Clintons

In January, 1991, as America stood on the edge of its first war in a generation, a quiet, bespectacled man stood in the well of the U.S. Senate and forced the nation to hesitate and think. George J. Mitchell, a former federal judge who was then Senate majority leader, had successfully pressed the Bush Administration into something Presidents had ignored for half a century: allowing Congress its constitutional authority to vote on making war.

Mitchell’s maneuver was politically perilous. Anyone who opposed the Gulf War risked appearing disloyal to the country and its then enormously popular President. Yet what followed, people in both parties now recall, was one of the finest moments in Senate history, a high-minded and highly emotional debate of conscience by a nation about to send its young people to war.

During George Bush’s four years as President, it was only one of many incidents when Mitchell, an intellectual politician in the era of three-second attack politics, drew sharp lines between Congress and the Republican Administration. For a time, the stoic New Englander, who avoided flashy TV sound bites and had a strong commitment to lighthouses and waterfowl, was the most important Democrat in the country.

Mitchell had risen to majority leader with historic speed. He was in only his eighth year when the Senate picked him as its leader. The former political protege of legendary Maine Democrat Edmund S. Muskie, Mitchell had spent much of his time in the Senate fighting to pass two liberal bills, a Clean Air Act and a law to clean up oil spills. He struck colleagues as uniquely decent and fair, disciplined, unemotional and deeply intellectual.

Early in 1994, he stunned Washington by announcing he would not seek almost certain reelection for a third term. He then turned down a seat on the Supreme Court in the spring of 1994. Some speculated that he was holding out to become commissioner of baseball. Still others linked his court demurrer to the fact that the 61-year-old divorce would marry 37-year-old Heather MacLachlan, a manager of professional athletes.

He dedicated the rest of his Senate career to passing health-care reform, but by October, that effort had collapsed. Then, on Election Day, his chosen successor for the Senate lost, the seat going to Republican Olympia Snowe. His party had lost the Senate after six years in the majority and the House after 40. On election night, Mitchell says, he never saw it coming.

During his last week in Washington, Mitchell sat down a t the polished conference table in his elegant Senate office to reflect on his leaving. He was still busy, juggling plans for his marriage in December and managing the passage of GATT , always dressed in crisp white shirt and dark suit, even on Saturday. But over the course of three long sessions, his reserve began to ease and his hands to wave as he reflected on what is right and wrong with the U.S Congress, on President Clinton, the Republican and Democratic parties, and about why so many Americans feel the nation is in political crisis.

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I was taken by surprise. I’d hoped that we would retain control of both the Senate and House, although I knew that we would suffer some losses. In off-year elections, the party of the President usually loses about four seats in the Senate. We lost eight.

In retrospect, if the Administration and the congressional leadership had decided to forgo health care for this year and concentrated on welfare reform, it might have produced a different result.

But I think the Democrats are also suffering the effects of larger cultural, political and economic upheaval. Whenever a society is in transition, there’s uncertainty, anxiety, even fear. Clearly, we are a society undergoing major transition now. For most American families, incomes have either declined or remained stagnant. People see now that it is not inevitable or likely that incomes will continue to rise. Whenever there is a major transition, there is a natural desire, even a longing, for a simple, easy answer–Why is this so? How can it be corrected? There is a nostalgia for the past, often an inaccurate glorification of the past. We’ve had in our history times when seemingly simplistic answers have been offered, which in retrospect look ridiculous. The Know-Nothing movement flourished in the mid-19th Century; the Ku Klux Klan flourished early in this century; we’ve had a lot of Red scares; we’ve had a lot of things we look back on and wonder now how they happened. But at the time, given the state of anxiety and fear, it’s understandable.

I want to make very clear that I do not equate what happened this year with the Ku Klux Klan or the Know-Nothings. I’m simply describing a phenomenon of a society in transition being (susceptible).

