Gatekeepers of Hillaryland

A year into her tenure, the first lady was besieged by questions about the Whitewater land deal and her personal finances. She wanted to address the media with no interference from her husband's staff. Hillaryland clicked into high gear, secretly planning the complicated logistics of the counteroffensive. Her office summoned the White House press corps to the State Dining Room -- minutes before the now famous "Pink Press Conference." Blindsided, her husband's stunned advisers could do nothing but watch her on television, as she fielded questions in her bright pink suit.

Solis Doyle stayed at the White House for eight years and hasn't been far from Hillary Clinton since, most recently heading Clinton's fundraising. When Beltway operatives privately question whether Solis Doyle has the management experience to run a presidential campaign, Hillaryland scoffs. "Patti is her single most important political adviser now," says Ickes. "She understands Hillary's dynamics, her rhythms, what will fly with her, what won't, how to best structure a schedule that plays to her energy levels."

Ickes says Solis Doyle -- known to be competitive and organized -- earned her right to run this campaign in 2000, when she uprooted her family and moved to New York to bring order to the faltering Senate race.

Like others in Hillaryland, Solis Doyle has a compelling personal story. She was the sixth child of Mexican immigrants from Chicago; her mother worked in a "horrible" industrial laundromat, she says, and her father worked three jobs. "My father died never making more than $18,000 a year," she says.

She is the person who speaks to Clinton several times a day and the one who declares when a decision has been made. "I'm a closer," says Solis Doyle.

Mandy Grunwald, today Clinton's media adviser and advertising director, says Solis Doyle's style reflects how the candidate wants business conducted. "[Clinton] hates behind-the-scenes maneuvering. If you have a difference of opinion, say so, but when a decision is made, it's made," says the consultant, who started out as an adviser to Bill Clinton.

Issues chief Tanden joined Hillaryland fresh from Yale Law School in 1997, when she was hired in the West Wing policy shop but assigned to the first lady. "All of a sudden I'm going to Hillaryland meetings and there were cakes for people's birthdays and it was a different world," recalls Tanden.

She worked on the Senate campaign, then became legislative director when Clinton took office. Tanden says that the issues about which Clinton most cares are the social programs that saved Tanden's own family. She grew up in Bedford, Mass., the product of an arranged Indian marriage. Her father left when she was young, forcing the family to go on welfare.

Former social secretary Marshall's father came to the United States from Croatia with $4 in his pocket, she says, went through Ellis Island and ended up in Cleveland, where she grew up. He cried the first time he visited her in the White House.

"A lot of us are from middle-class -- even lower-middle-class -- families, people who wanted to make it," says Marshall, whose job it was to greet and seat kings and prime ministers at the White House. Marshall has spent almost her entire career working for Clinton; she, too, joined up right out of law school.

The staying power of this group can be seen as remarkable in light of what they've been through: the health-care debacle, dragged before a Whitewater grand jury at their own legal expense, pushed to take lie-detector tests, crying at their desks during a humiliating sex scandal and impeachment. But it is also what binds them together.

"I feel like she always has my back, and no matter what, I'm going to have hers," says Solis Doyle. "It gives you a real sense of comfort when you're working and the stakes are this high."