Living History (83 page)

“Oh, was that you?” I said. Letterman and the audience roared, and, after that, I relaxed and had a great time. Some months later I branched out into other comedic venues, performing a deadpan routine as a “carpetbagger” at the annual press dinner in Albany, and later appearing on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.

In February 2000, I formally declared my candidacy at the State University of New York in Purchase, near our home in Chappaqua. The crowd was filled with jubilant supporters and political leaders from all over the state. Bill, Chelsea and my mother were all there. Senator Moynihan introduced me and told of his visits with Eleanor Roosevelt at her home in Hyde Park. He paid me the ultimate compliment, saying, “Hillary, Eleanor Roosevelt would love you.”

Patti Solis Doyle, the first person I had hired in 1992, coordinated my White House and campaign schedules, and she later took a leave of absence from the government to work fulltime in New York, overseeing logistics and helping to run campaign strategy.

Patti also worked with the fast-growing and influential Latino community, whose enthusiastic support of my campaign delighted me. I was so proud of Patti and the exceptional job she did for me. I often thought back to our first day in the White House, when her Mexican immigrant parents, who had dreamed of a better life for their six children, came to the Inauguration and cried with joy that their daughter was on the staff of the First Lady of the United States.

On the campaign, Patti joined an experienced and talented team led by my campaign manager, Bill de Blasio, who proved to be an outstanding strategist and trusted emissary among the many communities of New York; communications director Howard Wolfson, who ran an extraordinary rapid response operation; political director Ramon Martinez, who shared his sharp political instincts and encouraged me to reach out to new constituencies and “show them some love”; Gigi Georges, who coordinated my campaign with other Democratic candidates in New York and mobilized a genuine grassroots effort; deputy campaign manager for policy Neera Tanden, who had mastered every detail and nuance of the issues facing the state; research director Glen Weiner, who knew more about my opponents than their own staffs probably did; and finance director Gabrielle Fialkoff, who gracefully handled the thankless but critical job of raising the money to make the campaign possible. All of them worked night and day with dozens of other campaign staffers and thousands of volunteers on what became one of the most effective campaigns I have ever seen.

More good news was that Chelsea had taken enough extra courses at Stanford to be able to come home for the first half of her senior year to help her father in the White House and me in New York. She joined our Speedwagon crew to campaign for me whenever she could, which always boosted my spirits. She was a natural on the campaign trail.

I was so proud of the young woman she had become and grateful that she had emerged from eight trying years as a kind, caring person with her head on straight. I am very lucky to be her mother.

For the first months of the campaign, I’d taken most of the heat from the media. Now it was the Mayor’s turn. New Yorkers and the press took note that Giuliani was making little effort, other than fundraising, to win the Senate seat. He ran a campaign that was primarily New York City oriented. He rarely traveled outside his home base, and, when he did, he gave the impression that he would rather be home. He had offered no ideas for dealing with the faltering upstate economy or with racial tensions simmering beneath the surface in New York City. And he began to make mistakes.

A fatal police shooting in New York City in March of a black man named Patrick Dorismond underscored the Mayor’s political vulnerabilities. Giuliani’s handling of this tragic case inflamed old hostilities between his office and the city’s minority populations.

In this situation, the Mayor exacerbated a crisis when a calm and reassuring tone was needed. Citizens in many neighborhoods, especially minority ones, felt that the police under the Mayor’s leadership could not be trusted. Their wariness was fed by well-known cases like the shooting of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx the year before. Police officers, in turn, were legitimately frustrated that they were being misunderstood while trying to do their jobs effectively because of a city leadership at war with the communities they were trying to protect. When Giuliani released Dorismond’s sealed juvenile records, casting aspersions on a man who was dead, he merely drove the wedge deeper and intensified the distrust.

The more Giuliani continued with his divisive rhetoric, the more determined I was to offer a different approach. In a speech at Riverside Church in Manhattan, I laid out a plan for improving relations between the police and minorities, including better recruitment, training and compensation for the NYPD. Then I went to Harlem to speak at the Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Giuliani’s handling of the Dorismond case was wrong, and I intended to call him on it. Instead of easing the tensions and uniting the city, he had poured salt in the wound.

“New York has a real problem, and we all know it,” I said. “All of us, it seems, except for the Mayor.” The packed sanctuary erupted in cheers and hallelujahs.

My appearance in Harlem was a turning point in the campaign. After trailing Giuliani for months, I had finally gained traction, and I was even doing well upstate. Sustained attention to the voters and their local issues was paying off in growing support. I felt like I was beginning to get the hang of campaigning, and I was finding my political voice.

In mid-May, I was formally nominated as the U.S. Senate candidate from New York at the state Democratic convention in Albany. It was an enthusiastic gathering that brought together over 10,000 urban, rural and suburban party activists and political leaders, including Senators Moynihan and Schumer and many others whose generous advice and support carried me to the campaign finish line. At the last minute, the President of the United States appeared―much to the delight of the crowd―and of the Democratic nominee.

Shortly after my nomination, a seismic shift rattled the New York political landscape.

On May 19, Mayor Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and following news reports about his long-running extramarital affair. Suddenly, he was the one thrashing out his personal life in public. In spite of our political differences, I took no pleasure in this ironic twist, knowing all too well the private pain for everyone involved, especially the Giuliani children.

Mayor Giuliani ended his term with strength and compassion, reassuring and comforting the nation after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Because of our work together on behalf of the city and the victims of terrorism, we developed a productive and friendly relationship, which, I think, came as a surprise to both of us.

The Mayor’s departure from the race was not the welcome relief that some anticipated.

