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Profile: U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

Xinhua, July 27, 2016 Adjust font size:

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday became the first woman to run for president on behalf of a major U.S. political party.

At the age of 68, the former U.S. secretary of state enjoys nearly universal name recognition after her almost four-decade-old public life.

Her debut as a political figure started in 1979 when her husband, Bill Clinton, became the governor of Arkansas. When Bill Clinton campaigned for the White House in 1992, he once quipped that he was offering voters two presidents for the price of one.

As first lady of the United States, Hillary raised her profile in 1993 by aggressively campaigning for universal health care for Americans. But she failed.

Between the mid-1990s and the end of his second term in office, Bill Clinton was involved in various scandals, including an investigation into a failed real estate project in which the Clintons had invested and his affair with a White House intern that later led to impeachment proceedings.

The scandals, particularly the Monica Lewinsky saga, put the Clintons and their relationship through serious ordeals and Hillary's support for her husband gave her much credit.

In 2000, Hillary was elected senator for New York State, which was believed to be a place hostile to Democrats. She easily won re-election in 2006.

Hillary launched her first White House bid in 2008 and was immediately viewed by many as the front-runner in the Democratic field. However, she was defeated by then first-term Senator Barack Obama from Illinois in the nomination race, who later became the first African-American president of the United States.

After Obama's win, Hillary became secretary of state. She left office after Obama's first presidential term.

She entered the 2016 presidential race with strong momentum in April 2015. But her campaign has been dogged by controversy around her use of a private email account and server in her capacity as secretary of state and her handling of an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Now she is facing a fallout from emails published by WikiLeaks, indicating that staff of the Democratic National Committee tried to tip the scales for Hillary to win against Bernie Sanders in the primaries. Endi