She’s Gonna Do It

Starting Sunday, Clinton will no longer be just the First Lady, she will be a candidate, starting an arduous, months-long tour of the State, which willcontinue until the November election. During many “preparatory visits,” when she held meetings in 40 different counties around the State, she announced the central themes of her likely-campaign: better health coverage and support for public education, especially in cities and neighbourhoods whose schools are inferior.

“I think I have some real work to do to get out and listen and learn from the people of New York and demonstrate that what I’m for is maybe as important, if not more important, than where I’m from,” she said in July when she launched her “listening campaign”. Even then, she recognised that the campaign will be long and hard fought, regardless of the outcome. “I have no illusions that it will not be a very difficult and challenging race, but that’s what should happen in a democracy,” she said.

Without a doubt, these months of campaigning will be necessary if Clinton is to reverse the current polls that show her losing to her likely Republican opponent, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,analysts said. Although she led the polls last spring when the possibility of a First Lady running for office was considered exotic, opinion polls show the tide turned against her over the summer, a fact that strengthened her resolve to put herself in front of the voters for the first time.

“Finally, she will lose our State,” political analyst John Zogby said recently. “In general, Democrats lose our State. She needs to hope that Rudy (Giuliani) makes a big mistake.”

Clinton has always been controversial as First Lady. In 1992, during her husband’s presidential campaign, the former high-priced lawyer offended some housewives by saying she chose a career instead of “staying home and baking cookies”. In Washington, she also has been criticised for overstepping her bounds in policy making, but was praised for her thorough understanding of issues by conservatives and liberals alike when she testified before Congress on overhauling the health care system. Questions were also raised about a suspiciouslylucrative investment Clinton made in the 1980s and for her role in the couple’s Whitewater real estate deal, which spawned years of Congressional and independent probes.