For months, I had planned a campaign against him. He may have been my toughest opponent, but I felt that my candidacy presented a clear choice to New York voters, and voters were responding. By the time his campaign ended, I was eight or ten points ahead, according to public opinion polls. Now I had to start over with a brand new opponent, Congressman Rick Lazio.

My campaign left little time for anything else in my life. When I did break away, it was either for official White House events I could not miss or, sadly, for what seemed to be a never-ending procession of memorial services for friends and colleagues. Casey Shearer, the twenty-one-yearold son of our dear friends Derek Shearer and Ruth Goldway suffered fatal heart failure while playing basketball one week before his graduation from Brown University. King Hassan II of Morroco died in July, and the United States lost a valued friend and ally. His son and successor, King Mohammed VI invited Bill, Chelsea and me to the funeral where Bill, in a sign of respect, joined thousands of male mourners in walking behind the coffin for three miles through the streets of Rabat, lined with over one million Morrocans.

The previous summer, John E Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren died tragically in a private plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. Bill and I felt great affection for John, whom we had gotten to know in private gatherings at his mother’s home on the Vineyard and at public events. We wanted John, his sister, Caroline, and her children to feel free to visit the White House at any time. After he was married, John brought his bride for a personal tour. When he saw that Bill was using his father’s desk in the Oval Office, it stirred a faint memory in him of playing beneath it and peeking through its small inset door while President Kennedy made phone calls. I remember John standing silently in front of the official portrait of his father, painted by Aaron Shikler, which we had hung in a prominent place of honor on the State Floor. It was heartbreaking to attend yet another funeral for someone with so much life and promise, surrounded by members of a family who had given so much to our country.

I also received terrible news about my friend Diane Blair. I frequently consulted with Diane during my campaign. She had graduated from Cornell University and knew New York well. She encouraged me to relax and enjoy myself, and she always laughed at tales of my missteps. Diane, an avid tennis player, seemed very fit at age sixty-one. In early March 2000, just a few weeks after she received a clean bill of health during a routine check-up, she noticed suspicious lumps on her leg. Within a week, she was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. She called to give me the news, and I was beyond devastated.

The prognosis was grim. I simply could not imagine going through the ups and downs of the coming years without Diane. Over the next few months, no matter how busy I was on the campaign, I tried to call her every day. Bill and I flew to Fayetteville, Arkansas, several times to be with Diane and with Jim, who took such good care of her.

Although she underwent highly toxic chemotherapy treatments that left her weak and caused her hair to fall out, Diane was a valiant fighter who never lost her smile or her loving spirit. Even in her last months, she and Bill competed to see who could do the New York Times Sunday Magazine crossword puzzle faster.

When Jim called in June to tell me the end was near, I left the campaign behind and flew to see Diane for the last time. By then, hospice nurses―living saints in my view―were tending her around the clock. Surrounded by her family and a legion of devoted friends, she slipped in and out of sleep as I stood next to her bed, holding her hand and leaning close to hear whatever she labored to say. As I got ready to leave, I bent down to kiss her goodbye. She pressed my hand tightly and whispered to me, “Don’t ever give up on yourself and what you believe in. Take care of Bill and Chelsea. They need you. And win this election for me. I wish I could be there when you do. I love you.”

Then Bill and Chelsea joined me at her bedside. She looked intently at us. “Remember,”

she said.

“Remember what?” Bill asked.

“Just remember.”

Five days later she died.

Bill, Chelsea and I later flew to Fayetteville for a memorial service to celebrate Diane’s extraordinary life. Just as Diane would have wanted it, the service was upbeat, lively and filled with music and stories of her personal and public passion to better her world. Presiding at the celebration, I said that Diane squeezed more out of her too-brief life than any of us could have done in three or four hundred years. I don’t know anyone who tried harder or had more success at living. Bill summed up Diane in a moving eulogy, saying: “She was beautiful and good. She was serious and funny. She was completely ambitious to do good and be good, but fundamentally selfless.” She certainly made my life happier. I never had a better friend, and I miss her every day.

On July 11, Bill began a two-week meeting at Camp David with Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat in an effort to resolve outstanding issues in the ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords. Barak, a former general and Israel’s most decorated soldier, was anxious for a final agreement that would fulfill the vision of Yitzhak Rabin, under whom he had served. Barak and his vivacious wife, Nava, quickly became friends whose company I enjoyed and whose commitment to peace I admired. Unfortunately, while Barak came to Camp David to make peace, Arafat did not. Although he told Bill repeatedly that peace had to be achieved while Bill was in office, Arafat was never ready to make the hard choices necessary to reach an agreement.

While campaigning, I kept in close touch with Bill, who expressed his growing frustration.

One night Barak even called me asking for any ideas I might have to convince Arafat to negotiate in good faith. At Bill’s request, Chelsea had accompanied him to Camp David and joined the group for informal lunches, dinners and casual conversations.

Bill had also asked my assistant, Huma Abedin, to help with hosting the delegations. An American Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia and speaks Arabic, Huma displayed the skill and grace of a seasoned diplomat as she interacted with the Palestinian and Israeli representatives during breaks in the meetings and over games of darts and pool.

Finally, at noon on July 25, Bill announced the close of the unsuccessful Camp David summit, acknowledging the deep disappointment he felt and urging both sides to continue working to find “a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” Their efforts continued during Bill’s remaining six months in the White House and nearly succeeded in talks in Washington and the Middle East in December 2000 and January 2001, when Bill put forward his last, best offer of a compromise peace proposal. In the end, Barak accepted Bill’s offer, but Arafat refused. The tragic events of the last few years show what a terrible mistake Arafat made.

By August 2000, it was time for the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

Bill and I were scheduled to address the delegates on the first night, August 14, and then leave the city, making room for Vice President Gore and his vice presidential pick, Senator Joe Lieberman, to accept the nomination and take center stage.