Clinton to unveil platform in June campaign kickoff rally

NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton will end weeks of smaller campaign events with a splashy rally designed to kick off a run for the White House that aides expect to cost over $1 billion, senior Clinton advisers said Thursday.

The June 13 event — at a location still being kept quiet — aims to detail Clinton’s vision for the country in a higher-profile manner than the roundtables she’s held in early voting states since announcing her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination last month.

She’ll be joined by former President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, who have so far stayed away from the campaign trail, going so far as to travel to Africa in the weeks that followed Clinton’s entry into the race.

Clinton’s speech will be followed by the release of a series of detailed policy proposals throughout the summer and fall, the officials said. While many of her would-be Republican challengers are focused on foreign policy, Clinton’s message will center on economic issues that directly affect families still struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

The officials who described the plans Thursday did so on condition of anonymity, in order to brief reporters on campaign strategy.

Even as Clinton makes reforming the campaign finance system a major tenet of her bid, her team expects to raise over $1 billion between both her campaign and Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing her candidacy.

That’s about the same amount of money President Barack Obama raised for his re-election campaign in 2012. Like Obama, officials say they are first focused on raising about $100 million to spend in the Democratic primaries.

In recent weeks, Clinton has ramped up her fundraising, adding a series of donor events to her schedule and announcing she would court donors for Priorities.

Officials said they increased early fundraising because of concerns about the amount of money expected to be raised by her Republican rivals.

While Clinton is the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination, her campaign insists its focus is solely on the primary contest. Despite that focus, campaign officials are eying opportunities to expand the electorate beyond the coalition of young people, women, African-Americans and Hispanics that helped Obama twice win the White House.

Officials raised the prospect of Clinton being able to compete in some traditionally Republican states where demographics are beginning to look more favorable for Democrats. While the campaign did not specify which states they were looking at, Democrats outside the campaign have mentioned Arizona and Georgia as possible options.

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