What the Republicans did was very skillful. They developed a clear and simple message–that if we can somehow stop this expansion of government authority, then family values will be restored. It has an appeal. It’s simple, it’s comprehensible, it appears to be logical. Of course, it isn’t going to restore those values. It certainly isn’t going to do the really essential thing of promoting economic growth. Indeed, they also labeled the Democrats as the party of high taxes. In fact, the President’s economic plan passed in 1993 raised income-tax rates only on the highest-earning 1.2% of all Americans and cut taxes for most lower- and middle-income families. Polls show people don’t know that. But the Republicans didn’t make up their argument out of whole cloth. Democrats helped them.

For too many in our party, government became a first resort rather than a last. There was an inability to distinguish between principle and programs–we became committed to programs. Democrats have succeeded when we have seen the difference and when we have been perceived as the party of economic growth. But in recent years, we’ve become increasingly perceived not as the party trying to make the economic pie grow but as the party trying to make sure that every single person gets an absolutely equal slice of the pie. That has coincided with a polarization of income concurrent with the polarization by race.

In Congress, meanwhile, the Republicans have been very skillful, cynical but skillful, in creating a gridlock from which they have benefited.

Perhaps the best example is the first item in the House Republicans’ contract with America, which would require that all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress. That’s a good idea, isn’t it? It’s so good, in fact, that we Democrats have promoted this legislation even longer than Republicans. That bill passed the House of Representatives when it was controlled by Democrats.

When I tried to bring it up in the Senate, Republican senators objected. They prevented the Senate from considering the legislation that their party said was No. 1 on its contract. That’s cynicism and, I’m sorry to say, successful cynicism. Now next year they’ll pass the legislation, and they’ll say, “Look here, we’re honoring our contract.”

*

Though they barely knew each other before Election Day in 1992, Mitchell was one of President Clinton’s closest allies during the past two years. He fought for Clinton’s deficit-cutting budget in 1993 and battled for health care reform in 1994 even when most Democrats thought the battle was lost. Since the Democratic defeat in November, many in Mitchell’s party have laid most of the blame on Clinton.

*

I think the problems the President has encountered are largely the result of too ambitious an agenda. If we had had just a few items, I think we’d have been a lot better off.

In retrospect, moreover, if I had known that health care would not be enacted, it would have made sense to discontinue the effort and to go on to welfare reform. But nine months ago, (passing health care) looked pretty good.

I didn’t know then-Gov. Clinton very well prior to the election, but I came to consider him extremely intelligent, very knowledgeable on issues, hard working, and the policy positions he has taken are mostly, not always, consistent with my own.

I recall one meeting last year, when he had a group of us to the White House for dinner to talk on health care, bipartisan, maybe 10 or 12 senators. Usually at these meetings, the members of Congress know all the details because the President speaks in general terms. It became evident quickly that the President knew much more about the details than did any of the members. It was a complete reversal in terms of knowledge of the subject.

I also disagree that the President is vacillating and indecisive. Historian Garry Wills has compared Clinton to Lincoln and said that the difference is Clinton does it all publicly in advance, and Lincoln did it all privately, behind the walls of the White House. I think one of the problems that has depicted this White House as vacillating is that they do their thinking out loud.

It is unfair, too, to have suggested that President Clinton has no bedrock principles on which he will not compromise. Look at the things he’s taken on. Why does he have political problems? In the South, they say it’s because of the policy on gays in the military. Is this a man without conviction? I don’t see how critics can have it both ways. On the one hand they say he pursued unpopular policies, on the other he doesn’t have convictions.

I have a theory, though it’s entirely subjective and personal, that economic matters are more important to the electorate in presidential elections than they are in off-term elections. I think if the economy stays strong, he’ll be in a much better position to gain reelection than he is now. Right now he’s being measured not against another person, but against each citizen’s individual subjective idealization of the presidency. When he runs, he’s going to be running against a person, (who will) have a personal life and a business background that will be relentlessly scrutinized. I’m convinced that Ross Perot will be running, and that will help President Clinton–even more than in ‘92, because the Perot supporters are much more Republican now. I think Bill Clinton will be reelected.

*

Mitchell said he began thinking about retiring the day of the 1994 State of the Union speech in January. There were many factors, but important among them was the realization that if he didn’t leave now, at 61, he would become too old to take up anything else–such as, for instance, baseball commissioner.

