"When you stay up late with a crack whore you picked up on a streetcorner, this is what you look like the next day."
Posted on 04/10/2003 2:33:14 AM PDT by NYpeanut
WASHINGTON - The job performance of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is viewed negatively by a majority of New Yorkers, despite her being in the news almost daily on issues dealing with homeland security.
A new poll by Zogby International released Tuesday showed that those interviewed rated her performance as 47 percent excellent or good against 51 percent fair or poor. Only 2 percent of the 709 New Yorkers interviewed about Clinton on Thursday and Friday said they weren't sure about her.
The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
When asked how they viewed Clinton generally, 55 percent said they looked on her favorably against 42 percent who said unfavorably. That result shows major slippage since the last survey taken Feb. 23, when she earned 62 percent positives against 35 percent negatives.
Clinton colleague Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., earned a 52 percent excellent/good score on his job performance versus 36 percent who thought his work was only fair or poor.
The results for Clinton were parallel to those reported on Monday by the Marist poll, which gave her work a 47 percent positive rating against 49 percent who saw her work negatively.
Upstate - which excludes New York City and its suburbs - gave Clinton a net negative of 21 points.
Upstaters, whose support was critical to her 2000 election victory, rated her work only 39 percent positive and 60 percent unfavorably. She did best in New York City - 62 percent positive and 35 percent unfavorable. But across the line in the city's suburbs, she rated only 43 percent positive against 54 percent negative.
Other than former Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato during his final term, it is unusual for a New York senator's performance to be consistently viewed negatively.
Clinton's office declined to respond to a request for a comment.
James E. Campbell, political scientist at the University at Buffalo, said Clinton "has not been a major presence up here for quite a while."
"I don't know why her numbers should be moving that way - so little has happened," said Michael Haselswerdt, Canisius College political science professor.
Of Gov. George E. Pataki, the Zogby poll reported that 61 percent said it's time for a new governor, while 31 percent said he should be re-elected. Even so, Pataki enjoyed a 54 percent excellent/good performance rating compared to 46 percent who said it was poor or fair.
In theoretical matchups for the 2006 gubernatorial race, Pataki would still defeat Democrats Eliot Spitzer or Andrew Cuomo.
Bureau assistant Eric DuVall contributed to this article.
e-mail: dturner@buffnews.com
"When you stay up late with a crack whore you picked up on a streetcorner, this is what you look like the next day."
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