The First-Ever Clinton Campaign Started With an “Area Man” Headline

Southwest Times Record; John Paul Hammerschmidt Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville

Even the onetime leader of the free world was once just a lowly Area Man. That headline, from the Southwest (Arkansas) Times Record, heralded the inconspicuous start of Bubba’s political career, when he launched his first campaign in 1974, against Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt (R-Ark.) Clinton, at the time a law professor at the University of Arkansas, hoped to ride anti-Watergate sentiment to Congress in the state’s most conservative congressional district, but fell just short. It might have been for the best—he was elected the state’s attorney general two years later and, two years after that, became America’s youngest governor.

The newspaper clipping was included in Hammerschmidt’s personal and public papers at the University of Arkansas. Also in the collection: what appears to be the first ever anti-Clinton whisper campaign, from a former law student of Clinton’s who claimed the candidate had once lost a bunch of papers:

John Paul Hammerschmidt Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville

Did Hillary know?