First Lady's Big Day Nears
On Sunday, Hillary Rodham Clinton will officially declare her candidacy for the United States Senate from New York. She'll stop listening and start talking. Last summer, on the farm of exiting Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Mrs. Clinton started a listening tour, traveling to more than forty counties and hearing about everything from dairy prices to NAFTA.
From that moment on, she has been dogged relentlessly by the always unforgiving New York tabloids for listening too much and talking too little. New Yorkers are talkers - she should know that by now. Sunday, that's over. Campaign manager Bill DeBlasio, appearing on CBS News' Early Show, said she'll take the podium on Sunday armed with issues: Health Care, Education, Social Security. But DeBlasio tried to sidestep the real issue on most New Yorkers' minds: just how Ugly (and this is a capital U) this campaign will get. DeBlasio told Bryant Gumbel it would be tough...ok, "it'll be hot."
But just how hot? Hillary Clinton and her likely opponent, New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, are actually closer on the issues than some might think: Abortion, Gun Control, Immigration. So how do they campaign on issues?
"The strategic imperative she faces is to move Rudolph Guiliani to the right, and the strategic imperative he faces is to move her to the left," says political analyst Hank Sheinkopf. If they're both in the middle, then it's all about personality, and most local reporters will tell you, neither candidate is a winner there.
Guiliani hasn't declared his candidacy yet, but he has raised more than $12 million and launched a boatload of attacks on Mrs. Clinton, everything from her "left-wing ideology" to her "carpetbagger" roots. Lately, it's been a direct mail campaign from ultra-conservative groups: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. If the sound of that makes your blood boil as much as it does mine, then I've written to the right person."
The mail is bringing in the cash, but the candidate is still not officially in the ring. Joking with reporters in Washington D.C. this week, Guiliani said he was afraid to have a declaration ceremony - whenever he does that he loses. The last time he ran for mayor he just ran - no starting gun.
Hillary Clinton will announce her candidacy at the State University of New York at Purchase, not far from her new home in Chappaqua. Her husband and daughter are expected to flank each side. Throughout the state, Hillary 2000 (the name of her campaign) has organized "house parties," groups of supporters who will get a personal pep- call from their candidate after the announcement. The more New Yorkers she surrounds herself with, analysts say, the more she looks like a New Yorker herself, even if by association.
So who is candidate Hillary versus first lady Hillary? That will surely play out in the coming week, under the microscope of more media outlets than anyone can estimate. The onthing most reporters agree on, though, is she'll have to make her move, not just to a new house.
"If she's fully committed to the idea of being a candidate, the first lady persona and perks and privileges to the largest degree possible will be checked at the door like a hat," says Tish Durkin of the New York Observer. But she'll still have the Secret Service, that's just the rule.
As for the rest, it's up to her. "To the degree that there's a tension between her being an imperial candidate and her being a rough and tumble New York candidate, that tension is going to have to be resolved in the latter direction, in the direction of her being more of an engaged and bold candidate, if she's to have a hope at all. I think caution here is the biggest danger," says Durkin.
As she takes the starting line, Candidate Clinton faces an uphill battle. She's already dropped in the polls, and her opponent is out-fundraising her. But it's a Democratic state, and the party has chosen her and her only. She wants it, and now she's in it, in the thick of it, out on her own, for the first time in a long time.