*

In 1993, when I turned 60, I decided to celebrate by climbing the highest mountain in my home state of Maine, Mt. Kitahdin. It’s one of the toughest non-technical climbs in the East, a mile high and about a 4,000-foot vertical climb.

There are two peaks on Mt. Kitahdin: Pamola Peak and the summit. The distance between them is a narrow ledge that stretches more than a mile, called the Knife’s Edge; I have a fear of heights.

Late that night, after we finished, I told my friends that the climb reminded me of Charles Darwin’s trip around the world, during which he first conceived the theory of evolution. It was a physically rough trip for him; he was sick for a large part of the time. He never made another such trip, and he spent the rest of his life talking about that one. That’s the way I felt about climbing Mt. Kitahdin.

That is also how I feel when I reflect on what it took to pass major legislation in the U.S. Senate, including one of my highest priorities, the Clean Air Act.

I had run for majority leader in 1988, in significant part so that we could pass some of the legislation that I had tried for six or seven years to make into law and failed. After I was majority leader, and we finally got the clean air bill onto the floor, it became obvious it couldn’t pass. I didn’t want it to die, so I decided we should negotiate. We spent over a month in my conference room–members of the Bush Administration and senators, groups of 10 or 12, sometimes 50 or 60. There were many 16- to 18-hour days. We went over every provision, negotiating in good faith, and we finally reached a consensus.

That’s what it takes to enact major legislation. And that is one of the few tools available now to the Senate majority leader: the ability to get people together, to get them to listen to each other. No longer can a leader order senators to follow. Lyndon B. Johnson centralized power in the majority leader. He was able to exert influence on his colleagues for three reasons. One was his personality. Second, he had the power to appoint all senators to committees and to remove them from committees. That can make or break a senator’s career. The other was that if you wanted a roll call vote, you had to get his approval. He used those powers very effectively, but in the minds of many of his colleagues, he abused them. When he left, those powers were taken away from the majority leader, so majority leaders since have had very little in the way of institutional tools to impose discipline (over their party or the institution).

I have advocated that some of these powers be restored. Bob Dole, the new majority leader, disagreed. I expect he may change his mind now. Of course, the Senate could make these changes simply by operating with a resumption of the self-restraint that existed among its members for most of our history but no longer does.

In the entire 19th Century there were 16 filibusters in the U.S. Senate–an average of one every 6 1/2 years. For most of this century, filibusters occurred fewer than once a year. In the 103rd Congress just concluded, there were 20 filibusters attempted and 72 motions to end them.

It is harder to govern now, I think, because of the tone in politics today, which debases public discussion. Distrust of Congress and elected officials is not new in our society, but I think several factors have contributed to the increase in negativism in politics.

First, the press has abandoned many of the traditional restraints it imposed on itself with regard to reporting on the personal life of public officials. Second, television. The viewer, the voter, hears candidate Tom say that his opponent Diane is a bum; Diane responds that Tom is a crook, and so the voters come to believe that they have a choice between a bum and a crook. A third factor, I believe, is partisan. Until Bill Clinton was elected, there seemed a nearly permanent state of affairs in which the presidency was held by Republicans and the Congress by Democrats. So for nearly two decades, Republicans bashed the Congress.

All of those things have combined to create a highly negative discussion in which issues are oversimplified and reduced to slogans.

*

In his own career, Mitchell was unusually fair and bipartisan when it came to dispensing the rules of the Senate. Among his first acts as majority leader was ending the practice of tactical surprise . Before that, both sides had to keep one senator on the floor at all times . But Mitchell could also be scorchingly partisan when it came to policy differences.

*

We Democrats bear responsibility for the failure to deal more effectively with the nation’s problems. But so do Republicans. Their policy in the Senate in 1994 was one of total obstruction. Let me give you an example.

