When Bill and Hillary Crossed the Picket Line

In 1971, Bill and Hillary Clinton went on their first date — and scabbed.


Yale Law School students Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton were both members, alongside future Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal and Bill Clinton’s eventual secretary of labor, Robert Reich, of the Yale Law School Students Committee for Local 35, the university’s blue-collar worker union, and signatories, during the week before the union went on strike, to a statement asserting “WE BELIEVE THE UNION DESERVES THE SUPPORT OF YALE STUDENTS AND FACULTY.”

Bill Clinton was even, former UNITE-HERE President John Wilhelm would note decades later in his eulogy for Vincent Sirabella, the voter registration chairman of the Sirabella for mayor campaign.

And yet, on her first date with classmate Clinton in 1971, Rodham would later recall:

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