Political positions of Hillary Clinton Political positions of Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton, the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States in 2016, has taken positions on political issues while serving as First Lady of Arkansas (1979–81; 1983–92), First Lady of the United States (1993–2001); as U.S. Senator from New York (2001–2009); and serving as the United States Secretary of State (2009–2013). In accordance with longstanding custom, during her time as Secretary of State she largely avoided taking stances on most domestic political issues. In 2015, she announced her candidacy for the presidency. Clinton won the Democratic primaries and formally became the
Cultural and political image of Hillary Clinton degree of opinion about a political figure, to find that such polls during Clinton's first lady years confirm the "conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure", with the added insight that "affect towards Mrs. Clinton as first lady tended to be very positive or very negative, with a fairly constant one fourth of respondents feeling ambivalent or neutral". University of California, San Diego political science professor Gary Jacobson's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, Clinton had the fourth-largest partisan difference of any senator, with a