The progressives don’t really know what they’re doing, but they’re doing a lot of it.

Charlie Neibergall / Getty

Howard Dean desperately needed to make his train. But before he could leave a gathering of high-profile New York City progressives Friday, he had to stop and repeatedly sell them on Hillary Clinton.

"I think Elizabeth [Warren] is absolutely right and I think Hillary agrees with Elizabeth. She just doesn't use the same rhetoric," the former Vermont governor told one wary progressive woman among the mob looking for photos. He had just stepped off the stage, following his lunchtime keynote at the day-long Tackling Income Inequality symposium at New York City Law School in Lower Manhattan.

The event was hosted by many top officials in the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The official Q&A after his speech was dominated by leaders in philanthropy and education reform. There wasn't a single question about 2016, despite Dean's promise to answer any thrown his way at the outset of his 30-minute speech.

But in the post-speech glad-handing, the questions came. Progressives, it seemed, still don't know exactly what to do with Clinton and they were looking to Dean — who has carried the mantle of progressive leader since his anti-Iraq War-focused 2004 presidential bid — to help them understand it.

Back to that talk of Clinton rhetoric. Dean explained to the woman, a lawyer and NYC Law School graduate, that the demands of Iowa just didn't allow for Warren-style populism to be fully unleashed. But Dean assured her Clinton was on board with the new Democratic Party.

"You can't — well, people work differently in places like the Midwest and you can't say the things — look, I listened really carefully to her announcement speech and she said some things that we wrote," Dean said.

"She embraced Obama's community college thing, which I was surprised at," he offered.

The woman protested that Clinton "really wanted to distance herself from [President] Obama but…" when Dean cut her off.

"Oh, she has this game she has to play," Dean said. "For some populations that's true [that she needs to distance herself from Obama] and for others it's not. She's got a tough row to hoe."

By this time, Dean was really, really late. His plan to ride the subway to the train station was abandoned for the nearby SUV of an audience member. As he made his way through the halls of New York City Law School, he briefly discussed his support for Clinton's campaign. Dean's been formally backing Clinton's presidential campaign since August, 2014 at least, putting him weirdly at odds with Democracy For America, the group founded out of his 2004 bid and run by his brother.

"I think it's fine," Dean told BuzzFeed News when asked about the continued effort by some progressives to pressure Clinton. "I think it's helpful for the Democratic Party."

How healthy the progressive effort is exactly remains to be seen, however.

Dean's argument about Clinton, one week into her official campaign, is essentially: She's already doing what the left wants her to do, even if she's not saying it exactly like they want her to say it.

The rest of the Clinton-wary left, meanwhile, has spent the week honing sharp contrasts with Clinton, trying to poke holes in her inevitability shield, and still more fixated on the progressive candidate not in the race versus the candidate that is.

Aides at Ready For Warren, the progressive grassroots effort to coax the Massachusetts senator into the Democratic primary race (Warren has said no to that idea many, many, many times) told BuzzFeed News they enjoyed their best-ever fundraising week in the days since Clinton made her campaign official.

The Monday after Clinton announced her campaign was Ready For Warren's biggest day in terms of money raised. The money coming in was 400% more than on an average day. December 2014 was still the group's best fundraising month, but the 30-day period ending April 15 is the very close to that level, an official with the group said, and it only includes a few days with Clinton as an official candidate.

The group declined to share the total amount raised with BuzzFeed News. "I don't want to go there because that has less to do with momentum than just size of lists, which isn't fairly compared to established groups with lots of low-dollar donors (like MoveOn) or high-dollar donors (like a Patriot USA super PAC)," an official said.

Ready For Warren has also changed tactics in recent days. In the leaders of that organization's telling, Warren's 2014 book A Fighting Chance, describes her overcoming her reticence about a run for Senate after hearing a personal story of one woman's struggle with the system. So Ready For Warren launched "#DearElizabethWarren," an online effort to collect videos of people telling their personal stories and directly asking Warren to get into the race.

At the same time, the would-be progressive torchbearers actually interested in running for president used the first week of a Clinton candidacy to draw contrasts while mostly staying away from direct shots at the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

Speaking at Harvard on Thursday, Martin O'Malley basically gave progressives everything they want in proposed economic vision. The former Maryland governor promised raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for an expansion of Social Security. He got behind a $15 minimum wage and called for the federal minimum to be indexed to inflation. He took direct aim at Obama's trade agenda, which is one of the few places where the president and his base are far, far apart.

And he took a shot at Clinton. A passive-aggressive shot over shifts on same-sex marriage and driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants that put her squarely in the Democratic mainstream, but a shot nonetheless. O'Malley is stepping up his profile ahead of a formal campaign announcement he said Thursday will come by the end of May. He recorded a wide-ranging interview with NPR that will broadcast Monday, a week and a day after Clinton announced herself as a former presidential candidate for the second time.

The trade talk has come at the perfect time for progressives trying to make their voices heard over the cacophony of Clinton's campaign. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, also considering a bid, released a statement Friday calling on Clinton to formally oppose Obama's push to get fast track authority from Congress and, eventually, support for his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. In a statement Friday, Clinton's campaign said the former secretary of state is watching the TPP very closely, but didn't say she opposes it.

The combined efforts of Sanders and O'Malley have not stood as most vocal attacks from the left on Clinton, however. Those have come from de Blasio, the man Dean is joining forces with. The New York City mayor kicked off the week by refusing to endorse Clinton's candidacy before heading to Iowa to pressure everyone running for president to support tax hikes on the rich. He ended the week with a tweet that appeared to play on Clinton's false claim that her grandmother was an immigrant.

"Proud of my grandmother and the many immigrants who've made our city thrive. Happy #ImmigrantHeritageWeek," de Blasio tweeted before linking to a picture of his grandmother's immigration paperwork.

“The difference is purely in implementation. If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference.”

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Rand Paul's brother says that when it comes to ideology, there's "no difference" between his brother, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate, and his father, the former congressman and three-time presidential candidate.

Ronnie Paul, the eldest son of the former congressman and sometimes-surrogate for his brother, was speaking with libertarian podcaster Israel Anderson. He said that both his brother and father held the same beliefs, there's just a difference in the implementation of how to get there.

"The difference is purely in implementation," Paul's eldest son said. "If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference."

As he runs for president, Rand Paul faces the task of both appealing to a broader set of mainstream Republican primary voters, while maintaining enough credibility with the vast Paul family libertarian network to get those people to the polls in early states.

Over the last year, he has sharpened his rhetoric on defense and terrorism. He signed Sen. Tom Cotton's letter about a potential Iran nuclear deal and recently proposed increasing defense spending, though the increase was offset by other cuts. Last summer, he supported intervention against ISIS, and said, in his presidential announcement speech, "the enemy is radical Islam, you can't get around it." When he was a surrogate for his dad in 2007 and 2008 the Kentucky senator often spoke of American interventionism as a cause of terrorism and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"Basically, if we're both going the same place you may have a favorite way to get there and I may have a little different way to get there. We both are going to the same place and I can't even say that your way maybe is better than my way, you know, we can debate all day long which way is the best way," said Ronnie Paul in the recent interview.