We passed earlier this year in both houses the gift- and lobbying-disclosure legislation. The Republicans really didn’t want it, so when the bill came up for final passage in the House, Newt Gingrich concocted this argument that it will have some effect on grass-roots lobbying, and they got Christian organizations to come out against it. That same excuse was used in the Senate. So I offered to take that provision out and vote on the same bill that we had passed by a vote of 95 to 2 a few months earlier. Which, of course, all the Republicans had voted for. But they refused. When you prevent legislation that you’ve actually voted for, you’re engaged in a policy of total obstruction. But it worked. The Republican (complaint) was, well the darned place isn’t functioning. The Democrats are in charge, so let’s change the people in charge, and maybe we’ll get some action.

Now they are in a different position. I think the Republicans will soon learn that it’s easier to campaign against something than to govern. You actually are responsible for acting. I think we Democrats suffer the burden more because we believe that government can produce beneficial results and conditions in our society. But we didn’t do a very good job of making that case this year.

I don’t know Newt Gingrich very well. Most of my dealings have been with Bob Michel, who was the Republican leader in the House for all of the time that I was majority leader. Newt sort of took over during the latter stages of this Congress. My impression is that he’s very smart and appears to be committed to an ideology. But I wonder if he is smart enough to recognize that in order to be a successful Speaker, he will have to use an approach different from that which got him to be Speaker–basically the difference between campaigning and governing.

I believe people can change. In general terms, I think people grow in office. I think people become more responsible with increased responsibility, become more active with increased demands on them. But I have no way of knowing in his particular case.

*

For all his frustration, even anger, Mitchell wanted to assert that he does not feel jaundiced about politics and the future. He also remains, in the parlance of Washington, an unreconstructed liberal, though not without complaints .

*

For all this, the problems of the party and the historical forces the Republicans have capitalized on, I don’t share the view that the country is shifting ideologically. Nor do I fear that the Democratic Party is somehow marginalizing itself. I am, on the contrary, very optimistic.

I’ve written a lot of bills that have become law, and many of them are meaningful to me. I’m the author of something called the Lighthouse Preservation Program. It’s a very small bill, but I regard it as a great accomplishment.

It’s ironic that at this moment, when American ideals and culture are ascendant in the world, when the American economy is the most productive and efficient in the world, when unemployment in America is less than that in virtually every other developed industrial democracy of the world, that Americans should be so anxious and fearful, such easy prey for demagoguery and scapegoatism. I think the Democrats still are the party of opportunity and economic growth.

What we have to do is to narrow our focus to economic-growth policies as opposed to trying to solve every other problem. I can sum up my philosophy in a sentence: In America, no one shouldbe guaranteed success, but everyone should have a fair chance to go as far as talent, education and will can take them.

WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department on Tuesday for files in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation and is seeking depositions with the Clintons and former law enforcement officials, part of a congressional probe that lawmakers believe may show links to President Trump and former top officials.

The Republican-controlled committee issued subpoenas for depositions with former President Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and eight former top law enforcement officials.

The committee’s actions showed how even with lawmakers away from Washington on a monthlong break, interest in the Epstein files is still running high. Trump has denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and claimed he cut off their relationship long ago, and he has repeatedly tried to move past the Justice Department’s decision not to release a full accounting of the investigation. But lawmakers from both major political parties, as well as many in the Republican president’s political base, have refused to let it go.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the Oversight Committee, noted in letters to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the former officials that the cases of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell “have received immense public interest and scrutiny.”

“While the Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex-trafficking laws generally, and specifically, its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell,” Comer said.

Epstein’s circle

Since Epstein’s 2019 death in a New York jail cell as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges, conservative conspiracists have stoked theories about what information investigators gathered on Epstein — and who else knew about his sexual abuse of teenage girls. Republican lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee nodded to that line of questioning last month by initiating the subpoenas for the Clintons, both Democrats, as well as demanding all communications between President Biden’s Democratic administration and the Justice Department regarding Epstein.

Bill Clinton was among a number of luminaries acquainted with Epstein, a wealthy financier, before the criminal investigation against him in Florida became public two decades ago. Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing by any of the women who say Epstein abused them.

One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, once gave a newspaper interview in which she described riding in a helicopter with Clinton and flirting with Trump, but she later said in a deposition that those things hadn’t actually happened and were mistakes by the reporter. Clinton has previously said through a spokesperson that while he traveled on Epstein’s jet, he never visited his homes and had no knowledge of his crimes.

