Scanning through the recent tranche of hacked emails released by Wikileaks, taken from the Gmail account of John Podesta, the chairperson for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, I came across this interesting exchange from last March on the issue of “Ethnic Outreach“. I’ve edited the original email in order to highlight the passages relevant to Ireland and Irish-Americans:
“From: slatham@hillaryclinton.com
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2016-03-13 10:25
Subject: Fwd: Ethnic Outreach Summary | March. 9 – 12
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jared Mueller <jmueller@hillaryclinton.com>
Date: March 13, 2016 at 12:35:51 AM EST
To: Amanda Renteria <arenteria@hillaryclinton.com>, Marlon Marshall < mmarshall@hillaryclinton.com>, Sara Latham <slatham@hillaryclinton.com> *Cc:* Laura Rosenberger <lrosenberger@hillaryclinton.com>, Elizabeth Renda <erenda@hillaryclinton.com>, Milia Fisher <mfisher@hillaryclinton.com>, Sally Marx <smarx@hillaryclinton.com>, Brynne Craig < bcraig@hillaryclinton.com>, Kari Thurman <kthurman@hillaryclinton.com>
Subject: Ethnic Outreach Summary | March. 9 – 12
All, Below is an end-of-week ethnic outreach update with the latest since Wednesday, for communities we have prioritized going into the 3/15 states. Please let me know if you have any questions — and huge credit to Laura, Kari (among others) for their work on many of these communities:
Irish Americans –
Earned media: HRC’s Youngstown visit to an Irish pub with Congressman Ryan covered by press corps (video https://twitter.com/ABCLiz/status/708855631466401792>) –
Irish Americans for Hillary call with Jake Sullivan locked for Monday, 3/14 (RSVP link here <http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/XR8LR5DG92HLDF>) –
Jake Sullivan post for The Feed on HRC’s Northern Irish record in works; digital working on finalizing, Sunday for Monday – Irish Americans for Hillary phone bank in NE Ohio amplified online by local and national Irish Am Dems (tweets here <http://www.polishnews.com/newsy-news/news-from-around-chicago-z-chicago-i-okolic/6497-bill-clinton,-former-us-president-visits-chicago> and here <https://twitter.com/kat_rogers/status/708431855905869824>)
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 8:30 AM, Jared Mueller <jmueller@hillaryclinton.com> wrote:
We’re also evaluating options for additional Irish Americans for Hillary outreach, building on the well-received Irish fact sheet, including a brief meeting with Irish-Am leaders and a blog post from Jake or another FP validator to personalize her work in Northern Ireland
Will share additional updates as programming and products are locked in over the course of the week. Thank you!
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 9:02 PM, Jared Mueller <jmueller@hillaryclinton.com > wrote:
Below is a summary of our ethnic outreach efforts over the past week. In particular it’s been great to see the reception of the Irish fact sheet the campaign published yesterday, which we’ve pushed Irish American Democrats to promote — typical tweet here <https://twitter.com/JohnWMcCarthy/status/706235699733925888>. Priorities for next week include locking in a Greek-American call with Governor Dukakis, an Italian-American call with Congresswoman DeLauro, continuing our Irish outreach efforts in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day, and building our network of identified ethnic leaders in March and double-battleground states. Huge thanks to Laura for her (and her foreign policy team’s) very generous support of this work!
Ethnic Outreach Summary: February 29th – March 6th
CONFERENCE CALLS COMPLETED
DIGITAL AND POLICY OUTREACH
Irish Americans for Hillary collateral developed by Teams Digital and Policy Digital generated an Irish Americans for Hillary share graphic Policy has created a fact sheet for Irish Americans, which has >> been publicly released and picked up by IrishCentral and Irish activists on Twitter (link <https://twitter.com/JohnWMcCarthy/status/706235699733925888>)
EARNED MEDIA
IrishCentral covered the release of the campaign’s Irish affairs fact >> sheet (link <http://bit.ly/1L9EHXD>
INDIVIDUAL OUTREACH
Irish American leaders in D.C., Massachusetts, New York”
Interesting stuff, though even the Democratic Party staff had to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s contribution to the Irish-British peace of the 1990s and early 2000s was minimal at best.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the unsung heroes of the success of the Irish peace process,” said Irish America co-founder Niall O’Dowd.
In 1998, Clinton put together the Vital Voices Conference of women in Belfast, a body that pressed for a piece agreement. The former secretary of state cited her experiences in Ireland during a number of speeches in 2014.
O’Dowd is a longtime Clinton supporter, though,and was a member of her 2008 campaign finance team. Some Republicans have questioned how active Clinton was in the Northern Ireland peace process. The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote in 2008 that Clinton “seems to be overstating her significance as a catalyst in the Northern Ireland peace process, which was more symbolic than substantive,” but that she did play “a helpful role at the margins.”
At the margins, and then some!
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Interesting. I, along with my entire family going up to my nonagenarian grandfather (who is one of those very New York-Irish-Catholic types), supported Bernie Sanders up until the Democratic National Convention.
Bernie should have run with the fact that he wrote a letter to Thatcher on behalf of the hunger strikers in 1981. It might have swung a lot of Irish-American votes in his direction.
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It’s all about the money, isn’t it? And they’re not fussy about where they get it from, either.
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The Democrats have always shamelessly pandered to ethnic votes.
I remember some years ago a Jewish Democrat in Illinois even changed his name to a stereotypically Irish one in the hope of getting Irish American votes.
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I’ve heard similar things about John Kerry (D-MA), an Hungarian Jew whose roots do not extend back to the Kingdom
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