Michelle Kwan Joins Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign Staff

This is kind of old news, but I wanted to blog about it for the record. Back on June 10th, Michelle Kwan (yes, the figure skater and Olympic medal winner) is joining the 2016 Hillary Clinton for President campaign, as first initially reported by the New York Times:

“Michelle Kwan, a former figure skater and Olympic medal winner, will work from Mrs. Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters on outreach efforts before the Clinton campaign’s formal kickoff rally on Saturday, according to campaign aides. … Ms. Kwan’s focus is said to be on directing campaign surrogates to engage voters on issues critical to working families. Ms. Kwan worked as the United States public diplomacy envoy at the State Department when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.”

I had first blogged about Kwan’s involvement in government back in June of 2011 when she worked for Clinton when Clinton was Secretary of State. But Kwan’s first involvement with the government was back in November 2006 (before 8Asians.com existed!) when then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appointed Kwan as the first “American Public Diplomacy Envoy.”

I always wondered where Kwan stood politically. The fact that she worked both for Rice and Clinton, I thought she was possibly a political independent to keep her government or political career wide open. But after Kwan married Clay Pell, who is the grandson of former and late Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell, I figured she was probably a Democrat.

It’ll be really interesting to see how active and promient of a role Kwan plans in the Clinton campaign. For certain swing states like Nevada and Virginia, Kwan could help rally the Asian American vote for Clinton. As we know, Asians Americans generally lean Democratic, but a good number are independents.

Here’s the first YouTube video that the Clinton campaign posted (“broadcasted” via Periscope) on June 13th – the day of her official campaign launch:

Unfortunately, Kwan doesn’t say anything in this very brief clip. Hopefully Kwan will be more vocal in the future! (then again, the video clip is only 8 seconds …)