The committee is also demanding interviews under oath from former attorneys general spanning the last four presidential administrations: Merrick Garland, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales. Lawmakers also subpoenaed former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.

However, it was Democrats who sparked the move to subpoena the Justice Department for its files on Epstein. They were joined by some Republicans last month to successfully initiate the subpoena through a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee.

“Today was an important step forward in our fight for transparency regarding the Epstein files and our dedication to seeking justice for the victims,” said Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on the committee, and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who initiated the subpoena, in a joint statement. “Now, we must continue putting pressure on the Department of Justice until we actually receive every document.”

Will the subpoenas be enforced?

The subpoenas give the Justice Department until Aug. 19 to hand over the requested records, though such requests are typically open to negotiation and can be resisted by the Trump administration.

The committee is also asking the former officials to appear for the depositions throughout August, September and October, concluding with Hillary Clinton on Oct. 9 and Bill Clinton on Oct. 14.

Multiple former presidents have voluntarily testified before Congress, but none has been compelled to do so. That history was invoked by Trump in 2022, between his first and second terms, when he faced a subpoena by the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Lawyers for Trump resisted the subpoena, citing decades of legal precedent they said shielded an ex-president from being ordered to appear before Congress. The committee ultimately withdrew its subpoena.

The committee had previously issued a subpoena for an interview with Maxwell, who had been serving a prison sentence in Florida for luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein but was recently transferred to a Texas facility.

However, Comer has indicated he is willing to delay that deposition until after the Supreme Court decides whether to hear an appeal to her conviction. She argues she was wrongfully prosecuted.

As the Justice Department has tried to appease demands for more disclosure, it has turned attention to Maxwell. Officials interviewed her for 1 1/2 days last month.

But Democrats stressed the importance of gaining direct access to the investigative files, rather than relying on Maxwell’s words.

“We need these files now in order to corroborate any claims she makes,” Garcia and Lee said, adding: “This fight is not over.”

Prosecutors say there’s not much new in grand jury transcripts

Another way the Trump administration is trying to address the public clamor for more transparency is by asking federal judges to unseal grand jury transcripts in the cases against Epstein and Maxwell. But prosecutors indicated Monday the public already knows a lot of what’s in the documents.

Much of the information “was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses,” prosecutors wrote in court papers Monday.

The prosecutors also made clear they’re seeking to unseal only the transcripts of grand jury witnesses’ testimony, not the exhibits that accompanied it.

Groves writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jennifer Peltz and David Caruso in New York and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Reporting from San Francisco — When Hillary Clinton parachuted into Los Angeles recently, some of the well-heeled donors who swarmed her brought unsolicited campaign advice, while others brought ambitions of White House appointments. Susie Tompkins Buell brought a bag of dry-roasted chickpeas.

It was fitting that Buell, a wealthy San Franciscan who ranks near the top of the sprawling national network of Clinton benefactors, was obsessing about the candidate’s nourishment. Few people in the orbit of the Clintons have done more for their care and feeding than this 73-year-old fixture of Bay Area philanthropy and salon society who wanted nothing to do with politics — she didn’t even vote — until a chance meeting with Bill Clinton well into her adult life.

Buell not only has become a fundraising powerhouse since then. She has also become Hillary Clinton’s soul mate. Theirs is among a handful of friendships that have been key to fueling the candidate’s ambitions, providing emotional and financial sustenance. It reflects the uncanny Clinton ability to build and maintain unyielding loyalty from the people positioned to help them the most – even people, like Buell, who have no business interests or political aspirations the couple might advance. In many cases, the bonds have only solidified through the stresses of scandal, electoral disappointment and Democratic Party rivalries that the Clintons have powered through.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The network has been most valuable in California, where Hillary Clinton is raising more cash than anyplace else. How Susie Tompkins Buell became a hub of that operation is a uniquely California story.

