Politics

Hillary In N.Y. State Of Mind

April 12, 1999 / 3:41 PM EDT / AP

Hillary Rodham Clinton is planning a four-day trip that will take her from Long Island to Niagara Falls and help her gauge what a New York Senate campaign might be like, an adviser said Monday.

Mrs. Clinton is considering running for the New York Senate seat being vacated next year by Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a race that could pit her against New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is also thinking of running.

The first lady's four-day trip begins next Monday, April 19, with a speech at the teachers college at Columbia University in New York City, followed by an evening fund-raising event to benefit U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler. The Manhattan Democrat was one of President Clinton's biggest supporters during the House impeachment trial.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton heads to Long Island for a visit to Hofstra University. That night, she is back in New York City for a speech at a $250-a-person fund-raising dinner for the United Jewish Appeal.

On Wednesday, officials said, Mrs. Clinton might head upstate before finishing off her trip Thursday with a speech to the annual convention of the politically powerful New York State United Teachers Union in Niagara Falls.

The Niagara Falls appearance will put her in the Buffalo area in the midst of the eight-day "Operation Save America" anti-abortion protest. One of the event's organizers has said the first lady probably will be greeted by some of the demonstrators.

Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a veteran of the New York political scene, said the trip should help give the first lady a sense of what a New York campaign would be like.

"There'll be more press, more people talking to her, and so I think she'll come away with a much better feel about the intensity of the situation," Ickes said.

Nonetheless, Ickes said the trip was not a political one, but rather "her ordinary schedule."

"She is not scheduling any meetings or any events that are related solely to the senatorial inquiry," the adviser said. "That is not to say that some people won't talk to her about it."

On The Republican front, Jonathan Bush, brother of former President George Bush, told the New York Post that the news media would "have a field day with Hillary Clinton" if she ran for the Senate. He cited the Whitewater land deal and the missing-and-then-found Rose law firm records as two issues that would cause the first lady problems.

"She's dead, I think," Bush said.

Bush predicted that if the first lady faced Giuliani in the Senate race next year, the mayor would score a "roaring victory."

Bush's nephew, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, is considered the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Ickes said Monday that he still doesn't expect any decision from Mrs. Clinton on the Senate race until sometime this summer, at the earliest.