"So they've taken different paths. Do you take little pieces at a time, do you try for the whole thing at one time? You know, there's all different debate on how do you get to ultimately limited government, a pro-American defense foreign policy and Bill of rights, individual liberties for the people at home."

Ronnie Paul added in a philosophical discussion on ideology there "would be no difference" between his dad and brother and "the end goal without a doubt is the same."

"I mean, the goal is the same and I'd be willing to wager we could get everybody who listens to this and we can agree on the vision we're going to and we'd probably have, if we had 100 people in the room we could have 100 different paths. The path is a little different; the end goal without a doubt is the same."

"The difference is purely in implementation. If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference."

And the conversation is much more positive, too, after hitting a rough patch during news about foreign donations and personal email. Rubio, meanwhile, gets a big boost.

It was a big week for Hillary Clinton:

Between April 8 and April 14, there were more than 10 million unique interactions about Clinton, according to data provided to BuzzFeed News through a partnership with Facebook. The non-unique number — in other words, all interactions including multiple posts, shares, etc., by a person or page: 28.9 million.

Interaction numbers include pages, so news coverage on Facebook of her announcement would be included here.

Clinton typically dominates the conversation against other presidential candidates; this isn't always a good thing — the previous peak in this chart for Clinton was the week of her press conference following the revelation that she used a personal email account while at the State Department.

A few weeks ago, we posted a chart trying to roughly assess which candidate was talked about the most, the most positively on Facebook. Here's this week's:

The data for Clinton overwhelms the scale — you can barely tell the difference between the significantly different numbers on the lefthand side.

(The information about how positively a candidate is talked about on Facebook comes from a different data set, which only measures personal accounts.)

If you take out Clinton (and the candidates registering fewer than 100,000 interactions: Jindal, O'Malley), you can see Marco Rubio and the other two declared Republican candidates are doing better here than the undeclared:

Likewise, if you take Clinton out of that first chart, you can see that Rubio really saw a big boost this week:

And that Cruz's decision to declare first did bring in a lot of attention. Rubio's announcement came at the very tail end of this week's data, however, so next week's may be bigger for him. The sentiment for Rubio was also good: 59% positive in personal posts.

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Clinton is avoiding large settings on the trail — and in her fundraising. She will appear at “Hillstarter” events this month, likely in private homes, in New York in Washington.

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Hillary Clinton is trying to keep her presidential campaign small, low-key, and home-grown: There will be no rallies, no massive crowds, no ropelines.

But she'll still need to raise money at a staggering rate.

Clinton will attend the first fundraisers of the campaign later this month.

There will be one event on April 28 in New York City, and one on April 30 in Washington, D.C., according to an email that Dennis Cheng, the campaign's finance director, sent donors and fundraisers on Friday evening.

In the email, Cheng did not list the ticket price for each event.

A source familiar with the plans confirmed that Clinton would appear at the fundraisers — which will most likely take place at private homes. Democrats who have been advised of the campaign finance strategy have said that Clinton will avoid large, banquet-style fundraisers to start.

These events, the source said, are considered part of the lower-dollar "Hillstarter" program for Clinton's early fundraisers.

The finance team, led by Cheng, has offered designation as a Hillstarter to any supporter who finds 10 donors to give $2,700 — the most any one person can contribute toward the campaign's efforts in the primary. They may give another $2,700 for the general. But to start, Clinton will only collect primary dollars.

It's the approach Barack Obama took during the 2008 primary. Clinton, meanwhile, raised for the general as well, collecting money she was never able to use.

The Hillstarters program also heralds a more inviting fundraising style: Clinton's last campaign asked its "bundlers" to raise at higher levels. Fundraisers who collected more than $100,000 for Clinton were granted "Hillraiser" status.

The campaign will host weekly "Behind the Scenes" telephone briefings for Hillstarter members, according to the email from Cheng. Each call will introduce Clinton's fundraisers to a different member of the campaign staff. (Jennifer Palmieri and Kristina Schake, the communications director and deputy communications director, are scheduled to star on the first "Behind the Scenes" call.)

Clinton's finance strategy — the focus on primary dollars, along with a more inclusive start to fundraising efforts — is meant to mirror the campaign's wider approach. Last time she ran for president, Clinton was too inaccessible — and her operation was seen as overly confident. Now, the campaign has signaled at every turn that, as her aides often tell reporters, she is taking "nothing for granted."

Later on, Clinton will no doubt emphasize big-dollar fundraising.

She could have to raise as much as the $1.1 billion Obama needed during the last election — and without the advantages of incumbency.

The Republicans in the race are already raising at the highest levels.

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, has had to push back on rumors of a $100 million goal for the first quarter of the year. And Ted Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, is dubbing bundlers who raise a total of $500,000 as "founders," $250,000 as "statesmen," $100,000 as "generals," and $50,000 as "federalists."

Next week, as Clinton travels to New Hampshire for the second trip of her campaign, the finance team will host a series of "strategy sessions" for Hillstarters.

The first four meetings will take place in Washington, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, as first reported in the New York Times. Cheng will attend, along with the campaign manager, Robby Mook, and campaign chairman, John Podesta.

“You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots,” an Immigration and Naturalization Service official wrote in 1975. The letter behind The Washington Post’s story of Anthony Sullivan’s marriage to Richard Adams.

On Sunday, the Washington Post's Robert Barnes told the story of Richard Adams and Anthony Sullivan, an American and Australian who fell in love and married in 1975 — when a renegade clerk in Colorado married some same-sex couples.

Pat Rocco (courtesy of Lavi Soloway)

Adams and Sullivan presented their marriage to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, seeking to provide Sullivan with a way to stay in the country, and using their marriage as the justification, like straight couples can.

Courtesy of Lavi Soloway

The response, which came seven months later, was short, stark, and dismissive.

Courtesy of Lavi Soloway

Although the couple fought the INS decision, they were rejected by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — Adams v. Howerton stood as a barrier to same-sex couples seeking immigration rights for decades — and the Supreme Court declined to hear their case.

Monique Voegel (courtesy of Lavi Soloway)

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Michael B. Thomas / Getty

Last Saturday, a few days before the event, Brendan Comito showed the Secret Service the warehouse in Norwalk, Iowa, where he packages fresh-picked produce. Later in the week, he dragged out the empty boxes he keeps near the back door.

That was about all Comito had to do to prepare for Hillary Clinton’s visit.

There were no “H” signs to be hung from the pallet shelving. There was no candidate literature. No ropeline. Barely even an audience, just 12 people seated nearby. Clinton’s “roundtable” with Comito and other small business owners — the fifth of six such discussions she hosted in Iowa last week — was more like a think-tank policy panel: Hand-picked voters played experts, offering comment on healthcare and immigration, and Clinton played moderator, wielding more questions than proposals of her own.

The event had few of the trappings of a presidential campaign from the beginning to the very end — when, from the rabble of reporters, an unmistakeable voice rang out:

“Mrs. Clinton!” yelled NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

“Can you tell us… Mrs. Clinton!?”

