She starts the phone calls with, Tom, this is Hillary.
Hey, how are you? he responds, consciously working his way around being so formal at this point in their relationship, but also too ingrained in his Dominican upbringing to just start calling her by her first name.
Hillary Clinton and Tom Perez have had some practice with the routine, according to sources familiar with the conversations. There was the phone call when she called to ask for his endorsement, which became a nerd-out session on prison reform and registering farmworkers. In March, when she asked for his help on Latino engagement ahead of the New York primary, he pushed for her to send him to a politically powerful local union president to ask for his help and ended up being asked himself to rile up a bundler session the morning after the New York debate.
Then there was the call in April, when she called to congratulate him about the new conflict of interest rule his Labor Department had just released. Before long, she was grilling him: who on the Hill had helped? What sort of response was he getting?
Unlike the other people being speculated about as running mate picks, Perez has actually gotten to know the Clintons, and theyve both taken a shine to him after the year he spent putting his own progressive credentials on the line to knock back Bernie Sanders. Arguing forcefully that shes a change agentthe former presidents made clear hes particularly sensitive when people say otherwiseappears to have made an impression, too.
Clintons inner circle is debating whether entrenched opinions about both her and Donald Trump leaves them free to pick a running mate without having to worry about moving the needle in a state or a particular demographic or political agenda, wondering if the focus should be fully on the potential partnership of the next eight years.
Though shell hit the campaign trail with Tim Kaine on Thursday and has known him somewhat professionally over the years, shes rarely been in the same room with him he arrived in the Senate after she left. So did Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, with whom she has a longer history thats recovered in recent years. She overlapped two years with Sherrod Brown, but she was off on her first White House race within weeks of his swearing-in.
Shes had a few short conversations with HUD Secretary Julían Castro, mostly around his offering his endorsement when they ran into each other at one event last summer, and her formally asking him for it as they stood in the back of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala last fall. Shes known Rep. Xavier Becerra since she was first lady and likes him, has had several group dinners with him over the last year, but still mispronounces his name with an extra emphasis on the vowel in the last syllable.
Its been different with Perez.
