Living History (84 page)

I was greeted on stage by Democratic women Senators Barbara Mikulski, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, who herself had been through a wrenching Senate race in 1996. With all the attention focused on what I was going to do next, I wanted to make sure that, when I took the podium, the American people knew how much I appreciated the privilege of serving for eight years as their First Lady. “Bill and I are closing one chapter of our lives-and soon, we’ll be starting a new one … Thank you for giving me the most extraordinary opportunity to work here at home and around the world on the issues that matter most to children, women and families…. [and] for your support and faith in good times―and in bad. Thank you … for the honor and blessing of a lifetime.”

Bill’s speech followed mine, and his mere presence evoked a rush of nostalgia throughout the Staples Center, with people chanting “four more years” and enveloping him in a thunderous and warm reception. He gave a powerful accounting of his Presidency and a rousing endorsement of AI Gore. Then our role in the convention was over, and we were gone.

Within days, I began to prepare for three upcoming debates against Lazio. A young, telegenic Republican from Long Island, Lazio enjoyed strong support in the suburbs.

Unlike Giuliani, he was not divisive or hard-edged, nor was he well-known outside his district. With support and encouragement from Republican leaders across the country, he presented himself as the anti-Hillary candidate, running a negative campaign for most of the summer. It was not very effective. One of the odd advantages I had was that everyone already thought they knew everything about me, good or bad. Lazio’s attacks were old news. My campaign ignored the personal tone of Lazio’s campaign and lasered in on his voting record, as well as his work in Congress as one of Gingrich’s top lieutenants. People knew little about him, and our information about his positions was all they needed to fill in the blanks.

Our first debate was in Buffalo on September 13 and was moderated by a Buffalo native, Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press. After a series of questions about health care, the upstate economy and education, Russert showed a news clip of my appearance on the Today show when I went out on a limb defending Bill after the Lewinsky story broke.

Then Russert asked if I “regret[ted] misleading the American people” and whether I wanted to apologize for “branding people as part of a vast rightwing conspiracy.”

Although I was taken aback by the question, I had to respond, so I did: “You know, Tim, that was a very painful time for me, for my family and for our country. It is something I regret deeply that anyone had to go through. And I wish we all could look at it from the perspective of history, but we can’t yet. We’re going to have to wait until those books are written…. I’ve tried to be as forthcoming as I could, given the circumstances that I’ve faced. Obviously I didn’t mislead anyone. I didn’t know the truth. And there’s a great deal of pain associated with that, and my husband has certainly acknowledged …

that he did mislead the country as well as his family.”

The questions also covered school vouchers, the environment and other local issues, and that’s when Lazio made a critical mistake: He said that the upstate economy had “turned the corner.” But to anyone who lived upstate or who had spent time there, Lazio sounded out of touch. By then I had visited the region frequently and had held extensive discussions with residents about the problems of job loss and young people leaving the area. I had also developed an economic plan for the region that voters were taking seriously.

When the focus of the debate turned to campaign commercials and the use of socalled soft money―funds spent by outside political committees on behalf of a candidate or an issue―Russert showed clips of a Lazio commercial featuring the Congressman in a photo juxtaposed with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a coupling that had never taken place. The ad distorted the truth and exploited the popularity of a venerable New York public servant. It was paid for with soft money, large contributions that could be used by political parties or outside groups to support a candidate or attack his opponent. In the spring, I had called for a ban on all soft money, but I wasn’t going to commit to it unilaterally.

The Republicans had refused to forswear the use of soft money from outside groups, some of whom were busily raising $32 million in support of Lazio’s Senate bid.

Near the end of the debate, from behind his podium, Lazio began hectoring me about soft money and challenging me to ban large Democratic Party contributions in my campaign.

I could barely get a word in when he marched over to me, waving a piece of papercalled the “New York Freedom from Soft Money Pact”―and demanding my signature. I declined. He pressed in closer, shouting, “Right here, sign it right now!”

I offered to shake hands, but he kept badgering me. I only had time to utter one sentence in response before Russert ended the debate. I don’t know whether Lazio and his advisers thought they could fluster me or provoke me into anger.

Throughout the campaign, I had steeled myself for the possibility of personal attacks and was determined to stay focused on the issues―not on Lazio as a person. Like an internal mantra, I repeated to myself: “the issues, the issues.” Besides being more helpful to voters, it seemed a more civilized way to run a campaign.

The debate was another turning point in the race that helped push some voters into my corner, although I didn’t realize it right away. When I got off the stage, I had no idea how I had done and wasn’t sure how Lazio’s confrontational ploy would be received. His campaign immediately declared victory―and the press was buying it. Many of the first stories highlighted Lazio’s stunt and all but declared him the winner.

Nonetheless, my team was upbeat. Ann Lewis and Mandy Grunwald sensed that Lazio had come across as a bully rather than the nice guy he was trying to project. Public opinion polls and focus groups soon made it clear that a lot of voters, especially women, were offended by Lazio’s tactics. As Gail Collins wrote in The New York Times, Lazio had “invaded” my space. And many voters didn’t like it.

The public reaction didn’t stop Lazio from continuing a campaign that was largely negative―and personal. He sent out a fundraising letter stating that his message could be summed up in six words: “I’m running against Hillary Rodham Clinton.” His campaign was not about the people of New York; it was about me. So I began to tell audiences around the state: “New Yorkers deserve more than that. How about seven words: jobs, education, health, Social Security, environment, choice?”

Lazio also dredged up health care reform in a series of ads designed to touch a nerve with voters. But, as I had learned from months on the road, New Yorkers generally seemed to appreciate my effort to reform health care, even if it had not succeeded in revamping the whole system. In the intervening years, health care costs had soared, and HMOs and insurance companies were more restrictive in their coverage. On the campaign trail, I frequently talked about specific incremental reforms that I had helped push through and ways the Senate could address rising health care costs through legislation.

