Surviving The Free Fall

It's impossible not to feel sympathy for this sixth child of Mexican immigrants, who, at 25 years old, was Hillary Clinton's first personal staff hire when her husband ran for president in 1992.

"What's so sad is that these relationships often form when someone is very young, and they seem to be immutable and then all of a sudden you realize it's a business," says Solis Doyle's friend Carter Eskew, a longtime Democratic operative. "That's very tough because you've fallen in love."

Solis Doyle grew up in the working-class Pilsen neighborhood in southwest Chicago. She rode a bus for 90 minutes to attend an upscale parochial high school in a better part of town. Her mother worked in a "horrible" industrial laundry, and her father worked three jobs to support the family, never earning more than $18,000 a year, she says.

"My father's motto was work hard, play by rules, never do anything to cause embarrassment to you or the family. He passed away nine years ago. I'm relieved that he didn't have to see me go through this because it surely would have killed him," she says. Her voice catches, but she refuses to cry.

Some Hillary Clinton intimates say Clinton was attracted to Solis Doyle's personal story and so admired her tenacity that she might have overlooked her shortcomings as she brought her up through the ranks. For years, she was Clinton's White House scheduler, which put her in constant contact with the first lady and gave her enormous influence over how Clinton would allocate her time and energy. When Washington's elite needed a piece of Hillary Clinton, Solis Doyle was the woman they called.

When Clinton's 2000 Senate race was faltering, with staffers at one another's throat, she turned to Solis Doyle, then running her fundraising political action committee, who uprooted her husband and baby and moved to New York to bring order. She played the same role in the 2006 reelection campaign, managing the same large personalities that came to dominate Sen. Clinton's historic bid -- Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Mandy Grunwald. Clinton thought the dynamic worked because, as she told people, "everyone stayed in their own lanes."

And what Solis Doyle lacked in national campaign experience, she made up for with unequivocal loyalty -- a trait Clinton values highly. Paul Begala, a veteran of both of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns, once called Solis Doyle "bulletproof" because of her relationship with Hillary. Still, many in the extended Clinton family had privately raised doubts to Clinton about Solis Doyle's readiness for a job of this magnitude; among them were longtime friend and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe, and Doug Band, an adviser to former president Clinton.

Solis Doyle was never the campaign's political strategist but was tasked with being the organizer and enforcer, the person who was to watch the budget and make the trains run on time. And when Clinton was 30 points ahead in the polls last year, few complained openly. But after she lost in Iowa, the finger-pointing began.

Why didn't the campaign have as comprehensive a field operation as Obama's? Why didn't Solis Doyle seek skilled operatives to lead the political operations? Why did she rent a headquarters building in Virginia at a steep $100,000 a month -- with a lease that runs until next April? Why did Clinton need to lend herself $10 million to stay afloat after raising $100 million?

"As campaign manager, I ran the campaign. I take responsibility for what worked and what didn't work. End of story," Solis Doyle says now. "But I've been surprised by the extent at which some people have run from the strategies they argued so passionately for."

Adds Howard Wolfson, who was the campaign's spokesman: "Every day for a year, seven people were on a morning conference call making decisions for the whole campaign. Everyone of us bears some responsibility for the outcome."

But listen closely, and the real rage toward Solis Doyle is less about losing -- and far more personal. She is portrayed as a remote and combative personality who used her power to keep people out of the loop, rather than bring them in.