Planting and Harvesting Campaign Groove

The presidential campaign seems to have settled down in to a groove. Candidates traipse across the country rarely going a day without fundraising and calling at least one press conference. The early primary states are lavished with much more attention than the February 5th states. Every few weeks there is a debate or an event where they all get to make their stump speeches. This week it is the Take Back America conference in DC. The ratio of campaign events to campaign events is shifting as the quarterly deadline approaches and the need to feed the media beast with a large figure drives decisions. Hillary Clinton had a pretty classic campaign day today, which the AP details.

She was in her now home state of New York, but was upstate most of the day, going from appearance to appearance. She started off in Buffalo at the Eero Saarinenn designed Kleinhan Music hall for a $500 plate breakfast fundraiser. A neat space actually, if you happen to find yourself in Buffalo. It's right on the Frederick Law Olmsted park. Clinton left from there to plant trees with Buffalo's mayor at the City Honors High School. She had brought along seeds from a white ash tree from Eleanor Roosevelt's Hyde Park estate Val-Kill. The trees were meant to replace the ones that were lost in an enormous (even for Buffalo) snow storm. That one forced my grandmother to evacuate her home for a few days. The planting appearance gave Hillary a chance to promote her energy and environmental policy positions.

After planting trees and raising cash Clinton headed East to Rochester for a meeting on the city's crime rate and an opportunity to talk about her national anti-violence initiatives. Oh and she has another fundraiser scheduled in Rochester later today.

In that way, Clinton said, she sees her presidential run as a positive for New York.

"There's a linkage between everything I do in and for New York and what I'm trying to do on the campaign trail and what I want to do as president," Clinton said at City Honors High School, where a lawn full of children awaited her arrival for more than an hour.

"You can talk about global warming right here in Buffalo while we're planting trees that are going to benefit the people of Buffalo, and I want to make those connections," she said.

It is an effective approach that is employed by all of the major candidates. They smoothly transition from event, to press conference, to fundraiser. I am simply amazed that they don't screw up the name of the town more often, as they plant trees to harvest voters and cash.