“Can you tell us why you decided to endorse a Supreme Court ruling…”

“Ma’am!?”

“Can you tell us…?”

Mitchell’s cameraman gave it one last try.

“Madame Secretary,” he said. “Can we get some questions?”

Clinton ignored the reporters. But she did take questions.

Comito, her host at the warehouse, recalled in an interview this weekend that the candidate made it a point, even after the hour-long roundtable, to make herself available to the participants in private.

“Is there anything you want to ask?” she said to Comito on their way out.

The appearance at Capital City Fruit, just outside Des Moines, was typical in look, size, and feel of Clinton’s first week on the campaign trail. Each event followed a simple rubric: a wonky roundtable or discussion at a diner or coffee shop; a tiny audience or none at all; no giant rallies; and few questions from the press — with a premium placed squarely on people like Comito, not a national audience.

Clinton will continue this approach for the first month, aides say.

She’ll take the roundtables to New Hampshire this week, and is expected to hold more soon in South Carolina and Nevada. Until sometime in May, when Clinton plans to “deliver the speech to kick off her campaign,” the roundtable will be her main venue.

The launch is being cast by officials as everything her failed 2008 bid was not.

It’s low-key and voter-focused — solid, but not exciting. And according to Democrats close to Clinton and her team, that was more or less the point for phase one. Excitement can wait, they said in interviews last week, so long as she proves — as her campaign aides have repeated again and again — that this time, she is taking “nothing for granted.”

“There’s a rhythm. She’s starting off like Beethoven, with melodies and chords that people understand. But she’s got to end up like Beyoncé,” said Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist who worked on both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

“She doesn’t have to do it overnight. She has time. She has nothing but time.”

The strategy does feel somewhat at odds with the sense of anticipation that preceded this campaign.

After leaving the State Department in 2013, Clinton moved about private life in public as if nudged on, if not at times pushed forward, by the expectancy of her fans and supporters. At nearly every appearance, no matter the venue, Clinton received questions about 2016. And often, to the delight of those crowds, she played along, making coy reference to the big “decision” before her. All the while, a group called Ready for Hillary was gathering widespread support: In two years, they built a nationwide network of 4 million members.

Clinton’s supporters argue that the soft launch won’t break the momentum of those efforts. Her team has referred to this first leg of the race as a necessary “ramp-up period.” (Aides also characterize it in passing as a “listening tour” — modeled in part after the “listening sessions” Clinton held at the start of her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign in New York, when she ran as a sitting first lady in a state where she had never lived.)

Many attribute the idea for a small-scale “ramp-up” to Clinton directly. More than one friend used the phrase, “doing it her way,” to describe her approach to a second bid. (A Clinton aide also described the strategy as “how Hillary wanted to start.”)

“This was her idea,” said Minyon Moore, a former senior Clinton White House aide and longtime adviser to both Clintons. “After a while, she’s going to be running fast and furious. And while she can, she wants to be as close to the voters as possible.”

Ahead of the campaign, Moore said, Clinton hoped to prioritize settings that would generate a true give-and-take: “How does she put herself in a position where, whoever she comes in contact with, they will understand that she is really trying to hear first,” said Moore. “Her struggle was to make sure she could get in that environment.”

Clinton has also said she wants to “embed” ideas from the roundtables directly into her platform. She was struck in Norwalk, for instance, by a participant whose students loans were making it difficult to secure credit for his business, according to an aide.

Clinton does not have a member of her policy team traveling with her, but is said to be in regular touch with the team about her events on the campaign trail.

Voters shouldn’t expect a detailed policy agenda until summer or fall, aides have said. Senior officials are also weighing to what extent Clinton can, without a clear idea of the likely Republican nominee, begin to stake out positions that could hurt her in a general election, according to two people familiar with discussions in the Clinton camp.

The roundtables have given Clinton a chance to frame her candidacy around what she called the “four big fights” of her campaign: rebuilding the economy, strengthening families, fixing “dysfunctional” government, and protecting the country. Her campaign has said that she will focus on the first at her New Hampshire events this week.

In Iowa, to keep the size of the events small, none of Clinton’s six roundtable-style events were actually open to the “everyday” Americans and Iowans referred to frequently in campaign statements and memos. The participants, selected by the campaign, included business owners, students, and local activists and officials — several of whom did not support Clinton in 2008. At some locations, the atmosphere was more relaxed: In Marshalltown, at the Tremont Grille diner, Clinton led a discussion as customers ate breakfast in booths nearby. Real people (“RPs” by national campaign parlance) were free to approach.

The roundtables still drew criticism as inaccessible. At most events, the pool of reporters allowed in were escorted out after the first 10 minutes or so. And unlike most of the Republicans who attended a forum in New Hampshire this weekend, Clinton did not hold a Q&A. (She took about two questions at her first event in Monticello.)

Clinton’s aides didn’t seem to need, or particularly want, the massive national media attention. The roundtables have provided the campaign with their own content.

Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who worked in the Clinton White House, said the small settings are better suited for repackaging on digital media than traditional campaign events. “People aren’t sitting in their living rooms watching the big rallies in a package on the nightly news,” said Lehane. “That’s not how people engage anymore.”

An official campaign photographer, Barbara Kinney, has already uploaded dozens of behind-the-scenes photos to a Flickr page, following Obama’s example. His campaign in 2012 often drew material from White House photographer Peter Souza. Clinton’s ad man, Jim Margolis, could be seen at most of the events last week, filming just a few paces away. Some of the video has already been edited and posted on Clinton’s Facebook page.

And most important: Inside local Democratic circles, the roundtables hit the campaign’s intended mark — animating Iowa’s network of party activists in a personal way.

One longtime activist in Des Moines, Peggy Huppert, didn’t get the chance to see Clinton herself. But a lot of her friends did. One was Linda Nelson, who participated in a discussion in Council Bluffs; another was Sara Sedlacek, who attended a coffee shop roundtable in Le Claire; yet another was Comito, the produce distributor in Norwalk; and several more were state legislators — a large group of whom met Clinton on Wednesday at the capitol in Des Moines.

Every one of them, said Huppert, posted pictures and feedback on Facebook.

Huppert noticed that Comito, for instance, wrote in a lengthy thread just how surprised he’d been when, before his roundtable, a campaign aide told him and the other participants that they should feel free to ask Clinton whatever they liked.

“To be at these ‘tell me what you think’ discussions — they were just thrilled,” said Huppert, summarizing what she’s seen online. “She has cachet. It’s not just meeting with anybody. It’s Hillary. It’s a big deal for a Democratic activist to sit down at a coffee shop and meet her. This is what the campaign wanted — this kind of buzz.”

“I can’t get into her mind,” Comito said. “I don’t know if she’s genuine or not. But I know she heard us. She didn’t talk very much at the roundtable. She listened.”

“You can’t pick who you want to talk to. This is an unsustainable model, and to say it’s a listening tour is sort of a joke.”

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina mocked Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Iowa as "about as, you know, scripted as if it came out of North Korea." Graham was speaking with Boston Herald Radio Friday when he made the comments.

Likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton embarked on a two-day "listening tour" across Iowa after announcing her presidential bid last week. When one of Graham's interviewers suggested that the "everyday voters" that Clinton encountered "are pretty much planted," Graham jumped at the opportunity to draw an unflattering comparison.

"Well, they call that North Korea," responded Graham. "You know, Kim Jong-Un, he meets people — 'everybody likes me,' he says. I mean, it really is ridiculous."

"I don't know how long you can keep this up," Graham continued. "[Y]ou're gonna have to, basically, get out in front of the voters. You can't pick who you want to talk to. This is an unsustainable model, and to say it's a listening tour is sort of a joke."

Graham, who is visiting early primary states as he considers a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, was in New Hampshire for the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit.

Graham was also asked about the possibility that the large number of candidates seeking or likely to seek the Republican nomination -- 21, by some estimates -- would result in conservatives "splintering their votes," allowing a "somebody like a Jeb Bush" to get the nomination.

"Well, I think Jeb Bush is conservative," Graham replied. "I think everybody in the primary is far more conservative than Hillary Clinton."

"There'll be degrees of what you would call conservative," Graham continued, before taking a thinly-veiled shot at Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the fellow Republican he criticizes most frequently: "Libertarian is libertarian, not conservative. So there're gonna be different lanes in the primary, but Jeb Bush is plenty conservative. He was a good governor, and I think is a conservative guy."

Here's the audio:

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“We will be subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks, and I’m ready for that,” Clinton told reporters on Monday of an upcoming book that looks at money and her family’s foundation. She did not address the allegations specifically.

Andrew Burton / Getty

KEENE, New Hampshire — Before Hillary Clinton left the furniture warehouse where she kicked off the second week of her presidential campaign, she signaled to the line of reporters and television cameras that there was something she wanted to address.

"I'll be right there, guys," she told the press.

Clinton took the opportunity to comment, for the first time, on the new book by author Peter Schweizer, titled Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.

The 186-page book, which HarperCollins will publish on May 5, alleges that foreign entities gave to the Clinton Foundation, or paid Bill Clinton for speeches — and in turn received "favors" from the State Department during her tenure.

Here in Keene, Clinton dismissed the book wholesale as part of the "distractions" that come with running for president. But she did not address the allegations.

"We will be subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks, and I'm ready for that," Clinton told reporters. "I know that that comes with the territory."

Clinton also volunteered that the Republicans in the race, many of whom were in New Hampshire over the weekend for a party forum, frequently invoke her name.

"It is, I think, worth noting that the Republicans seem to be talking only about me," she said. "I don't know what they'd talk about if I wasn't in the race. But I am in the race, and hopefully, we'll get on to the issues. And I look forward to that."

Clinton took about three questions at her event — a roundtable discussion with employees of the family-owned Whitney Brothers, established here in 1904.

She was also asked about the scandal that preceded her campaign: her use of a personal email account to conduct government business at the State Department.

"Those issues are in my view distractions from what this campaign should be about, and what I'm gonna make this campaign about," said Clinton. "I'll let other people decide what they want to talk about.

"I'm gonna talk about what's happening in the lives of the people of New Hampshire and across America."

At least three news outlets — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News — have "exclusive agreements" with Schweizer to pursue stories based on the book's reporting, according to a story published Sunday by the Times.

But it's not clear how much Clinton Cash will derail the candidate from her message, particularly in the roundtable settings with which she is opening her campaign.

Several attendees here on Monday afternoon either hadn't heard of Schweizer's book — or shrugged it off as irrelevant to voters. One was state Sen. Molly Kelly, a Democrat from Keene who supported Clinton's campaign in 2008.

"I think people are smarter than that," Kelly said after the roundtable. "The issues that voters are interested in are family, life, safety, opportunity."

The Florida senator has taught at FIU since 2011.

Wilfredo Lee / AP

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio got pretty good reviews as a professor at Florida International University. Rubio's syllabus and professor ratings, obtained via an open records request provide insight into the course he has taught since becoming a professor at the school.

The course has been the subject of numerous profiles, including one in the Washington Post and one in Politico.

Rubio's recent courses focused on America in the post-Cold War world and the history of America's political parties with a focus on demographics along with a focus on how Florida is a major player in presidential elections.

Here's the syllabi for the courses he taught:

Here are his reviews. They were pretty good. Most people expected to get good grades:

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Hillary Clinton calls for “concentrated policy” on local, state, and national levels. “This is not something we can just brush under the rug and wish it would go away.”

Don Emmert / Getty Images

KEENE, New Hampshire — In the last week, Hillary Clinton has outlined her presidential campaign the same way at just about every event. She lists her "four big fights": rebuilding the economy, strengthening families, stripping dysfunction from government, and protecting the country from security threats.

From that framework, one issue not frequently discussed in presidential politics keeps coming to Clinton's attention: mental health and substance abuse.

She heard about it last week in Iowa in Council Bluffs, and in Davenport, she said. And on Monday, at a "roundtable" here in New Hampshire, Clinton discussed the issue a third time, promising to make it "a big part of [her] campaign."

"I think a lot of people are thinking, Well, that's somebody else's problem. That's not my problem. And indeed, it is all of our problem," Clinton said. "This is not something we can just brush under the rug and wish it would go away."

At the event — a panel-like discussion at Whitney Brothers, a small, family-owned business in Keene — several of the roundtable participants told Clinton they viewed mental health problems, including substance abuse, as a leading concern.

Pam Livengood, an assembler at Whitney Brothers, raised the issue. There is a "growing drug problem" in the area, said Livengood, citing a personal example — a struggling family member. "There are very limited resources here. And we'd like to see something in that respect. Do you have any further ideas?"

"Well, I do actually," Clinton said. "I am really concerned, because, Pam, what you just told me, I'm hearing from a lot of different people."

Clinton, who announced her campaign for president just over a week ago, said substance problems persist as an "increasing problem" but have become less visible. Treatment programs, Clinton added, have also seen "steady cutbacks."

"This is a quiet epidemic," said Clinton.

Later Monday, at a house party in Claremont, Clinton told a crowd of about 50 people how much Livengood's comment had resonated. "If I were just to read briefing books or I were just to engage in the political back-and-forth," she said, "would I have heard what a big problem mental health is in New Hampshire?"

The roundtables — the campaign's main event format during a period aides have called the "ramp-up" phase — may inform policies Clinton introduces later this year. She has said she hopes to "embed" voters' ideas directly into her agenda.

In Iowa, voters expressed unease in particular about shuttered in-patient facilities. "I literally heard from one end of the state, to Davenport to Council Bluffs, about this problem," she said. "There was nowhere for people to be sent."

The roundtable in Keene, attended by about a dozen local Democrats, was meant to concentrate on the first of Clinton's four "fights": the economy.

But after Livengood, a Keene resident, brought up mental health, Clinton spent a considerable chunk of time discussing the issue with several other panelists.

She praised the measure in the Affordable Care Act that requires most health insurance plans to cover mental health and substance services. But she said lawmakers have to "do more," and called for a "concerted policy" at the "national, state, local" levels, and across the public and private sectors.

