LAST WEEK IN NEW YORK, Democratic State Committee chairwoman Judith Hope dropped a broad hint. She told a Manhattan television station she expected Hillary Rodham Clinton to make a decision within months on whether to run for Pat Moynihan’s open Senate seat in 2000. That means Hillary’s decision will likely be yes.
It’s not just that Hope is among a handful of New York Democrats Hillary has been huddling with lately. The news that HRC is working on a decision also dovetailed nicely with this fact: Hillary has asked Hope for permission to address the state committee when it convenes in New York in late April.
If Hillary ran, she’d be tough to beat. Most polls show her 4 to 9 points up on her likely rival, New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. And her Senate explorations have been thorough. Three weeks ago she met with top labor leaders Dennis Rivera, of the city’s powerful hospital worker’s union, and Randi Weingarten, local head of the United Federation of Teachers. Two weeks ago, she invited party leaders to Washington for consultations, including Hope, State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, and Bill Lynch, who was David Dinkin’s campaign manager and deputy mayor. That was the clincher for one Manhattan party activist. “There’s a way of play-acting this and a way of doing it for real,” he said. “No one spends two hours at lunch with Bill Lynch unless they have to.”
Last week Mrs. Clinton spread her organization even further, beginning consultations at the county level. She had hour-long chats with Westchester County chair David Alpert and Onondaga County (Syracuse) chair Steve Paquette. She also asked Democratic statisticians to retrieve election returns from far-sub-urban and upstate counties — Dutchess, Rockland, Erie — that will be the battlegrounds in any close statewide election, as they were in last fall’s Schumer-D’Amato Senate race. She has not yet started polling, but those close to her campaign think she’ll take at least one poll within weeks.
Hillary’s Whitewater baggage may be a liability in the local media, but her keenest supporters think that’s secondary. Her ability to dent New York politics is going to rest on whether she can master a variety of local issues. Most pressing now are the demonstrations that have rocked New York in the wake of the police shooting of the unarmed African Amadou Diallo. Congressman Charles Rangel and former mayor David Dinkins have both been arrested while participating, and ex-mayor Ed Koch says he’ll soon join several city councilmen in the protests, which have sent Mayor Giuliani’s numbers plunging.
This isn’t all good news for Hillary. In a perverse way, it may spur law-and-order support for Giuliani upstate. And the controversy could force Hillary into unbreakable alliances with black radicals like Rev. Al Sharpton, who has styled himself the Diallo family’s protector. Sharpton is the only major figure on the New York left she has not sought out.
The politics of black and white work out strangely where New York and Washington overlap. Some Democrats claim that Charles Rangel, who would be the chief organizer in any black get-out-the-vote effort, is interested in using Hillary to protect his seniority on the House Ways and Means Committee. Most New York Democrats fully expect the party to take back the Congress in 2000, and expect just as fully that a Speaker Gephardt would pass over Rangel for the chairmanship to which protocol entitles him. A desire to draw the Clintons into his congressional battle could explain why Rangel has linked himself so intimately to both Sharpton’s anti-Giuliani agitation and the Hillary boomlet, at a time when certain black New Yorkers — most flamboyantly Peter Noel in the Village Voice — have begun to fault Hillary for keeping her counsel.
Backers differ on whether Hillary has to meet with Sharpton. “Sharpton’s a more responsible guy than he was years ago when I arrested him,” says former mayor Ed Koch. “She has to meet all the well-known leaders, and he’s a definite black leader. If he acts irresponsibly, she can blame him then.” Koch’s support for a Hillary candidacy has been as full-throated as his condemnation of her husband’s ethical standards. Hillary supporters point to Koch as evidence that the movement is a phenomenon of the party’s center as well as the city’s fringe.
That a high-profile newcomer can win a New York Senate seat was proved by Robert F. Kennedy, who ran in 1964, just weeks after taking up residence in the state. And a Hillary candidacy has advantages that have not yet come into play. She has a husband whose job-approval rating in New York is 75 percent, and who is in a position to shower the state with pork. (In his most recent radio address to the nation, he seemed to be using the Diallo case to do just that, suggesting tens of millions in training and police-education money for New York.) What’s more, Hillary doesn’t have to contend with a party riven between “regular” and “reform” wings, as Kennedy did. There is no serious force in the Democratic party opposing the Hillary movement — not even the circle surrounding Westchester’s member of Congress, Nita Lowey, who is generally held unlikely to prevail against Giuliani. Hillary’s could-be candidacy has made early-front-runner Lowey the designated place-holder for the nomination. If Hillary dithers and drops out, she will have handed Lowey an undreamed-of gift — a senatorial nomination without a bloody primary fight.
Right now, former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes is serving as a one-man inner circle, showing Mrs. Clinton the ropes of New York politics. While other Washington and New York activists — among them Hillary’s close friend Susan Thomases, Clinton media consultant Mandy Grunwald, and Dinkins aide Victor Kovner — are helping Hillary, the outer ring to this circle of advisers hasn’t yet gelled. “Ickes is ‘it,'” says one New York Democratic activist. A Washington consultant close to Hillary says no one should be surprised, though, if she has assembled an all-star kitchen cabinet by the time she officially declares her candidacy. “She can have whomever she wants,” says the consultant. “Because this Senate idea is worth it if she decides she wants to be president — and not worth it if she doesn’t. The presidency as the endgame is the only way this makes any sense.”
Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
