Living History (81 page)

My White House staff had other reasons to worry about what it would mean if the First Lady suddenly turned into a candidate for the U.S. Senate. My staff was going full steam ahead with my domestic policy agenda. They wanted to be sure I would continue to support these efforts if I ran. I told them that, Senate race or not, I would continue advocating for all of our initiatives―from Save America’s Treasures to afterschool care.

The prospect of a campaign also raised the question of whether I could continue to serve as a representative of American interests abroad. Throughout Bill’s tenure, I had traveled the world on behalf of women’s rights, human rights, religious tolerance and democracy.

Thinking and acting globally might be exactly the opposite of what I would need to do if I were running a New York campaign. In the midst of my deliberations, I had to keep commitments for official visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco and a trip to a Kosovar refugee camp along the Macedonian border. I had spoken out strongly in favor of Bill’s leadership of NATO in the bombing campaign to force Slobodan Milosevic’s troops out of Kosovo. I helped the Macedonians reopen textile factories to put people back to work in order to avoid economic instability that could have undermined NATO’s goal of returning the Kosovars to their homes.

As the spring progressed, I hashed over all of the campaign scenarios with advisers and friends, and each discussion turned into a spirited debate about my future. One thing we talked about is euphemistically referred to as “the spouse problem.” In my case, that was an understatement. It’s always difficult to figure out the appropriate role for the wife or husband of a political candidate. My dilemma was unique. Some worried that Bill was still so popular in New York and such a towering political figure in America that I would never be able to establish an independent political voice. Others thought the controversy attached to him would overwhelm my message. Logistical considerations relating to “my spouse” were tricky. If I were to announce my candidacy at a kickoff event, would the President of the United States sit quietly behind me on the stage, or would he speak too?

Over the course of the race, would he campaign on my behalf, as he would for other Democratic candidates across the country, or would that consign me to being his surrogate again? A fine line would have to be drawn between asserting myself as a candidate in my own right and taking advantage of the President’s support and advice.

One benefit of my decision-making process was that Bill and I were talking again about matters other than the future of our relationship. Over time, we both began to relax.

He was anxious to be helpful, and I welcomed his expertise. Bill patiently talked over each of my concerns and carefully evaluated the odds I faced. The tables were now turned, as he played for me the role I had always performed for him. Once he had given his advice, it was my decision to make. We both knew that if I ran, I would be on my own as I had never been before. With each conversation, I found myself swinging back and forth. One minute it seemed like a great idea to run. The next minute I thought it was crazy. So I kept pondering what to do, waiting for lightning to strike.

I needed a push. Finally I got one, but it didn’t come from a political adviser or Democratic leader. In March, I went to New York City to join tennis legend Billie Jean King at an event promoting an HBO special about women in sports. We gathered at the Lab School in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, joined by dozens of young women athletes who were assembled on a stage adorned with a giant banner that said “Dare to Compete,” the title of the HBO film. Sofia Totti, the captain of the girls’ basketball team, introduced me. As I went to shake her hand, she leaned toward me and whispered in my ear.

“Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton,” she said. “Dare to compete.” Her comment caught me off guard, so much so that I left the event and began to think: Could I be afraid to do something I had urged countless other women to do? Why am I vacillating about taking on this race? Why aren’t I thinking more seriously about it? Maybe I should “dare to compete.”

The encouragement from Sofia Totti and so many others reminded me of a scene in one of my favorite movies, A League of Their Own. The star of a women’s professional baseball team, played by Geena Davis, wants to leave the team before its season ends to return home with her husband. When the team’s coach, played by Tom Hanks, challenges her decision, she says, “It just got too hard.” Hanks replies, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it―the hard is what makes it great.” After years as a political spouse, I had no idea whether I could step from the sidelines into the arena, but I began to think that I might enjoy an independent role in politics. All over the United States and in scores of countries, I had spoken out about the importance of women participating in politics and government, seeking elective office and using the power of their own voices to shape public policy and chart their nations’ futures. How could I pass up an opportunity to do the same?

Many of my friends weren’t persuaded. One afternoon in the spring, Maggie Williams and I went for a long walk. One of my closest friends and advisers, Maggie is a woman of great political acumen. She knew time was running out on making a decision, and for more than an hour she listened to me talk about whether I should enter the race.

“I just don’t know what to do,” I told her.

“I think it’s kooky,” she said. “And anyone who cares about you will tell you the same thing.”

“Well, I think I might do it,” I said.

I wasn’t surprised by Maggie’s reaction. She was protective and didn’t want me to be hurt. But by trying to talk me out of it, Maggie helped me think through and face the reasons to go forward.

Some people said that serving in the Senate might be a letdown after the White House. But all the issues I care about are affected by the United States Senate. And if I wasn’t a Senator, I certainly would be trying to influence those who were. “The U.S. Senate is the most important democratic body in the world,” Bob Rubin told me. “It would be an honor to be elected and to serve.” I agreed.

The mechanics of a campaign began to seem more manageable, too. I thought I could win if I could raise the $25 million needed for a statewide race in New York. Our good friend Terry McAuliffe, a native of Syracuse and an experienced and effective fundraiser, told me that if I were willing to work harder than I ever had in my life, I could win. That was encouraging. I also thought that I could make inroads in traditional Republican bastions.

Parts of upstate New York reminded me of neighboring Pennsylvania, where my father had his roots. And many of rural New York’s problems were similar to those that had plagued Arkansas: hard-pressed farmers, disappearing manufacturing jobs and young people leaving for better opportunities. Besides, Mayor Giuliani didn’t seem eager to spend time outside New York City, which was still predominantly Democratic. If I proved to New York voters that I understood the issues their families faced and was determined to work hard for them, I just might be able to do it.