Clinton also framed the problem as a particularly troubling one for local communities. New Hampshire, as well as other northeastern states, has notably faced an increase in heroin abuse in recent years.

State Sen. Molly Kelly, who supported Clinton in 2008 and was in the audience on Monday, said the issue was salient on a "local, state, and national" level.

And in Keene, said Kelly, "it's an issue that people really bring up."

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Video Courtesy of CSPAN

“A traffic stop prolonged beyond” the time needed to deal with an alleged traffic violation is “unlawful,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes.

Molly Riley / AP

WASHINGTON — Police officers may not extend a completed traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff of the car without reasonable suspicion, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for a six-justice majority of the court, held that "a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures."

Dennys Rodriguez had been stopped for veering onto the shoulder of the highway in March 2012. After being pulled over, questioned, had a records check completed, and issued a warning ticket, the officer asked for permission to walk his dog around Rodriguez's car. When he said no, the officer instructed Rodriguez to turn off his car and exit the vehicle. After a second officer arrived, the dog sniff was made and drugs were found.

Rodriguez argued that the drugs should not be allowed to be admitted as evidence in court because the drugs were only found after the traffic stop had been prolonged without reasonable suspicion to conduct the dog sniff.

"A traffic stop prolonged beyond" the time needed to deal with an alleged traffic violation is "unlawful," Ginsburg concluded — noting that the question is not even whether the dog sniff is conducted after a ticket is issued, but whether "conducting the sniff prolongs—i.e., adds time to—the stop."

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, which Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito joined, arguing that the Rodriguez stop was "reasonably executed" Thomas, writing only for himself and Alito, also added that, regardless, the officer "had reasonable suspicion to continue to hold him for investigative purposes."

To that final point, Ginsburg noted that the magistrate judge in the case had found that there was no "individualized suspicion" that would support detaining Rodriguez for the dog sniff, a position the district court adopted and the court of appeals did not review.

“Now, who could fit that bill— Why, wouldn’t it be Hillary?” In 1968, some Wellesley freshmen literally wrote an entire song to the tune of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady about Hillary Clinton.

Chris Ocken / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hillary Rodham ran for class president at Wellesley College in 1968.

During her run, the Davis Hall freshmen wrote a letter to the school's newspaper the Wellesley News supporting her candidacy, complete with lyrics to a song (sung to the tune of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from My Fair Lady.

Clinton had served as the hall's "Vil Junior," one of a group of students who helped members of the freshman class become oriented to the college. The letter indicates the song was sung to her on birthday and was signed by 25 freshmen.

Here's the tune:

w.soundcloud.com

And here are the lyrics:

Wellesley College

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“…she’ll just say they’re trying to pick on me because I’m a woman or because they’re conservatives and they hate me and my husband.”

w.soundcloud.com

Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia says Hillary Clinton will play the gender card to defend herself from those critical of her record in the Obama administration, particularly the events that surround the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

"I think she's hoping that she won't have to defend them. That she'll just say they're trying to pick on me because I'm a woman or because they're conservatives and they hate me and my husband," Griffith told Virginia radio host John Fredericks on Monday.

Griffith said he thinks the former secretary of state will argue the attack doesn't matter at this point.

"I don't think she's gonna plan on defending. I think that was her strategy when she said in regard to Benghazi, 'what difference does it make anyway.' And I think she's hoping the American people do not think that it makes any difference that she was a part of this administration and that she was a major player in one of the great disasters of the last 20 or 30 years when we lost an ambassador when we were under attack."

"When our troops were apparently told something along the lines of 'don't help.' It may not have been a full stand down but it was definitely a 'don't go help these folks.' All of that happened under her watch and she thinks it doesn't make any difference."

A two year investigation by the Republican-controlled Intelligence Committee found no "stand down" order was given, as has been repeatedly alleged in the incident. However, several American contractors hired to defend the CIA base in Benghazi said in their book they were told not to respond to respond to attack on the consulate by the CIA officer in charge of the base.

"It makes a difference in the world. It told the world that we were not willing to defend ourselves and we wouldn't in fact allow them to go forward to other parts of the world and do things that were against American interests," added Griffith. "It makes a big difference and she's hoping that nobody will care and unfortunately she might be right. It's up those of us listening and those of us in Congress to try make she that we hold her accountable."

“Will you stand with me to hold the VA accountable to its vast mismanagement and disservice to our veterans,” reads Rep. Mike Coffman’s page, before prompting you to donate to his campaign.

Bill Ross / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rep. Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican, appears to be fundraising off of the recent scandals that have plagued Veterans Affairs hospitals around the country. A spokesman for Coffman vehemently denied it was a fundraising page, saying it was en effort to build the Congressman's email list in support of reforming the Veterans Affairs administration.

The VA, which has dealt with issues of poor care and mismanagement for decades, was thrust into the spotlight last year when reports surfaced that at least 40 veterans had died waiting for their appointments with the Phoenix Veterans Affairs health care system. Reports of similar abuses at other VA hospitals emerged soon after.

A search of Coffman's name brings up a site which leads to a page about the scandal where you can enter your email and donate.

A spokesman for Coffman sent a lengthy statement after the story was put online saying it was "petition page" and "not a fundraising page." The spokesman said all of Coffman's "subdomains" forwarded to the page to fundraise.

Mike Coffman, a Marine Corps combat veteran and the only Member of Congress to serve in both Iraq wars, has been praised in near-universal, bipartisan fashion for his record of leadership on veteran's issues. Of course the left wing flacks over on Maryland Ave. who are pitching this story don't want Mike to talk about his leadership on the campaign trail. The brass over at the VA is kind of hoping Mike shuts up about it too. But let me break the bad news to both - Mike Coffman is going to keep pounding away on the VA's corruption, whether he is at work in Washington, or whether he is campaigning in Colorado, whether he is driving on Floyd Hill, or running on his tread mill. And the VA page is a petition page, not a fundraising page. Sleazy attacks don't work on Mike Coffman, people. They just don't.

"The outrageous mismanagement of the Colorado VA Hospital in Aurora is just one example of how the VA is failing our veterans and placing their basic needs at risk," reads the page on Coffman's site linked from the Google ad. "For more than a decade, Colorado's veterans have been promised the state-of-the-art healthcare the hospital will provide – and yet it still sits unfinished and massively over-budget."

The National Republican Congressional Committee slammed Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema for fundraising off of the VA scandal in the last election.

Coffman's been one of the loudest critics of Veterans Affairs in Congress and his work to fix the problems with the agency earned him praise from the Denver Post last year. There is speculation that Coffman might run for Senate in 2016, although he has said he is focused on his House seat.

The Aurora, Colorado hospital mentioned by Coffman is currently being built and has been plagued by cost overruns.

Googling Coffman's name brings up the ads:

The website:

Via coffmanforcongress.com

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“He is seriously considering running for president and taking the necessary steps to field a competitive campaign, and it’s not unusual for presidential candidates to occasionally miss Senate business,” a Rubio spokeswoman told BuzzFeed News.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Marco Rubio missed a closed Intelligence Committee briefing Tuesday while in Texas for a fundraising swing for his presidential campaign. The closed meeting was early in the afternoon.

