A Wary Mrs. Clinton Runs a Perpetual Race

NYTimes ^ | 10/18/04 | RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

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Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be riding high these days. Democrats around the country are begging her to run for president. Her name is a huge draw at party fund-raisers. And her memoir is selling big around the world.

But back home in New York, with her re-election campaign more than three years away, the junior senator from New York is acting like a candidate on the run, embarking on the kind of furious bout of campaigning normally found with a politician who is trailing in the polls.

Mrs. Clinton is not on the run, of course, but the pace she is setting reflects a recognition that she, more than most politicians, cannot take anything for granted. And that means doing all she can, all the time, to try to counteract a basic fact of life for her: a lot of voters really dislike her.

This core of Hillary haters is one reason that some of her advisers see her immediate presidential prospects as implausible.

"There are a large number of people out there who would run through a brick wall for her, but I also think there are an equal number of people who want to throw her through a brick wall," said one senior Democratic strategist.

Since she was elected in 2000, Mrs. Clinton's popularity in the state has been on the rise. Her approval rating among all New Yorkers appears to be higher than ever — 61 percent in a poll earlier this month.

More important for Mrs. Clinton, a large core of voters who said that they had no opinion of her or did not know how they felt about her in the early days of her term have become admirers of the job she is doing in the 32 months since then, recent polls show.

Despite all that — and despite her huge national celebrity — Mrs. Clinton has reason to be vigilant in New York, according to interviews with Republicans and Democrats as well as independent pollsters. New York, like the rest of the country, has a solid core of voters who apparently cannot be persuaded to support her, no matter what she does.

One of three New York voters, for example, recently told pollsters for Quinnipiac University that they have an unfavorable opinion of her, slightly higher than the number of people who said they felt that way when she took office. Zogby International, an independent polling firm, got roughly the same response from likely voters several months ago.

Mrs. Clinton would not comment for this article, but her spokesman, Philippe Reines, said, "Senator Clinton's focus each day is on the day ahead, and the decisions she makes concern how best to serve the people of New York."

People close to her, however, describe her as being in something of a bind, measuring her every action so she does not stir up her sizable number of opponents.

"Her margin of error is small," said one senior Democratic official who is close to her. "And she is working hard, and so far she has been very successful."

Her advisers also note that Mrs. Clinton inspired almost the same level of antipathy during her 2000 Senate campaign — and still managed to defeat her opponent, former United States Representative Rick Lazio, 55 percent to 43 percent.

"She fully understands that she will always have a core of people who dislike her," said another Democrat who is close to Mrs. Clinton. "But her goal has been to persuade the swing voters in the middle that she is doing a good job."

Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said there was danger in Mrs. Clinton's unfavorable ratings, which provide an opening that can be exploited by Republicans and other opponents who would like nothing more than to stop her political rise in its tracks.

He noted, for example, that a poll his organization conducted in late September found that Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is considering a run against Mrs. Clinton in 2006, would handily defeat her, 57 percent to 40 percent.

"Mrs. Clinton has a solid base of support to build from," Mr. Miringoff said. "But her high number of detractors makes her a potential target for the G.O.P., especially if Giuliani is wooed into the race. Her future politically could tip either way."

So Mrs. Clinton is leaving nothing to chance. With her book tour behind her, she is traveling the state from end to end. She has made at least 31 public appearances in the state in the last 57 days, according to her calendar.

She has, among other things, visited breast cancer survivors on Long Island, toured the United States Military Academy at West Point, welcomed the Irish prime minister on a stop in Albany. She was the first statewide New York official on the scene in Syracuse after the Carrier Corporation, the city's best-known company, announced that it would close its plant and stop making air-conditioners there.

When not traveling the state during that period, Mrs. Clinton spent much of her time working in Washington, often meeting with groups or officials representing all sorts of constituencies back in New York, from car dealers to retirees and farmers, according to her office.

Meanwhile, leading New York Republicans have stepped up their attacks on Mrs. Clinton, hoping to soften her up now for a challenge in three years. Big-name Republicans like Mr. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki have been touted as possible opponents, even as the party is hard-pressed to identify an opponent next year for New York's senior senator, Charles E. Schumer.

At least one senior adviser to Mr. Pataki and other Republicans have also tried to keep alive speculation about a possible presidential bid by Mrs. Clinton, in an effort to resurrect her image as a carpetbagger who is using New York as a steppingstone toward national power.

Most of the rumors have been spread behind the scenes. But in a recent radio interview, Mr. Giuliani endorsed the speculation that Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who had recently announced that he was running for president, was a stalking-horse holding a spot for Mrs. Clinton to enter the race herself.

Mr. Giuliani also said he believed Mrs. Clinton might jump into the 2004 presidential contest if President Bush suddenly began losing ground to any of the nine Democrats running for president. "If one of them starts to emerge with the ability of being able to defeat President Bush, then I think she may just jump in," he said.

Robert E. Davis, the vice chairman of the New York Republican Party, said that even if Mrs. Clinton did not enter the presidential race now, she would still have a lot of explaining to do when she is up for re-election. "In 2006, Hillary Clinton is going to have to answer the question of whether she plans to serve out her full term or whether she is going to be a presidential candidate in 2008," he said. "We're going to hold her feet to the fire."

Alexander Treadwell, the New York Republican Party chairman, said in an interview that while Mrs. Clinton enjoyed a huge national following, it had little to do with her work as a senator on behalf of New Yorkers.

"Yes, she is a celebrity," he said. "But she has been elected to represent the people of New York. What has she done? What has she accomplished?"

Wittingly or not, Mrs. Clinton has said and done things to encourage speculation that she has bigger plans than being merely a junior senator from New York, even as she and her advisers insist that is not the case.

After keeping a low national profile at the start of her Senate term, Mrs. Clinton has emerged as one of the national party's main attractions, campaigning and holding fund-raisers for fellow Democrats around the country. (At the same time, she has done well for herself. Her re-election committee, Friends of Hillary, raised $3.4 million since she took office, and has $1.3 million on hand, according to an aide. A political action committee she started in 2001 to help other Democrats, Hillpac, has raised $4 million, though it has only about $168,000 on hand, according to the latest disclosure statement.)

Most recently, Mrs. Clinton agreed to travel to Iowa, a key state in the 2004 presidential primary, to serve as master of ceremonies for a local Democratic Party fund-raiser in November that all the Democratic candidates for president are also planning to attend.

In the end, Mrs. Clinton may be doing nothing more than keeping her options open with trips like the one to Iowa, political strategists say.

But even her supporters agree that she must be careful. They believe talk of a national candidacy by Mrs. Clinton is a potential sore point among New Yorkers, though recent polls suggest that the talk has not hurt her standing in the state.

"Voters are sophisticated enough to know that this kind of speculation is not based on her performance in the Senate," said a Democrat close to the Clinton camp. "They know it's based on what many people see as her personal ambition. And she has to be careful about that because her personal ambition is what fuels the negative perceptions of her."

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Nota bene

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Her approval rating among all New Yorkers appears to be higher than ever — 61 percent in a poll earlier this month.

One of three New York voters, for example, recently told pollsters for Quinnipiac University that they have an unfavorable opinion of her...

Okay, which is it? I thought the Quinnipiac poll results had a much higher negative number than one in three...more like 60%. Does anyone remember?

And she has to be careful about that because her personal ambition is what fuels the negative perceptions of her.

Sorry, Slimes. She can't hide that personal ambition underneath a multitude of spongy pantsuits because it's her entire being, what she perceives as her purpose in life, her destiny.