As “New York, New York” so famously promises, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. Hillary Rodham Clinton may soon put those lyrics to a presidential test.
With little question that she will win re-election to the Senate this fall, a larger question looms: If Clinton turned numbers of skeptical and sometimes openly hostile upstate New Yorkers significantly in her favor, could she pull off the same thing nationally in a 2008 run for the White House?
Seven years ago, when she began her Senate campaign, many residents of this hard-pressed Finger Lakes region considered Clinton the political equivalent of the Wicked Witch of the West. Older women, particularly, acidly criticized her as domineering, arrogant, ambitious and oblivious to blue-collar concerns–not to mention unable to rein in her philandering husband.
During her first term as the state’s junior U.S. senator, Clinton hardly has morphed into Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. But the Democrat has shed much of her image as a broom-riding carpetbagger and gained more than a little respect and appreciation in some of the most conservative corners of the state.
Ann Brouse, a librarian in Elmira, is one of those Clinton has won over, albeit grudgingly.
“I may not like her as a person, but you’re not voting for the person, you’re voting for her ability,” said Brouse. She plans to vote for Clinton in November.
So does Sandy Schimizzi, 46, who works in the accounting department at Elmira’s St. Joseph’s Hospital. “I think she’s done a good job. I’m a registered Republican and I would vote for her this time,” said the single mother of two. “I don’t think she forgets the upstate people. Sometimes we get overlooked in Chemung County, where there’s not a lot of jobs, and industry is moving out instead of in.”
What primarily has swayed people like Brouse and Schimizzi is Clinton’s continuous work on behalf of the economically challenged upstate counties. These efforts range from snagging federal contracts and grants for local businesses and municipalities to making frequent trips to the region, whether to hear the problems of dairy farmers or to make commencement addresses as she did at Buffalo State College this month. It appears that work has paid off.
In February 2001, a month after she took office, Clinton’s approval rating among upstate women was a chilly 28 percent, according to the Marist Poll. Currently, it stands at a much cozier 53 percent, said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Job approval high
In fact, in most polls Clinton’s statewide job approval ratings have shown a steady upward trend; they now run between 50 percent and 60 percent. In terms of her re-election campaign, she has been leading potential GOP challengers by about 2-1, according to polls of registered voters released this month by Marist and by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.
“It’s an extraordinary story,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist and former adviser to the Clinton White House. “It is clear that Sen. Clinton deserves tremendous credit for moving the numbers around.”
But, what, if anything, do those numbers bode beyond the borders of New York?
Clinton’s Empire State performance–particularly in the upstate region with its economic and demographic similarities to presidential battleground states like Ohio–is regarded by some as a small-scale preview of what might play out on a bigger stage.
“I think it is a bellwether. It certainly says she is able to speak to and possibly win over people who were initially resistant to her,” said Kristi Andersen, a political scientist at Syracuse University.
Others, however, consider that a faulty forecasting tool. “It’s really a leap of faith to say that you’ve run up the score in upstate New York and therefore you can do well in Ohio,” said Marist’s Miringoff.
Douglas Muzzio, professor of public affairs at the City University of New York’s Baruch College, also has doubts about how transferable the skills Clinton demonstrated in New York may be to a national audience. “I’m agnostic on it. I neither support or oppose it. I just don’t necessarily see it,” he said. “New York is not the nation. Even conservative New Yorkers are not conservative South Carolinians or conservative Wyomingans. There are red portions in this blue state, but they’re not deep, deep red.”
Polls indicate that New Yorkers, ostensibly the voters who know her best, also are of two minds when they contemplate Clinton as a senator and as presidential candidate.
Supportive but doubtful
While a majority appears supportive of her re-election to the Senate, 66 percent of registered voters told Marist pollsters this month that they thought it unlikely Clinton would be elected president in 2008.
Miringoff noted that this result dovetails with responses in a national Marist poll in February. That poll found that more than a quarter of the electorate would not vote for a woman for president regardless of her political party and another quarter wouldn’t vote for her if she were the nominee of an opposing party.
The top reason given in the poll by voters who are not likely to vote for any woman for president: “Women are not up to the job.”
And Clinton comes with additional baggage in that area, said Ross Baker, a political scientist and U.S. Senate specialist at Rutgers University.
“It comes down to this very stark and uncomfortable question: Will Americans elect a cuckolded president of the United States,” he said. “If you can’t handle Bill Clinton and his unconventional social behavior, how are you going to deal with Ahmadinejad,” he said, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Clinton’s marital woes drew less sympathy than consternation from many women during her 2000 Senate campaign and they still remain on many women’s minds. “I think they all thought she ought to do something about her husband. It put out the wrong image,” said Georgia Brown, 69, a retired store manager from Barton, N.Y., who plans to vote for Clinton.
“She’s not stupid, but why she stayed with Bill, I’ll never know,” said librarian Brouse.
Critics are stalwart
Moreover, Miringoff points out, some things have not changed, even in New York, with regard to hard-core Clinton critics. In February 2001, 20 percent of registered New York voters rated Clinton “poor” in job performance. Said Miringoff, “19 percent think, right now, that she’s doing a poor job. The Hillary-haters are still there. The people who were willing to give her a chance, she won over.”
“At least she’s demonstrated the capability to change minds,” said Baruch College’s Muzzio. “There’s going to be an irreducible number of Hillary-haters, no matter what she does. Whether she changes water into wine or parts the Red Sea, they ain’t voting for her.”
No one may know how many Hillary-haters are out there, but Louise Wilson, 68, a retired home-economics teacher from upstate Corning, definitely is one of them. “I still think she’s opportunistic. … She’s driven and she doesn’t care who she walks on to get where she wants to go,” said Wilson, adding, “I felt she was not a lady.”
If she runs for president in 2008, Clinton will be the first senator from New York to do so since Robert F. Kennedy–also considered a carpetbagger. He was assassinated during his 1968 presidential campaign.
In terms of a presidential bid, the significance of Clinton’s success in New York may be unclear. But, in terms of the 2008 election, there’s likely little truth in the lyric: “It’s up to you New York, New York.”
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lbanderson@tribune.com
