NEW YORK -- Hillary Clinton will use a kickoff rally next month to lay out her most detailed policy vision to date, bringing together ideas and themes she has started to discuss during campaign stops so far in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
This speech will be the architecture and the operating manual for the campaign, according to senior campaign officials who briefed reporters Thursday at their headquarters in Brooklyn. Clinton will center her remarks around where the country is, where the country needs to go and why she is the best person to take Americans there.
Over the summer, the campaign will roll out specific policy proposals that Clinton believes are the best ways for moving the country forward.
Clinton officially jumped into the 2016 presidential field on April 12. Since then, she has focused on small events like roundtable discussions with voters in the four early primary states.
June 13 will mark Clinton's first big event, which will be open to the public. The campaign has not yet announced where it will be held, but is expected to do so in the next few days. Campaign officials said former President Bill Clinton and the couple's daughter, Chelsea, will be in attendance, although they won't be deeply involved in the campaign for months.
On the campaign trail, Clinton has talked about the four pillars of her campaign -- what she has called "big fights" -- that will also no doubt come up during her kickoff. Those include building an "economy of tomorrow," strengthening families and communities, campaign finance reform and national security.
Politically, the campaign remains focused on the four early primary states -- especially Iowa, where Clinton first went after her announcement -- with senior campaign officials insisting at every turn that they expect the Democratic primary to be competitive. But they also, as The Huffington Post first reported, have organizers on the ground in every state and are attempting to follow a 50-state strategy, similar to what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean laid out when he led the Democratic National Committee.
As the campaign ramps up, it has already had to deal with questions, for instance, about contributions to the Clinton Foundation and potential conflicts of interest. But campaign officials said they didn't believe these issues were doing any real damage to her candidacy, arguing that voters see them as overly political and therefore dismiss them.
Aides also characterized Clinton as pleased with the campaign so far, saying she was more in control than in the 2008 election, when the campaign often seemed to be leading her.
Still, the amount of money being amassed by Republicans remains a major concern to the campaign, which is why even though Clinton wants to change campaign finance rules, there will be a Democratic super PAC -- Priorities USA -- helping her candidacy. The campaign aims to raise $100 million this year for the Democratic primary.
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