Hillary Clinton is the former First Lady of Arkansas as well as the former First Lady of the United States. Clinton has also entered politics by serving as a Senator from New York. She set her eyes on the presidency, but the once-in-a-lifetime 2016 election cycle saw this politically-savvy candidate defeated by the underdog with no political experience.
Hillary Clinton is still influential in politics. She recently hosted a “Masterclass” in which she shared the acceptance speech she had prepared for what she and her team that would be an easy victory over Donald Trump. She also appears on talk shows and political commentary shows across the company and is active with the Clinton Foundation.
Celebrated Name: | Hillary Clinton |
Real Name/Full Name: | Hillary Rodham Clinton |
Gender: | Female |
Age: | 74 |
Birthdate: | October 26, 1947 |
Birthplace: | Chicago, IL |
Nationality: | American |
Height: | 5 ft. 6 in. |
Weight: | 132 lb. |
Sexual Orientation: | Straight |
Marital Status: | Married |
Husband/Spouse | Bill Clinton |
Children/Kids: | One daughter, Chelsea |
Dating/Boyfriend Name: | N/A |
Is Hillary Clinton Gay? | No |
Highest Political Office: | United States Senator |
Profession: | Attorney, Politician |
Colleges Attended: | Wellesley College; Yale University |
Degrees: | Bachelor’s – Wellesley; Juris Doctor – Yale |
Salary: | $186,000 |
Net Worth in 2022: | $120 million |
Biography: Early Life and Family
Hillary Diane Rodham was born on October 26, 1947, at Edgewater Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in a United Methodist family who first lived in Chicago. When she was three years old, her family moved to the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. Her father, Hugh Rodham, was of English and Welsh descent, and managed a small but successful textile business, which he had founded. Her mother, Dorothy Howell, was a homemaker of Dutch, English, French Canadian (from Quebec), Scottish, and Welsh descent. She had two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony.
As a child, Rodham was a favorite student among her teachers at the public schools she attended in Park Ridge. She participated in swimming and softball and earned numerous badges as a Brownie and a Girl Scout. She has often told the story of being inspired by U.S. efforts during the Space Race and sending a letter to NASA around 1961 asking what she could do to become an astronaut, only to be informed that women were not being accepted into the program. She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in the student council and school newspaper and was selected for the National Honor Society. She was elected class vice president for her junior year but then lost the election for class president for her senior year against two boys, one of whom told her that “you are really stupid if you think a girl can be elected president”. For her senior year, she and other students were transferred to the then-new Maine South High School. There she was a National Merit Finalist and was voted “most likely to succeed.” She graduated in 1965 in the top five percent of her class.
Rodham’s mother wanted her to have an independent, professional career Her. father, who was otherwise a traditionalist, felt that his daughter’s abilities and opportunities should not be limited by gender. She was raised in a politically conservative household, and she helped canvass Chicago’s South Side at age 13 after the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election. She saw evidence of electoral fraud (such as voting list entries showing addresses that were empty lots) against Republican candidate Richard Nixon, and later volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election.
Rodham’s early political development was shaped mostly by her high school history teacher (like her father, a fervent anti-communist), who introduced her to Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative and by her Methodist youth minister (like her mother, concerned with issues of social justice), with whom she saw and afterwards briefly met, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1962 speech in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall.
Personal Life
At the university, Rodham taught classes in criminal law. She was considered a rigorous teacher who was tough with her grades. Rodham became the first director of a new legal aid clinic at the school, where she secured support from the local bar association and gained federal funding. As a court-appointed lawyer, Rodham was required to act as defense counsel to a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl; after her request to be relieved of the assignment failed, Rodham used an effective defense and counseled her client to plead guilty to a lesser charge. She has called the trial a “terrible case”. During her time in Fayetteville, Rodham and several other women founded the city’s first rape crisis center.
In 1974, Bill Clinton lost an Arkansas congressional race, facing incumbent Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt. Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975 and she agreed to marry him. The wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[79] A story about the marriage in the Arkansas Gazette indicated that she decided to retain the name Hillary Rodham.Her motivation was threefold. She wanted to keep the couple’s professional lives separate, avoid apparent conflicts of interest, and as she told a friend at the time, “it showed that I was still me”. The decision upset both mothers, who were more traditional.
In 1976, Rodham temporarily relocated to Indianapolis to work as an Indiana state campaign organizer for the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter. In November 1976, Bill Clinton was elected Arkansas attorney general, and the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock. In February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence. She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law while working pro bono in child advocacy; she rarely performed litigation work in court.
Age, Height, and Weight
Hillary Clinton is 74 years of age. She is 5′ 6″ in height, and she weighs approximately 132 pounds.
Net Worth
Hillary Clinton is reported to be worth about $120 million. Some of this worth comes from book deals as well as speaking engagements, and she made her own salary as a Senator for the state of New York and as Secretary of State during the Obama Administration.
Career Outside of Politics
Hillary Clinton has only worked as an attorney outside of politics, but most of her life has been devoted to supporting her husband’s political career or serving as First Lady – both of Arkansas and the United States.
Career in Politics
When New York’s long-serving U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement in November 1998, several prominent Democratic figures, including Representative Charles Rangel of New York, urged Clinton to run for his open seat in the Senate election of 2000. Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home at 15 Old House Lane in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999. She became the first wife of the president of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani—the mayor of New York City—as her Republican opponent in the election. Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and matters related to his failing marriage became public. Clinton then faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented New York’s 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, because she had never resided in New York State or participated in the state’s politics before the 2000 Senate race.
Bill de Blasio was Clinton’s campaign manager. She began her drive to the U.S. Senate by visiting all 62 counties in the state, in a “listening tour” of small-group settings. She devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions. Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care.
The contest drew national attention. During a September debate, Lazio blundered when he seemed to invade Clinton’s personal space by trying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement. Their campaigns, along with Giuliani’s initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio’s 43 percent. She was sworn in as U.S. senator on January 3, 2001, and as George W. Bush was still 17 days away from being inaugurated as president after winning the 2000 presidential election, that meant from January 3–20, she simultaneously held the titles of First Lady and Senator – a first in U.S. history.
Publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million in December 2000 for her autobiography, released in 2003, as Living History.