Buell never thought she would be rich. She was but a 21-year-old who had chosen work as a keno runner in Tahoe over college when she randomly stopped by the roadside to pick up Doug Tompkins, a hitchhiking beach bum who, like Buell, had an unexpected mastery of entrepreneurship and getting in front of trends. The two eventually married and together built a fortune and a cultish following around the clothing lines they created: North Face and Esprit.

But it wasn’t until they divorced and Buell found herself at a retreat at the Esalen Institute that she got curious about the Clintons. Buzz about Bill Clinton at that Big Sur haven of mindfulness intrigued Buell. It was 1991, and the fledgling presidential candidate had inspired one of the speakers at the event, New Urbanist architect and thinker Peter Calthorpe, with his ideas on building and strengthening community, a topic of interest to Buell.

Susie Tompkins Buell, poses with a poster she designed supporting Hillary Clinton for president at her penthouse apartment.

(David Butow / For the Times )

So on a whim, and with a stroke of luck in timing, she dropped in at an event for Clinton while passing through Sacramento on her way home from Tahoe.

She quickly found herself at the head table. The conversation was memorable.

“I told him I was getting divorced and how I had worked with my husband all these years,” Buell said. “He really wanted to know what it was like, and he started talking about Hillary and how she was nervous that night because she was giving a speech at Wellesley,” her alma mater. They talked about the crushing poverty Clinton had seen on the campaign trail, Buell recalled, “and how much people were relying on government. I really wanted a president who would look out for them.”

She decided at that moment it should be Clinton. The next day, she wrote him a $100,000 check.

But the Clinton campaign was confused. Such large gifts usually come with requests for face time with the candidate or, at the very least, donor perks like ticket packages to the party convention and star-studded fundraising events.

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“They asked me what I wanted,” she said. “I remember saying, ‘I want him to be president.’ I had no idea about how the money part of this worked.” Indeed, the only candidate who had ever received a cent from her before then was Mark Buell, the man who is now her husband and who long ago unsuccessfully ran for county supervisor. He got $500.

The donation to Clinton might have been a one-off but for the relationship that bloomed when Hillary Clinton approached Buell to personally thank her. The women clicked immediately, and Buell grew more enamored when she saw Clinton deliver an impassioned Mother’s Day address at Glide Memorial Church, a hotbed of leftist activism in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

“I was attracted to Bill Clinton, but as soon as I met Hillary, it was much deeper for me,” she said.

Buell hasn’t stopped giving to the Clintons since. More than $15 million has made its way from Buell’s bank account to the campaigns and causes of the Clintons. Untold millions more have been raised by her, often at her gorgeous Pacific Heights penthouse apartment, a mandatory stop on the fundraising circuit for prominent liberals. The menu that iconic chef Alice Waters prepared when Bill Clinton dropped by in March 1996 is framed in the kitchen.

“I can’t even count the number of events I have been to at the house,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who first got to know Buell years ago, when he ran a wine shop and was good friends with her daughter. “It is a perfect venue overlooking the bay. There is an austerity to it. It is an opulent building, an opulent view. But the space itself is austere.” The rooms are sparsely but carefully appointed. Pieces worth more than a small condominium share rooms with stylish items plucked from far-flung flea markets. Every window has a panoramic view.

“It is a perfect backdrop to focus less on the surroundings and more on the occasion,” Newsom said.

The occasion is almost always political activism.

“The environment, women’s rights, children’s rights, equality, all of this,” said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, ticking off in an interview the causes she has been involved in with Buell. “Susie comes through. She doesn’t say, ‘Put my name down,’ and take a back seat.”

As Buell got entrenched in politics, her relationship with Hillary Clinton began to move beyond it. Clinton writes in one of her books about a conversation between the two while the then-first lady was under siege by Congress amid its investigation into her Whitewater real estate investment. “My free-spirited friend Susie Buell said she didn’t follow all the dramas going on back in Washington, but she did have something to say to me: ‘Bless your heart.’ That was all I needed to hear,” Clinton wrote.

Much later, Clinton showed up at Buell’s apartment to meet her dying brother, a prominent surgeon who was staying with Buell while undergoing painful cancer treatments. “Most people would say, ‘I am sorry I never met your brother,’ or send their best. She just goes right into it,” Buell said. “She wasn’t taking advantage of him. They laughed. It was just sweet. It was one of the tenderest times in my life. … Her comfort with the situation was very moving.”