If electoral politics sometimes seemed to be a universe of its own, I still had plenty of doses of reality to keep things in perspective throughout the late spring and early summer of 1999. Susan McDougal was finally acquitted of obstruction of justice in the Whitewater case on April 12, 1999, having served eighteen months in jail for refusing to testify before the Whitewater grand jury. Over the course of her trial, other witnesses had stepped forward to say they too had been pressured by Starr. It was another repudiation of Starr’s legal tactics, but I hated the inordinate price Susan McDougal had paid. She steadfastly maintained that Starr had pressured her to falsely implicate Bill and me, and when she refused, she was held in contempt and imprisoned, doing some of her time in solitary confinement. In Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, the story of three women’s ordeals in China from before the Communist takeover to the Cultural Revolution, I ran across another Chinese saying that summed up my opinion of Starr’s investigations: “Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence.”

Then on April 20, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado opened fire on their classmates and held their school under siege for hours before turning their guns on themselves. Twelve students and one teacher died in the massacre. The teenage killers reportedly felt alienated at their school and had meticulously planned the attack as a demonstration of their own power and desire for revenge. They were able to obtain a small arsenal of pistols, shotguns and other weapons, some of which were concealed in their trench coats when they went into the school.

A month after the shootings, Bill and I went to Littleton, Colorado, to visit with the families of victims and survivors. It was gut wrenching to see the faces of parents who were living through their worst night mare, dealing with the loss of their own children in such a senseless, disturbing act of violence. Parents and teenagers alike asked Bill and me to make sure these horrible losses were not in vain. “You can give us a culture of values instead of a culture of violence,” Bill told a gathering of Columbine students in the gymnasium of a neighboring high school. “You can help us to keep guns out of the wrong hands. You can help us to make sure kids who are in trouble―and there will always be some―are identified early and reached and helped.”

The Columbine tragedy was not the first, nor the last, episode involving gun violence at an American high school. But it ignited a call for more federal action to keep guns out of the hands of the violent, troubled and young―a lethal combination. Bill and I convened an event attended by forty members of Congress from both parties to announce a White House proposal to raise the legal age of handgun ownership to twenty-one and limit purchases of handguns to one per month. And I spoke out again about the pervasiveness of violence on television, in movies and in video games. Despite the public outcry, Congress failed to act on two simple measures regarding guns: to close the socalled gun-show loophole that allows people to buy guns without background checks and to require child safety locks on guns.

This congressional lack of will to buck the all-powerful gun lobby and pass sensible gun safety measures made me think about what I might be able to do, as a Senator, to pass common sense legislation. In an interview in May, I told CBS anchor Dan Rather that, if I ran for the Senate, it would be because of what I had learned in places like Littleton―

and in spite of what I had lived through in Washington.

The Senate race began to take shape. Giuliani met in Texas with Governor George W.

Bush, who had just announced the formation of his presidential exploratory committee.

The Mayor also labeled me a carpetbagger and announced that he would go to Arkansas to raise money for his campaign. A clever ploy, I thought―one that raised him both attention and money and gave me a taste of the campaign to come. Rep. Lowey, one of the most effective and popular members of Congress, announced that she would not run. In June, I took the first concrete steps necessary for a Senate campaign, announcing that I would form an exploratory committee. I enlisted the help of media consultant Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, the shrewd and insightful pollster who worked with Bill, and I began interviewing potential campaign staff.

During the White House years, I had often escaped to New York City with my mother or Chelsea to take in Broadway shows, museum exhibits or just to visit friends. Even before I contemplated a run for the Senate, the state had been on the top of our short list of places to live after Bill’s term ended. This desire grew over the years and had now hardened into a firm decision. While Bill intended to build his presidential library in Arkansas and to spend time there, he also loved New York. From a purely practical standpoint, it was a perfect base of operations for him, given the amount of time he would be traveling and speaking at home and overseas, and continuing his public service through his foundation.

We had already talked about buying a house, and before long, we were house hunting.

But this ordinarily routine process was complicated by the security concerns of the Secret Service. We couldn’t live on certain kinds of streets, and any house we bought had to have space for security personnel. Nevertheless, the search was fun for me. We had lived in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion and the White House, but we hadn’t owned our own home for almost twenty years. Eventually we found the perfect place, an old farm house and barn in Chappaqua, north of New York City in Westchester County.

I also started reaching out to potential contributors for the first time on my own behalf.

At a major fundraiser for the Democratic Party in Washington on June 7, 1999, Bill and I were welcomed on stage by former Texas Governor Ann Richards, whose sharp wit and homespun humor were legendary on the political circuit.

“Hillary Clinton, the next junior senator from New York, and, of course, her lovely husband, Bill,” she said in her deep Texas drawl. “Man, I bet he’s really going to shake up that Senate spouses club.”

Bill accepted the good-natured teasing and delighted in the public support I was receiving.

He understood the sacrifices I had made over the years so that he could serve in government. Now, recognizing that I had a chance to move beyond the derivative role of political spouse and test my political wings, he encouraged me to forge ahead. It would be awkward for him to watch from the sidelines, but he gave me unconditional and enthusiastic support as his wife―and as a candidate.

I received a boost in late June from another unexpected source: Father George Tribou, the priest who had run the Catholic boys’ high school in Little Rock for many years. He had become a friend of mine even though he disagreed with my prochoice position. He had stayed overnight in the White House, and I had arranged for him to meet His Holiness Pope John Paul II during the papal visit to St. Louis in 1999 Father Tribou wrote me a letter dated June 24,1999:

Dear Hillary,