According to the Texas Tribune, Rubio was in Houston and Dallas on Monday and Tuesday for a fundraising trip. The Tuesday fundraiser is at the home of Annandale Capital founder George Seay, and, according to Reuters, is taking place "with the moneyed Dallas elite at his 7,000-square-foot, seven-bath home."

Rubio has cited his "extensive work" with the Intelligence Committee and Foreign Relations Committee as experience that sets him apart from the current president, who was also a one-term senator when he ran for president.

"Since he's been in the Senate, Senator Rubio has received regular classified briefings, attends most Intel committee hearings, and reads intelligence reports almost on a daily basis, and if he misses a hearing, he is always briefed on the material covered," Rubio spokeswoman told BuzzFeed News.

"He is seriously considering running for president and taking the necessary steps to field a competitive campaign, and it's not unusual for presidential candidates to occasionally miss Senate business."

Vocativ reported earlier this year that Rubio's voting record was the worst in the Senate.

In January, while on a big fundraising swing through California, Rubio missed a top secret intelligence briefing on ISIS from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and two closed Intelligence Committee briefings from that period, according to records.

Rubio was spending a week in California on what was deemed an "aggressive" fundraising trip by the press. On the day of one hearing, Rubio appeared at a $1,000 per-person admission Beverly Hills fundraiser.

Here’s what he did on those days.

Andrew Harnik / AP

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has skipped most Foreign Relations Committee hearings since 2014, a BuzzFeed News review has found.

Looking at publicly available hearing transcripts and videos, Paul's attendance at the full committee and subcommittees he is on was only verifiable at 15 of 94 hearings since 2014. Out of the 94 hearings since 2014, 12 of them were closed, and Paul's attendance could not be verified either way.

Previously, BuzzFeed News found Paul had only attended five out of 73 Homeland Security hearings since 2014.

The senator, who launched his presidential campaign several weeks ago in his home state, calls national security and foreign policy "one of the primary functions of the Federal Government" on his issues page.

A Paul aide said "Senator Paul is one of the most active members of the U.S. Senate. In that same timeframe, he has made more than 98 percent of the votes in the Senate and authored more than 50 bills and amendments, all the while maintaining a full schedule of meetings with Kentuckians in his office."

"When schedules conflict, he has chosen to spend his time hearing the thoughts of Kentuckians, and will subsequently, receive a full report of pertinent information that was missed from staff in attendance at the meeting."

Politico recently reported one of Paul's presidential rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has skipped most Armed Services hearings since coming to Washington in 2012 and his committee attendance at other hearings was sub-par.

In the 2014 midterms elections, committee attendance became an in issue in the North Carolina Senate race when current Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina blasted then-Sen. Kay Hagan for missing "half the Armed Services Committee hearings" in 2014. Sen. John McCain blasted Hagan as well for missing a hearing on ISIS for a fundraiser in New York.

Here's a spreadsheet of a review of his attendance:

In January of 2014, Paul skipped a Foreign Relations hearing on the "crisis in the Ukraine." Earlier in the day, Paul appeared on America's Newsroom and talked about the NSA.

Via youtube.com

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“I’m convinced it’s not going to be the same it was eight years ago. Will I have the same amount that somebody like Bush would have? Probably not.”

Jim Young / Reuters

Former Arkansas governor and medically-questionable diabetes cure pitchman Mike Huckabee says Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is fundraising off the "family rolodex." Huckabee, who is expected to launch a presidential campaign in 12 days in Arkansas.

"I'm not going to pretend I have the money of a Jeb Bush or a Hillary Clinton but you know what? I don't have to have that much money," Huckabee said on Concord News Radio, a New Hampshire radio program. "For one thing, we will use our money as we had before, very frugally, very carefully and thoughtfully, we'll run the money of the campaign like people wish the federal government will run their money when they are taxed, with a real sense of good stewardship."

Huckabee added unlike Bush he doesn't have the "family rolodex."

"But we'll be competitive with money," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind, having met with donors across the country, having the process of fundraising under way. I'm convinced it's not going to be the same it was eight years ago. Will I have the same amount that somebody like Bush would have? Probably not. I do not have the family rolodex. But I also feel like I bring some ideas that are worth some value as well to the campaign."

Huckabee is expected to competed with Republicans such an Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for the same base of social conservative voters, particularly in Iowa whose caucus he won in 2008.

Here's the audio:

w.soundcloud.com

Even under Republican control, a majority of the Senate has repeatedly voted in favor of pro-LGBT measures this year. The beginning of a new normal?

Dennis Cook / AP

WASHINGTON — For the third time this year, a majority of the Republican-led Senate voted for a pro-LGBT measure — with 56 senators, including 10 Republicans, voting for an amendment that including LGBT protections for runaway youth.

Wednesday's vote to amend the Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act into the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 failed, however, as it would have required 60 votes to pass. The amendment included a nondiscrimination clause that would have prohibited runaway and homeless relief programs created by the act from discriminating against LGBT children based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Dan Sullivan, and Pat Toomey joined all the Democrats in voting for the measure, which was brought to a vote by Sen. Pat Leahy.

Among the declared presidential candidates, Paul was the only one to vote for the measure. Sen. Marco Rubio opposed the amendment, and Sen. Ted Cruz did not vote on the amendment or the underlying bill, which passed 99-0.

This was not the first such vote, suggesting that, while there is still not yet a filibuster-proof majority supporting LGBT rights in the Senate, there is a simple majority who appears willing to back a broad range of LGBT rights measures. In many cases, however, the Republican leadership's opposition to LGBT rights measures would keep them from coming to the floor. On amendment votes, however, such measures often are able to come to a vote in the Senate.

Earlier this year, for example, 11 Republicans voted for a Democratic-led measure to guarantee equal Social Security and veterans benefits to married same-sex couples.

Among those who voted for Wednesday's amendment, Collins, Kirk, Murkowski, and Portman — who have announced their personal support for marriage equality — also voted for the marital benefits measure as well, as did Ayotte, Capito, and Heller.

Last week, the vote on the marital benefits measure was reaffirmed in a voice vote on a motion to instruct budget conferees on the measure.

The delicate dance between the candidate and the president has been, so far, surprisingly smooth. But Clinton will have to hang on through Obama’s YOLO period.

Pool / Getty Images

Hillary Clinton has signaled that she will run a campaign rooted in embracing President Barack Obama, and muting any differences in policy and style between them because she needs his unstinting support to rally Democrats behind her.

But what about Obama? Will he hug her back?

Current and former top Obama's advisers say that there's no question he will do what he can to elect a Democrat, knowing that any Democratic nominee will be far more likely to lock in his core accomplishments, from the health care law to Iran, than any Republican. But they say he's also much less preoccupied with the campaign, and with Clinton's tactics, than might be convenient for the candidate. The relationship, in other words, is good — but Clinton may be in for a bumpy 2015.

"His goal is to have the next president be a Democrat," former Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in an email BuzzFeed News. "That is important personally and politically and he believes it is best for the country. This is much less complicated than I think people think it is."

