Mother Jones
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How times change. This Saturday Hillary Clinton is scheduled to swing by a Costco in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, for a book signing—part of her tour touting her new release, Hard Choices. The choice of venue isn’t all that surprising: the discount retail outlet has become a favorite among liberals thanks to its reasonable wages and generous health benefits. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden love to get photographed yucking it up at Costco stores, while the company’s co-founder and former CEO spoke at the Democrats’ 2012 convention.
For Clinton, this is a near repeat of her last book tour, almost exactly 11 years ago today. That tour also took her through the DC suburbs. But back then, she appeared at Costco’s rival, a company that has become, for Democratic activists, the emblem of income inequality: Walmart. In 2003, more than 1,000 Hill-fans showed up at the Fairfax, Virginia, store to have their copy of Clinton’s memoir Living History signed. “After many hours of waiting, they finally reached the senator, sitting at a black-curtain display facing a rack of $9.88 women’s shoes and $7.84 denim baby outfits,” according to an Associated Press article from the time. Clinton spent three hours interacting with her adoring crowd, at one point needing a hand massage from an aide after she got post-autograph finger cramps.
Clinton’s Walmart allegiance would soon sour. In 2005 she returned a $5,000 donation from the company’s PAC, severing most of her political ties to the company and putting an end to a long, cozy relationship that dated back to her days in Arkansas. Walmart is the country’s largest private employer with 1.3 million US employees, a wildly profitable company that has led the way in destabilizing unions as a force in the American economy. It is now common course for Democrats with national ambitions to rail against the company’s low wages and efforts to quash workers’ attempts to organize. Clinton’s past association with Walmart shows the dangers of a political career that spans more than three decades. When political tides shift over the years, they can leave stains on one’s resume.
Hillary was the primary breadwinner for the Clinton clan when Bill was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s. With Bill earning $35,000 a year as governor, the family relied on Hillary’s salary from her job as a partner at Rose Law Firm, which she supplemented by serving as a board member for several companies. One of those companies was Walmart, and it was an association that proved particularly lucrative for the Clintons. She sat on the board from 1986-1992 and earned $18,000 a year, with a $1,500 bonus for each quarterly board meeting she attended. Clinton held nearly $100,000 in Walmart stock before she and her husband moved to DC.
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Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour
