Hillary's First Hundred Days

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had just smiled her way through a photo session with star-struck Capitol Hill interns when an aide handed her a ringing cell phone.

The news was good: The Senate would take up her amendment seeking money to hire more food inspectors. In the hubbub of Senate activity on this Friday before spring recess, the topic would barely rate notice with her colleagues.

But Clinton is beaming.

"There's a real problem with meat inspections, especially in New York," she said.

One hundred days into her Senate career, Clinton has made the unprecedented transformation from first lady to senator and emerged as a blend of celebrity, workhorse and policy wonk.

Still gawked at by tourists and pursued by reporters, she nonetheless has settled into her new role, recording nearly perfect attendance at committee hearings and embracing local issues like trying to get government help for New York apple growers and naming a Manhattan courthouse after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

"What you're seeing is who Hillary Clinton really is, and always was, which is a passionate policy person," said Lisa Caputo, her former White House press secretary. "She's just able to show it now."

Clinton, 53, got off to a stumbling start marked by repeated questions about her husband's presidential pardons and gifts taken from the White House. Although the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan still is investigating the pardons, the questions have hit a lull.

A Marist College poll released this week found that just 35 percent of New York voters think Clinton is doing either an excellent or a good job, but that was up from 30 percent in February.

Sipping hot tea from a Syracuse University mug in the freshly painted yellow office she inherited from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Clinton said she was "looking forward not backward."

She said her Senate career at the moment is about little victories.

"But they add up and they create a pattern," she said. "That's what I'm trying to do."

Clinton still talks about health care and education — her signature issues as first lady. And she has been loudly bashing President Bush on his budget, tax cut plan and environmental policies.

But she has focused mainly on less-glamorous issues that are important to New York, like the apple growers, industrial pollution and clogged border crossings with Canada. Her first legislation was aimed at stimulating the economy of largely rural upstate New York.

"I think that I'm going to be pretty New York-centric," said Clinton, who already has sponsored 20 Senate bills and amendments, more than double that of any other freshman.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, called Clinton "the best freshman I've ever seen in the Senate."

"I was always struck with her being more interested in substance than her husband anshe demonstrates that every day on our committee," Reid said.

Even so, questions remain about her future ambitions. Though she has said repeatedly she has no plans to run for president, the question still arises. And try as she might to be just another senator, she still attracts more than her share of attention.

"Haven't you noticed these great big spotlights that I carry around with me all the time and no matter how hard I try to get out of them, there they are," she said, laughing. She is in a Capitol hallway as she says this, oblivious to nearby tourists who are, in fact, snapping her photo.

Apart from the limelight, Clinton describes long days topped by takeout pizza. Her office still is disorganized, stacks of newspapers and magazines litter the floor, and there are only enough chairs for one of her two Secret Service agents.

She and her husband have had a long-distance relationship since leaving the White House. But she says the two are in close contact, noting he called from India last week to offer suggestions for a speech on the Bush budget plan she was giving to newspaper editors.

So far, Clinton has scored high marks for collegiality, especially with GOP colleagues with whom many thought she would clash. She has lunched with Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois. And she is a regular at weekly Senate prayer breakfasts, populated mostly by Republicans.

"She's been working hard and doing her homework and not asking for any special treatment," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex.

Clinton apparently has won over Sen. Strom Thurmond, the 98-year-old South Carolina Republican who is one of the chamber's most conservative members.

When Clinton ran into Thurmond as he climbed off the Capitol subway with the help of two aides last week, she tried for a handshake but was wrapped in an unsteady hug. Thurmond had something for his new colleague: a signed copy of a cartoon from New York Magazine depicting the exuberant embrace he gave her when she was sworn in.

On it he wrote: "To Pretty Hillary. Welcome to the Senate."