First lady to formally announce Senate candidacy in FebruaryNew poll shows she trails Giuliani
January 11, 2000
Web posted at: 3:55 p.m. EST (2055 GMT)
WHITE PLAINS, New York (CNN) -- After unofficially acknowledging in November that she is running for the U.S. Senate from New York, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a formal announcement of her candidacy will come in February.
Clinton said the February announcement was based on her own timetable, but she wants to make sure the president and their daughter Chelsea are at her side for the kickoff of her historic candidacy. No first lady has ever run for public office while her husband was president
"That's one of the plans that I have, and I have to be sure that I've got their schedules coordinated, but that's what I'm planning," Clinton said.
Mrs. Clinton's likely Republican opponent, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, has yet to give a timetable for the formal announcement of his candidacy.
The first lady moved into her new home last week, establishing a New York residency to qualify for the election. But a new statewide poll indicates she still lags behind Giuliani, and her favorable rating fell below 50 percent for the first time in the state since pollsters started watching her prospective bid.
The Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll found 49 percent of registered voters supported Giuliani, with Mrs. Clinton at 40 percent and 11 percent undecided. But the poll's margin for error was plus or minus 4 percentage points, meaning the race remains close.
The poll of 621 registered voters was conducted Sunday and Monday. The results are identical to the institute's December poll, according to pollsters from Marist College in Poughkeepsie.
The poll put Mrs. Clinton's positive rating at 48 percent, compared with 52 percent in December 1999, and a high of
68 percent the previous February. Giuliani's favorable rating is 61 percent in the latest count, about the same as the 60 percent level in December.
But 51 percent of the respondents wanted to see someone else run, with 45 percent in the poll satisfied with a choice between Mrs. Clinton and Giuliani.
"The best thing each of them have going for them is their opponent," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute. "The negatives are high enough to keep things locked in place."
Both Mrs. Clinton and the mayor have been campaigning across New York and raising money for months. On Monday, Clinton challenged Giuliani to spend only money they raise themselves for the contest but Giuliani said
he was not aware of the offer.
At a news conference Monday, Mrs. Clinton, suggested a ban on "soft money" and independent expenditures in the a race between her and Giuliani.
"If we could work out a ban on not only soft money but independent expenditures, which have already run ads against me, I think that would be a very good example to set for the rest of the country," she said.
Each candidate is expected to raise upwards of $20 to $25 million for the race, with a limit of $2,000 per donor. On top of that, each may benefit from the spending by their political parties of the unregulated donations raised in unlimited chunks known as "soft money."
Clinton, who has already received $350,000 from the Democratic Party, said she would forgo further funds only if Giuliani camp did the same.
"I would not do it at all if they would not do it," she said.
Clinton said her staff had approached the Giuliani campaign with the idea, but the mayor's political committee said that was untrue.
"We have not received any offer," said Bruce Teitelbaum, the head of Giuliani's senate exploratory committee. "They know how to reach us."
Teitelbaum said the Clinton challenge was dubious.
"In the last few months the only thing we know for sure is the Clinton campaign has raised millions in soft money and hundreds of thousands of dollars has been spent on campaign-style commercials for her benefit," Teitelbaum said.
Giuliani has used two fund-raising committees subject to more lenient donor limits than his official campaign committee to raise and spend several hundred thousand dollars on past political activities, the New York Times reported over the weekend.
"I was concerned by what I read about the practices being engaged by the Giuliani campaign. I think they do bear looking into," Mrs. Clinton said.
But Teitelbaum said there was no connection between those efforts and the Senate committee.
"Those committees were created years before Giuliani contemplated a run for Senate," he said.
Clinton said among the issues before New York voters are which candidate would be best to vote on Supreme Court nominees, to move toward universal health care and to help the state get a fairer share of federal tax revenue. Currently the state's taxpayers send $14 billion more to Washington than they get back in federal government programs.
The first lady also suggested she had a better temperament than Giuliani to persuade legislators to divide the federal pie more equitably.
"Whoever represents New York has to be able to get along with other senators from other places in order to make that argument, and to make it clear that it's not just a New York problem," she said.
Mrs. Clinton also offered her views on two other controversial issues in the news this week: gay marriage and the battle over Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy who was rescued off the coast of Florida after a shipwreck that killed his mother, stepfather and others fleeing the island.
As a senator, Clinton said she would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and which was signed into law by her husband. But she also said federal employees should have domestic partnership benefits.
"We ought to be providing domestic partnership benefits for people who are in homosexual and lesbian relationships," she said.
As for Elian Gonzalez, Clinton said the boy should not be "a political football. We ought to do what is in the best interests of this 6-year-old child."
The Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled last week that the boy's father in Cuba should have custody. But relatives have sued to keep the boy in the U.S, and on Monday a Florida judge sided with his U.S. relatives that he should remain in the country until March 6, so the court can hear arguments from the boy's great-uncle, who is seeking temporary custody.
This was Mrs. Clinton's first news conference since she began moving into the couple's new home in Chappaqua, New York, last week.
"I was there last night and working to open more boxes. I'm still moving things from the White House, and I think that will take a lot longer than I had planned," she said.
CNN's Phil Hirschkorn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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