Buell said she regrets how few people see that side of Clinton.

“I remember once saying to her: ‘Can’t you just be yourself, Hillary?’ ” Buell said. “When there are not cameras around, she really lets it fly. She said, ‘You know what happens? They will get a moment of me expressing something and then say, “There she goes again, the crazy.” ’ Experience has trained her to be so cautious.”

But Clinton also sees a side of Buell that many candidates never get to see: the one that doesn’t talk politics.

“I don’t want to be one more thing she has to think about,” Buell said. “She knows who I am, she knows how I feel. We don’t talk shop. … She doesn’t need one more person to say, ‘What do you think about the Benghazi report?’ ”

This is the same donor who showed up at a high-stakes fundraiser for President Obama near the end of his first term and told him to knock off the small talk when he began to genuflect. Then she launched into a scold about his failure to get a landmark climate change bill through Congress.

“We don’t talk shop,” Susie Tompkins Buell says of her friendship with Hillary Clinton.

(David Butow / For the Times )

Newsom, who says Buell “holds your feet to the fire” when candidates get her support, let out a knowing chuckle when asked about her reluctance to push Clinton. As Buell and other climate activists fought for years to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, candidates who did not stand with them were getting an earful from her. Except Clinton, who stayed neutral through most of the battle.

“They have a deep friendship, and that transcends politics in many respects,” he said. “She has a loyalty to the Clintons that is extraordinary, and it is unbreakable.”

It’s not that Buell is star-struck. She is constantly in the company of celebrity. Meryl Streep gushed in an email about Buell’s “open, welcoming mien.” Waters happened to text while Buell was talking with a displaced former California reporter, and at Buell’s behest, recommended where in Washington to dine.

Bill Clinton emailed to say, “Susie has been my friend for almost 25 years,” and express gratitude “for her constant love and support for Hillary.”

And Gloria Steinem has also been Buell’s friend for years. She recalled in an interview coming to speak about feminism to Esprit employees in the 1980s, long before it was fashionable for big companies to try to raise the consciousness of their workforce. Buell’s then-husband vetoed her plans to advertise in the fledgling Ms. magazine, so Buell sidestepped him by writing a check to subsidize subscriptions for universities.

“She is a self-educated person in the best sense,” Steinem said.

Buell stopped selling clothing long ago, but she never stopped marketing her brand. Lately, she has been working on her “Badass for President” project, a more hipster-oriented line of Clinton campaign memorabilia than the less-daring goods sold in the campaign store. A mock-up poster in her office has the logo emblazoned over a black-and-white photo of young Hillary Clinton in stylish ’60s attire and a coffeehouse conversation pose.

The fundraising events she holds are among the fastest-selling tickets in the city — especially when they are at her apartment in the penthouse of a landmark red-tile-roof building on a Pacific Heights hilltop where the views are dreamlike and the history is rich.

Buell says she was one of the lonely Democrats in the old-money-heavy building when she held her first fundraiser for Bill Clinton there. She had to quickly patch together a bunch of linens to cover the picture windows that the president’s detail warned would be a security risk. Clinton joked that it was better to be looking at the linens than shattered glass. The Secret Service once got stuck in the utility elevator there for an hour after too many of the agents piled in.

They know their way around better now. There are at least three other big Democratic donors in the building now, and sometimes they team up to hold multifloor events. Obama once joked that he had been through so many times he was starting to feel like a resident. Buell expects that she and her neighbors soon will be holding another multitiered event in the building for Hillary Clinton soon. The haul from such events is in the millions of dollars.

“It works great,” she said. “As long as the Secret Service is clear that they can’t all pile into the utility elevator at once.”

And what’s next for Buell if Clinton wins? Probably more of the same, she said.

“I am absolutely not interested in getting appointed to something,” she said. “I have the perfect life.”

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‘It’s going to be a big, fat, beautiful wall!’: Trump’s words make his California climb an even steeper trek