Obama's 2015, too, has been relatively uncomplicated. He is focused intensely on large-scale policy commitments, and ignoring criticism both from Republicans and the Democratic left. Those key priorities include detente with Iran, a climate-change agreement with China, and a broad new Pacific trade deal. There is an obvious tension between the priorities of a liberated president and of a careful candidate, and for now, Clinton's priorities have no visible bearing on Obama's actions.

"For a while his strategy is going to continue to be the I-have-no-fucks-to-give, I-will-do-whatever-I-want-to-complete-my-legacy," said a former senior Obama aide. "And then you have to start coordinating."

The two allies are smoothing over differences when they can, however. On "Morning Joe" Wednesday, for instance, White House Communications Director Jennifer Psaki smoothly avoided a direct question on whether she, and Obama, agreed with Clinton's comment that the economy had "stalled out."

And Clinton has hired a staff whose relationships with the White House are extremely close. Her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, is Psaki's immediate predecessor. Another spokesman, Brian Fallon, is married to Obama's legislative director, Katie Beirne Fallon. Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign's digital director, is now running Clinton's digital operation. And most important is John Podesta, a veteran of both the Obama and Clinton White Houses, who is her campaign chair. Stylistically, the influence was already visible in the roll-out of the campaign — dubbed Hillary for America, in an echo of Obama's.

This day-to-day harmony has been a bit of a disappointment to the press covering them, and a shock even to those involved.

"The tales about battles between White Houses and candidates of their party to succeed them are legendary in politics," a Clinton aide told BuzzFeed News. "If the start of this campaign is any indication, the legends may die here."

Obama is expected, the New York Times reported, to aide Clinton in fundraising and targeted campaign appeals in parts of swing states with large black populations and other places, as Clinton follows a roadmap similar to that of George H.W. Bush campaigning after Ronald Reagan. But that coordination — particularly as it relates to Obama's legacy — poses some unknown questions.

When the moment comes, will Obama be satisfied to forsake the large rallies for targeted, digital appeals? The president was reportedly resigned to his more diminished role in 2014, but not especially pleased by it. And despite his talent for it, Obama notoriously dislikes the mechanics of fundraising — one of the top priorities for a Clinton campaign hoping to match the $1.1 billion he raised in 2012. Will he call donors on her behalf and schmooze at dinners?

And if Clinton breaks sharply, or even softly, with the administration on one of the prized components of his legacy — the prospective Iran nuclear deal, the trade deal, almost any aspect of the Affordable Care Act — how will Obama express his frustration?

The question is in the background now, and will grow steadily more urgent over the next 19 months. Clinton will rely on Obama's support broadly to rally Democrats — but most intensely in urging black Democrats to vote for her in the numbers that they turned out for the first black president.

Obama has sent no public signal on where he expects a Democratic nominee to stand on questions that have galvanized black Americans, and she hasn't spent a great deal of her career directly engaged in, in particular, the issues of police shootings that have been a central national story over the past year. She has signaled her support, however, for protesters, telling an audience last December that "black lives matter."

And some black Democrats have begun to push her to rely on more than an October presidential visit to Cleveland for the support of a vital share of the Democratic base.

"They have to earn it. Candidates understand this," said Donna Brazile, a veteran of the Clinton White House and Democratic commentator. "The old paradigm of waiting until the end to address these issues will also not work. Some issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later is the chronic rate of unemployment. What will it take to bring it down to single digits? How can we rebuild our nation's infrastructure and can this become a bridge to strengthening communities of color?"

"To get young professionals of color donating at levels similar to what happened to the Obama campaign I think it will be important for her to talk about realistic plans to drive employment in urban areas, realistic plans to educate kids being left behind and meaningful criminal justice reform proposals," said Brian Benjamin, who raised more than $250,000 for Obama.

And potentially in the last weeks of a campaign, Obama's leverage will be powerful until Nov. 9, 2016.

"I don't think he wants or expects her to march in lockstep," longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod said. "They'll not agree on everything. But they obviously share values, particularly around the need to build an economy that honors work and gives people a fair chance to get ahead."

Darren McCollester / Getty

Ever since a right-wing backlash blew up the bipartisan immigration bill that Sen. Marco Rubio helped champion in 2013, the ambitious Republican has struggled to find his political footing on the issue. For two years, he has hemmed and hawed; ducked and dodged; retracted, retreated from, and repeatedly revised his immigration rhetoric in a ploy to appease conservative activists without fully forsaking his position. These days, when the subject comes up in town hall meetings or TV interviews, the silver-tongued senator — now officially running for the GOP presidential nomination — is often reduced to reciting a few stilted talking points, and then angling to change the subject.

But there is one setting where Rubio frequently and unabashedly touts his immigration record to great effect: closed-door meetings with the GOP's elite, high-dollar donors.

According to a half-dozen Republican fundraisers and contributors who have been courted by the Rubio camp, the candidate's aggressive advocacy for the Senate's 2013 immigration bill has proved to be a substantial draw within the GOP money crowd — and his campaign has shown little hesitation about cashing in. Even as Rubio labors to publicly distance himself from the legislation so loathed by conservative primary voters, he and his aides have privately highlighted this line in his resume when soliciting support from the deep-pocketed donors in the party's more moderate business wing.

Norman Braman, the 82-year-old auto tycoon who has reportedly pledged to spend as much as $10 million to get Rubio elected, told BuzzFeed News that he and the candidate have bonded over immigration. Not only do they agree on the policy specifics, but at a deeper level the issue is a personal one for both of them.

"He's a first-generation immigrant, and I'm a first-generation immigrant. I can relate to that," said Braman, whose Jewish parents emigrated from Europe. "Some type of immigration reform has to come about because it's too great a problem. And we agree on that. He believes we have to secure the borders first, and I believe we have to secure the borders first."

The Miami billionaire added that he's known Rubio for a long time and always liked him, but that the senator's dedication to taking on the messy immigration battle in Congress — particularly while so many other Republicans shied away from the fight — demonstrated his White House worthiness. "Isn't that what leadership is all about? … Marco is not the type of person in all the years that I have known him who will put his finger up in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing."

Similarly, George Seay, a wealthy investor who held a fundraiser for Rubio Tuesday night at his home in downtown Dallas, said the candidate's controversial work on immigration reform is a plus in his book.

"I mean, honestly, we've got some severe immigration issues that need to be addressed in this country," he said. "It's been used for political gain by people who don't want to solve the problems. I find that incredibly irritating. On that issue, and many other issues, I think Sen. Rubio has shown a level of courage that most politicians lack."

Seay stressed that he didn't speak for the candidate or those who attended his fundraiser, but he said Rubio's personal story and agenda — particularly his work on fixing the U.S. immigration system — is especially compelling in a state like Texas, with its shared Mexican border and sprawling population of Latino immigrants. "He's a living embodiment of their dreams," Seay said. "They come here because they want a safe life for their children and grandchildren, they want economic opportunity, they want to be able to work hard."

It isn't only committed Rubio donors who are swooning after hearing the candidate's immigration spiel. During a press call in February with other pro-immigration figures in GOP fundraising, California-based fast food CEO Andrew Puzder said that regardless of whatever public murkiness might surround the senator's position, Rubio had personally assured him he was still dedicated to the cause.

