Comment on Clinton prioritizes paid leave in campaign

One of Hillary Clinton's new senior policy advisers, Ann O'Leary, is giving the clearest signal yet that Clinton plans to make the right to take paid time off from work—after child birth or to care for a newborn or perhaps an ailing relative—a central feature of her campaign. Lauren Sandler had a chance to speak with the new addition to Clinton's policy team: O’Leary told me paid leave will be part of a “suite of issues at the forefront of the campaign… a bubbling up of a whole bunch of issues related to how middle class families have both economic stability and opportunities for their children.” At the center of Clinton’s agenda, she said, is the need “to update our employment policies,” and make sure women can “make the income they need to make to support families and caregiving.” (Equal pay for women is another one of the issues O’Leary will be working to integrate into the Clinton platform, making it fitting that announcement of O’Leary’s role comes on Equal Pay Day, the day, four and half months into the new year, when earnings for women catch up to what men earned last year.) O'Leary may be a new name to many, but she's been running in Clinton circles for years, including a stint leading family policy on Bill Clinton's White House Domestic Policy Council and working as Hillary Clinton's legislative director in the Senate. Clinton did not make paid leave a major plank of her 2008 campaign and as recently as last year said she supported the issue but added, "I don’t think, politically, we could get it now." But hiring O'Leary, who has devoted much of her career to the issue, suggests that Clinton plans to push paid leave and may even believe it's more politically ripe now than it once was.