). Senator Clinton has visited U.S. forces (such as the Fort Drum, New York-based 10th Mountain Division) in both countries. In February 2005 she stated that much of Iraq was functioning well, elections in Iraq had succeeded, and that the insurgency there was failing. In July 2005 she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers. (no longer free) By late 2005, with domestic debate intensifying over whether and when the U.S. should remove its forces from Iraq, Clinton stated that immediate withdrawal would be "a big mistake", leading to Iraq becoming "a failed state", but that the Bush administration's open-ended commitment to stay in Iraq was also misguided, as it gives Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves." This centrist and somewhat vague stance caused frustration among the Democratic party's anti-war activists, who have even occasionally protested outside Clinton fundraisers. On June 13, 2006, Clinton was heckled as she restated her long-standing position against setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S forces from Iraq, while speaking in front of activists at the Take Back America conference in Washington. Though she was applauded while speaking on domestic issues and criticizing President Bush's handling of the war, boos, hisses and chants where heard when she spoke against a timetable.

Senator Clinton also became a national advocate for retaining and improving health and other benefits for veterans. By the end of 2005, her standing among the military community was much higher than it had been during her days as First Lady.

Senator Clinton was a vocal opponent of the Bush Administration's tax cuts.


Clinton has pressed for education, labor, and technology infrastructure programs to assist economic development in upstate New York and similar regions, with mixed results. Though she had promised to bring 200,000 jobs to the area during her 2000 campaign, the entire state has lost over 170,000 manufacturing jobs since then. (The state's overall jobless rate has risen .7%.) In 2003, Clinton touted her success in soliciting offshoring firm Tata Consultancy Services to set up shop in economically beleaguered Buffalo, New York. She was criticized when it was discovered that much of Tata's business involves outsourcing American jobs overseas (no longer free) In 2004, Clinton co-founded and became the co-chair of the U.S. Senate India Caucus with the encouragement and aid of the USINPAC Political Action Committee.
In 2005, Clinton co-sponsored with Senator Lindsey Graham the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition proposal regarding incentives and rewards for completely domestic American manufacturing companies. As an advocate for her state, Senator Clinton led a bipartisan effort to bring broadband access to rural communities; co-sponsored the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act; included language in the Energy Bill to provide tax exempt bonding authority for environmentally conscious construction projects; and introduced an amendment calling for funding of new job creation to repair, renovate and modernize public schools.

In May 2005, Senator Clinton joined forces with her former adversary, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, on a proposal for incremental universal health care. In June, 2005, Senator Clinton united with Senator Bill Frist to push for the modernization of medical records, claiming that thousands of deaths caused by medical mistakes, such as misreading prescriptions, can be prevented by greater reliance on computer technology.

In July 2005, Senator Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

In 2005, during the intense debate over the filibustering of some of President George W. Bush's federal judicial nominations, Senator Clinton generally kept a low profile. She was not part of the "Gang of 14" that resolved the dispute short of the "nuclear option", but she did vote to endorse that resolution and end debate on the nominations, thereby allowing the nominations to come to a vote. She subsequently voted against three of the nominees, but all were confirmed.

Regarding the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts, in September 2005 Clinton voted against his confirmation, saying "I do not believe that the Judge has presented his views with enough clarity and specificity for me to in good conscience cast a vote on his behalf," but that she hoped her concerns would be unfounded. Roberts was confirmed by a solid majority, with half the Senate's Democrats voting for him and half against.

Regarding the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, in January and February 2006 Clinton not only joined almost all Senate Democrats in voting against his confirmation, but also joined about half the Democrats in supporting a filibuster against bringing his nomination to a vote, saying he would "roll back decades of progress and roll over when confronted with an administration too willing to flaunt the rules and looking for a rubber stamp." That effort failed and Alito was confirmed on a largely party-line vote.

Clinton sought to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina. She failed to win over a two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate rules.

On November 29, 2005, Clinton, together with Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The act is intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. Similar bills have been filed in some U.S. states such as Michigan and Illinois, but were ruled to be unconstitutional.

In July 2004 and June 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage; the Amendment fell well short of passage both times.

On June 27, 2006, Clinton voted against the Flag Desecration Amendment, after her attempt to find middle ground by introducing legislation instead against flag burning (but that would pass Constitutional muster) was voted down. The Amendment failed by one vote.

Clinton announced in November 2004 that she would seek a second term in the Senate. No major Republican entered the race; the presumptive nominee, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, dropped out in December 2005 after her campaign failed to gain traction.• Clinton easily won a September 2006 primary against labor activist and anti-war candidate Jonathan Tasini, gaining 83 percent of the vote.
•
Clinton's opponent is set to be former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer. Several third-party candidates are also running, including Bill Van Auken of the Socialist Equality Party, Howie Hawkins of the Green Party and Jeff Russell of the Libertarian Party. Polls during the campaign have generally shown Clinton with a 20-point lead or better over Spencer, with no third-party candidate showing strength.