"I actually have spoken with Sen. Rubio on the issue and he has not backed away from wanting immigration reform at all," Puzder said. "He does think it's very difficult to do it unless you address illegal immigration first so there may be a step process to doing this. But he's still a very strong advocate for getting immigration reform that's effective and helps people, and he's one of the leaders in our party on this issue."

A spokesman for the Rubio campaign declined a request for comment. But granted anonymity, one adviser answered questions about these private conversations by saying, "Marco gives the same speech with donors that he does in public. He doesn't focus on immigration, but it almost always comes up in the Q&A in both public and private settings."

None of the donors who spoke to BuzzFeed News suggested immigration was the central or solitary selling point in Rubio's fundraising efforts. The senator's well-informed foreign policy tough talk holds special appeal to neoconservative hawks, while others are enthused by his reform-minded policy proposals — like a re-imagination of the high school education system that emphasizes vocational training and professional apprenticeships for students not interested in college.

But every source interviewed said that no matter how radioactive Rubio's immigration record might be to the right, it has done nothing but help him in this early stage of the primaries, when filling the campaign war chest is the chief concern. Two Republican fundraisers who have met with Rubio — requesting anonymity to candidly assess his efforts — even expressed surprise at how enthusiastic the candidate has seemed in private to promote his work on the Senate's immigration bill, given his strong reluctance to do so in public.

Rubio's hesitations are not politically unfounded. In early 2013, the young, Spanish-speaking conservative joined a bipartisan group of senators tasked with producing a sweeping legislative overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. A rising star in the GOP who was already surrounded by almost manic presidential speculation, Rubio promptly became the conservative face of the effort. The bill they eventually presented would have added tens of thousands of new border patrol agents, instituted tougher enforcement measures, revamped the U.S. visa system, and provided a pathway to citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country. It passed the Senate but by the time it reached the Republican-controlled House, talk radio crusaders and conservative activists were ferociously waging war on the legislation — as well as Rubio, the Tea Party turncoat who had betrayed the movement with his support for so-called "amnesty."

Rubio's favorability ratings collapsed among national Republicans, and he was unceremoniously defenestrated from the top tier of the 2016 field. He was soon furiously backpedaling on his support for the doomed bill, and before the year was out he was actively calling for the House to kill it. That perceived flip-flop, of course, confirmed the long-held suspicions of left-leaning immigration activists who believed his brief dalliance with their mission was solely about politics. The animosity between the two camps hasn’t dampened: Earlier this month, DREAMer activists marched on the Miami site where Rubio was officially announcing his presidential campaign, loudly chanting, "Undocumented! Unafraid!"

Rubio, meanwhile, has insisted that he did not reverse his position at all. His rhetorical defense has undergone several small evolutions over the past two years, but his fundamental argument was on display last week when CBS News journalist Bob Schieffer interviewed him on Face the Nation. The candidate said he remains committed to the broad tenets of the original immigration bill, but the 2013 fiasco convinced him that the legislation should be passed in small, bite-size chunks.

"If you became president, would you sign the bill that you put together into law?" Schieffer asked him.

Rubio's body stiffened. "Well, that's a hypothetical that will never happen," he said, leaning rigidly forward in his chair like a nervous pupil.

He went on to explain that as president he would first ask Congress to pass a "very specific law" that cracks down on illegal border-crossers and visa-overstays; then he'd want a bill making the legal immigration system "less family-based, more merit-based.” Finally, once those were in place, he would request legislation to deal with the country's 12 million undocumented immigrants. As he talked through these bullet points, he framed them — as he often does — as a more pragmatic, realistic alternative to the large, unwieldy legislative monstrosity of 2013.

But, of course, Republicans may not retain their majority in the Senate, and it seems incredibly unlikely Democrats would help pass a standalone border security bill without any concessions. And on the 2016 front, it's an open question whether Latino voters will flock toward a presidential candidate peddling such a plan.

In reality, said one Republican fundraiser, Rubio isn't currently focused on effective legislating or courting independent Latino voters. He is simply trying to find a message that can navigate between the monied elites at his fundraisers and the conservative voters in Iowa.

His dilemma is emblematic of just how deeply the immigration issue has divided the Republican Party's conservative base from its elite donor class. Among the wealthy establishment figures who write six- and seven-figure checks to political action committees, there is overwhelming support for softer immigration laws. The reasons for the split range from culture to ideology to economic interests. Whereas the well-heeled entrepreneurs, investors, and Fortune 500 executives who populate the GOP's business wing often stand to profit from access to legal, low-income labor, middle-class conservatives are more likely to fear negative effects from immigration. In a poll released last summer, Pew found that 73% of people identified as "steadfast conservatives" saw immigrants as a "burden," while just 21% of higher-income voters identified as "business conservatives" agreed.

But among those fundraising rainmakers most deeply invested in getting a Republican president elected, the predominant arguments for more progressive immigration policies often revolve around electoral math.

"Winning a Republican presidential campaign is very, very hard,” said Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney’s 2012 finance director, during the same pro-immigration press call in February. “And I feel like one of the things we do to ourselves as Republicans is at times we make it harder than it needs to be."

Zwick would know: In 2012, Romney tacked hard to the right on immigration in order to win the primaries, only to pay the price on Election Day when he attracted just 27% of the national Latino vote. Even if Tea Partiers aren't willing to get on board, Zwick said the GOP money men have learned their lesson: "I really believe that the donor community… now finally recognizes, and I see them only wanting to get behind a candidate that is willing to take leadership on his issue."

Though Rubio is still languishing in single digits nationally, there are signs that he’s earning a fresh look from many of the conservatives who abandoned him in 2013. He has one of the second-highest favorability rating in the likely 2016 field, and only 11% of Republican voters believe he is "not conservative enough."

Rubio's deft ability to lure back conservative voters without actually giving up his immigration position has impressed many in the Romney donor network, according to one former fundraiser for the nominee.

"I think Rubio's kind of getting the advantage of [donors] assuming he's somewhat moderate on the issue," the fundraiser said. "There's a lot of donors and contributors who liked his initial positions... But he's walked it back in a way that seems to satisfy the conservative base."

The fundraiser hastened to add that he doesn't believe Rubio is necessarily making contradictory statements about immigration to different audiences — the candidate is too "disciplined" to take such a risk. Instead, Rubio is carefully calibrating his approach to suit the setting. And after watching their party's 2012 nominee spend month after miserable month clumsily attempting to sell his moderate record to a permanently suspicious contingent of conservative voters, some in the GOP donor class are encouraged by Rubio's political dexterity. "He’s really talented in that way," said the fundraiser.

Still, the Rubio campaign adviser suggested that in at least one respect, his candidate may have learned a valuable lesson from the 2012 nominee — namely, not to try to get too slick during these closed-door donor meetings.

"His answer is always the same," the adviser said of the immigration-related questions Rubio fields from donors. "With a camera phone in every pocket, is there really such a thing as a 'private' setting in 2016?