Chelsea Clinton Finds Her Voice

As a measure of how fully formed her political world is, there are now distinct "Chelsea people" -- two longtime Clinton loyalists, Bari Lurie and Philippe Reines, who travel with her and handle everything from media requests to the unwieldy "Hillblazers" banner she hangs at appearances; an advance staffer, Paige Fitzgerald, who arranges her increasingly crowded events; her scheduler, Kyla Pollack; and Capricia Marshall, who manages the unit from campaign headquarters along with adviser Minyon Moore.

This week, as members of the group traveled around Indiana, they had their own plane.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has won many of the states that have been Chelsea targets, but what is known within the campaign as the "Chelsea effect" has been her ability to limit Obama's margins of victory -- such as in Vermont, where she was the only Clinton to campaign and where Obama did not exceed the 62.5 percent popular-vote threshold that would have earned him two more delegates.

Hillary Clinton has made inroads among younger voters in a few states since the first contest, in Iowa on Jan. 3, when she was trounced in part because that demographic supported Obama so strongly. She ran evenly with Obama among under-30 voters in Massachusetts and California, and she won them in Arkansas.

At one college stop, at West Chester University last month, Chelsea Clinton drew a motley assortment of noisy young Clinton supporters, older campaign workers from the area -- and a handful of students carrying signs for Sen. John McCain. Like her parents, Clinton was quick to note the detractors in the room; when the McCain supporters took their signs outside and pointed them through a window, she went out of her way to address them.

"If they want to ask questions, I'm happy to answer them as well," she said.

With similar adroitness, she has learned to address suitors (politely turning down date invitations with references to her boyfriend); to respond to offers of hugs ("I love hugs!" she says); and to deflect questions, which come more frequently now than ever, about whether she would play a role in her mother's administration, run for office herself, or potentially, if her mother loses to Obama or McCain, become the first female president.

She has a ready quip for each, saying she has no desire to move back in with her parents. "I have an apartment, a job, a dog and a boyfriend, and at some point, I'm going to go back to that life," she says.

That life includes a job with a six-figure salary at Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund in New York. Previously, she worked as a consultant at McKinsey, where colleagues praised her for keeping a relatively low profile and delving deeply into the subject matter; in many cases her work involved health-care accounts.

Her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, sometimes joins her on the road now that she is gone so much. Mezvinsky, who has known Clinton since childhood, works at Goldman Sachs and is the son of two former House members, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania, who lost her seat after supporting the 1993 Clinton tax increase, and Ed Mezvinsky of Iowa, who is in prison for fraud.

Like her mother, Clinton has a flair for wonkish details and academic-sounding words -- proposals for "incentivizing" corporations, doubling family education tax credits and introducing "green vehicular bonds" to automakers all roll off her tongue. Rarely does she duck a substantive question; after hearing her speak recently at an assisted-living home in Bensalem, a suburb of Philadelphia, several of the elderly residents said they were stunned by her command of health-care policy detail.

But the sensational questions and commentary have drawn the most attention, beginning with an MSNBC anchor's comment that Clinton is being "pimped out" by the campaign, with selected public appearances but no media interviews. Campaign officials pushed back hard, and the candidate herself wrote a letter of complaint. The network responded by suspending the anchor, David Shuster, who apologized.

Besides Clinton's answers to questions about Lewinsky and impeachment, one other recent response also generated some attention. Asked if she thought her mother would be a better president than her father, she said: "I don't take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania's help she will be our next president. And yes, I do think she'll be a better president."

On Wednesday in Pittsburgh, her mother laughed when she was asked about Chelsea's endorsement of her over the former president, reacting with the reserve she often shows when the subject of her daughter is broached. "I think I've got two great surrogates," she said.

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.