In yet another sign Hillary Clinton is looking past rival Bernie Sanders and on to a general election against Donald Trump, the former Secretary of State is adding and promoting staff at her national headquarters in New York.
A Clinton campaign official said the campaign is not giving up in the remaining primary states, but they are increasingly shifting their focus toward beating Trump in November.
“With more than 3 million votes and 285 pledged delegates than Bernie Sanders, there’s no doubt Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee,” the official said.
Clinton has numbers on her side, but Sanders, buoyed by a win in Tuesday’s Indiana primary, has pledged to fight on and pursue a slim chance at a contested Democratic convention.
There were already signs Wednesday that Clinton is setting her sights on Trump. In interviews she countered Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” label by characterizing the real-estate mogul as risky and a “loose cannon.”
And with Trump now the sole Republican candidate left in the race, the Clinton camp rolled out an ad that featured little more than barbs lobbed by Trump’s former GOP rivals and other Republican critics.
RELATED: In Clintonland it’s ‘DEFCON’ 1 for Donald Trump
While Clinton last week was preparing to hire staffers in the battleground states that will be most competitive in November, the new additions bolster the Clinton campaign’s brain trust at her national headquarters in Brooklyn.
Longtime Clinton aide Marlon Marshall will run the campaign’s battleground team out of the Brooklyn headquarters as director of states and political engagement. The campaign’s director of primary states, Brynne Craig, was promoted and will also serve as chief of staff of the campaign’s states and political engagement team, the campaign official said. Michelle Kleppe, who was Clinton’s organizing director for the Iowa caucus and is a veteran of the 2012 and 2008 Obama campaigns, will serve as Clinton’s national organizing director. Joining the campaign are Meg Ansara, who will become battleground states director and previously worked as regional director on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign; and Addisu Demissie, described as a veteran of presidential and regional campaigns, who will work as a senior staff member in Clinton’s states and political engagement department, the official said. This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
Kristen Welker
Kristen Welker is the moderator of "Meet the Press." Recommended
