The candidates: latest news, backgrounders, etc.
Front-runners find tougher going in N.H.
November 22, 1999
Where the candidates stand on ...
Candidates’ religions
What's at stake in the election
Voters tell what issues matter to them
October 20, 1999
Hair, and lots of it, not just window dressing
Jabs at Bush pepper polite GOP debate
Bankers help Bush; Wall Street backs Bradley
Potentially long, expensive road ahead for Dems
Reform Party landscape riddled with factions
Reform Party primer
Golden -- and forgotten -- words at past debates
Zingers, body language stand out in debate history
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Ulster Unionists OK peace compromise
Ferry sinks off Norway; 20 dead
FTC to OK Exxon-Mobil merger
Clinton: Use caution when shopping online
Book says Hillary wants turn in spotlight
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Hillary Clinton: 'I intend to run'
By Shannon McCaffrey
The Associated Press
November 24, 1999 4:05 p.m. CST
WASHINGTON (AP) --
Call it the anti-Rose Garden strategy.
Recognizing that the trappings of the White House must be cast aside if she wants to make it to the Senate, Hillary Rodham Clinton says she will scale back her first lady duties and devote herself to campaigning.
President Clinton even got into the action Wednesday, saying he was excited at the prospect of his wife's candidacy and saying her absence as first lady would take some getting used to.
"We'll have to make accommodations," Clinton said at the White House Wednesday. "She'll be here and do some things, and some things she might otherwise do she won't. But I'm excited for her."
A campaign manager may be named as early as next week, and a media guru is expected to come on board shortly after.
Tension between Mrs. Clinton's dual roles fueled a series of campaign fumbles - highlighted by her recent trip to the Middle East - that worried even her most ardent supporters. New York's state Democratic chairwoman, Judith Hope, even jokingly suggested the first lady should move a cot into the Chappaqua, N.Y., home the Clintons recently purchased and "give up her day job."
On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to run, and said while she wouldn't be giving up her first lady obligations entirely, she would be cutting back and upping her Senate stumping.
"I'll be living in Westchester County and traveling around the state campaigning," Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday, her first trip to New York in two weeks.
She then went to Camp David for a five-day Thanskgiving weekend with the president and daughter Chelsea. Campaign aides said she would be back in New York campaigning on Monday.
Her most likely rival, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, will spend Thanksgiving in the thick of New York's parade festivities.
"The problem is that everything Hillary Clinton does now is seen through the prism of the Senate race," said Esther Fuchs, a political science professor at Barnard College in New York City.
"She may be able to distinguish between doing one thing as first lady and another as a Senate candidate, but most voters aren't going to be looking at the two as separate," Fuchs said.
Over the last several months, the first lady role has at times been an advantage, with Mrs. Clinton making appearances at Capitol Hill news conferences on issues like minimum wage and prescription drug coverage - likely campaign themes.
Her husband's fund raising network will certainly stock her campaign coffers and the fame she has gained as one of the most talked about first ladys in history is what made her the immediate Democratic front runner for the seat in a state where she has never lived or worked.
But she has also faced heightened scrutiny. When she and the president first took steps to purchase a home in New York they initially arranged to have the mortgage guaranteed by Democratic Party fund-raiser Terry McCauliffe. Republicans protested, alleging a possible violation of federal election law. The Clintons obtained other financing.
She has been forced to distance herself from some policies of her husband's administration, such as a milk pricing provisions that would have hurt New York dairy farmers.
Her most public break with her husband's policy was over clemency he offered to 16 Puerto Rican nationalists. Amid speculation that the president had made the offer to help his wife's standing with New York's large Puerto Rican population, Mrs. Clinton came out against the clemency offer, without consulting New York's Puerto Rican leaders. Rep. Jose Serrano, an influential Bronx Democrat, withdrew his support for Mrs. Clinton.
But the conflict between her roles really crystallized overseas. Mrs. Clinton traveled to the Middle East as first lady, and in that role balanced her time in Israel with a quick stop in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. There she sat silently while Yasser Arafat's wife, Soha, alleged that Israelis have used "poison gas" on Palestinian women and children. The first lady embraced Mrs. Arafat and kissed her after those remarks, an image that has become fodder for an advertisement running against Mrs. Clinton in New York.
Mrs. Clinton's campaign aides concede that as a candidate she would never have traveled to the West Bank because of the importance of the Jewish vote in New York.
That incident sparked widespread Democratic handwringing that culminated in Mrs. Clinton's announcement Tuesday.
As of Wednesday, word was out that Bill DeBlasio, Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo's New York regional director, could be named campaign manager as early as next week. DeBlasio was part of the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. A media consultant could be hired sometime in December, probably David Doak.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
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