Late in the campaign, on October 12, the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists in Yemen. The powerful explosion killed seventeen American sailors and ripped a hole in the destroyer’s hull. This attack, like the embassy bombings, was later traced to al-Qaeda, the shadowy network of Islamic extremists led by Osama bin Laden that had declared war on the “infidels and crusaders.” That label applied to all Americans and many others across the world, including Muslims who denounced violent tactics and extremism. I cancelled my campaign events to go with Bill and Chelsea to Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia for the memorial service. I had met with the families of the American Embassy bombing victims in August of 1998; now I offered condolences to the families of our murdered sailors, young men and women who were serving their country and providing security in a critical region of the world.

I despise terrorism and the nihilism it represents, and I was incredulous when the New York Republican Party and Lazio campaign insinuated that I was somehow involved with the terrorists who blew up the Cole. They made this despicable charge in a television ad and an automatic telephone message directed to hundreds of thousands of New York voters twelve days before the election. The story they concocted was that I had received a donation from somebody who belonged to a group that they said supported terrorists―“

the same kind of terrorism that killed our sailors on the USS Cole. “The phone script told people to call me and tell me to “stop supporting terrorism.” It was sickening.

This last-minute desperation tactic blew up, however, thanks to a vigorous response by my campaign and with help from former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who cut a television commercial scolding Lazio: “Rick, stop with the sleaze already.”

By the final weeks of the campaign, I began to feel confident that I would win. But we had one last campaign scare the week before the election, when the race suddenly began to tighten. Lazio had been running an ad with two actresses playing suburban women who wondered how I had the nerve to show up in New York and think I deserved to be Senator.

We didn’t know whether voters were responding to Lazio’s ad or were influenced by the terrorism phone calls, or whether the shift in the race was simply a momentary fluke.

I hashed it over with Mark and Mandy until two in the morning and decided to make one last effort to reach out to women who might still be ambivalent about my candidacy.

Lazio was particularly vulnerable, I thought, on breast cancer research, an issue that I had worked on for eight years. After he entered the Senate race, the House leadership allowed him to hijack an important breast cancer funding bill that had been the brainchild of California Rep. Anna Eshoo and enjoyed broad bipartisan support. House leaders listed him as the lone sponsor of that bill, so that he could point to it in the campaign as a sign of his commitment to women’s issues. That was bad enough. Worse, when the bill finally passed, he supported cutting funding for the program. I cared passionately about breast cancer treatment and research and was disgusted when I learned that Lazio had played politics with such an important and emotional issue.

Marie Kaplan, a breast cancer survivor and advocate from Lazio’s own district on Long Island, had become one of my most faithful campaign volunteers. “Why not ask Marie to make an ad?” I suggested. And we did. In many ways, it was the best ad of the campaign. Marie explained what Lazio had done to the breast cancer funding bill and then said: “I have friends with questions about Hillary. I tell them, ‘Get over it. I know her.’ On breast cancer and health care and education and a woman’s right to choose, Hillary would never walk away. She’ll be there for us.’” She summed up everything I wanted people to think about as they cast their ballots.

I worked up until the last minute, campaigning in Westchester County with Representative Nita Lowey early on Election Day, November 7. Bill and Chelsea voted with me at our local polling station, Douglas Grafflin Elementary School in Chappaqua. After seeing Bill’s name on ballots for years, I was thrilled and honored to see my own.

As the results came in during the evening, it was clear that I was going to win by a much bigger margin than expected. I was getting dressed in my hotel room when Chelsea burst in to deliver the news: The final tally was 55 percent to 43 percent. Hard work had paid off, and I was grateful for the chance to represent New York and to contribute to our nation in a new role.

The presidential race, meanwhile, was a roller coaster. Little did we know at the time that thirty-six days would elapse before the country learned who the new President would be. Nor could we imagine the demonstrations, lawsuits, appeals and challenges that would arise over the disputed votes in Florida or the addition to our political lexicon of terms like “butterfly ballot” and “dimpled chad.”

The uncertainty in the presidential race tempered my elation on election night, but it did nothing to subdue the joyful victory party at the Grand Hyatt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The ballroom was packed with campaign staffers, friends, supporters and loyal Hillaryland aides who had taken leaves of absence from the White House during the last week of the campaign to help with “GOT” (get-out-the-vote) activities. I was overwhelmed by the generosity and openness of New Yorkers, who listened to what I had to say, got to know me and took a chance on me. I was determined not to let them down. I joined Bill, Chelsea, my mother, and scores of supporters in a deluge of confetti and balloons.

Dozens of hugs and handshakes later, I stood at the podium to thank my supporters. I told them: “Sixty-two counties, sixteen months, three debates, two opponents and six black pantsuits later, because of you, we are here!”

After eight years with a title but no portfolio, I was now “Senator-elect.”

Two days after the election, with the outcome of the presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush still in dispute, I returned to Washington to host a celebration of the White House’s two-hundredth anniversary. It could have been an awkward evening, given the political tension in the air. All the living former Presidents and First Ladies were there (except President and Mrs. Reagan, who stayed at home in California because of President Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease) as well as descendants and relatives of other Presidents. The magnificent black-tie gala sponsored by the White House Historical Association turned into a testament to American democracy as each former President spoke eloquently about our nation’s endurance in the face of controversy and upheaval.

“Once again,” said President Gerald Ford, “the world’s oldest republic has demonstrated the youthful vitality of its institutions and the ability and the necessity to come together … after a hard-fought campaign. The clash of partisan political ideas does remain just that-to be quickly followed by a peaceful transfer of authority.”