The New York Times > New York Region > Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans

The New York Times > New York Region > Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans: "February 22, 2005
Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
February 22, 2005

Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and the conventional wisdom about how polarizing a figure she is? Well, think again.

Recent polls have shown that Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, may have turned a corner politically, sharply reducing the number of voters in the state who harbor negative views of her.

Pollsters say the change is remarkable for a woman who has long been shadowed by a seemingly implacable group of voters - commonly referred to as Hillary haters - who dislike her, no matter what she does, and who pose a potential obstacle to any presidential ambitions she may harbor.

A measure of how far Senator Clinton has come was on display Sunday when Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona, said on "Meet the Press" that he thought Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, would make a good president, although he said that he would support his party's nominee. She returned the compliment, saying when asked by the program's host, Tim Russert, that Senator McCain would be a good president.

The changing view of Mrs. Clinton coincides with a period following the November election in which she offered a series of speeches filled with references to faith and prayer, while putting less emphasis on polarizing social issues like gay marriage and abortion.

The result of these comments has been an emerging image of Senator Clinton that is far different from the caricature that Republicans have painted of her: that of a secular liberal whose stances are largely at odds with a public that they say is concerned about the nation's moral direction.

Political analysts say the themes Senator Clinton has emphasized - combined with the hard-working image she has sought to project - appear to be causing large numbers of voters to re-evaluate her in New York, although not nationally, where the number of people who disapprove of her is still high. In a Marist poll last fall, roughly 4 in 10 Americans had negative views of her.

Her progress appealing to once skeptical New Yorkers was illuminated by a New York Times poll released last week that showed that 21 percent of New Yorkers had an unfavorable opinion of how she is handling her job, down significantly from the 29 percent of voters who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.

(In two recent back-to-back surveys, pollsters for Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn., also found a notable decline in the number of New York voters who expressed a negative view of Mrs. Clinton.)

At the same time, Senator Clinton's job approval rating has increased to 69 percent from 58 percent in October 2002, according to the Times poll. That is higher even than the 63 percent approval rating of Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York who was re-elected last year to a second term with a record 71 percent of the vote and who is known for his attention to upstate concerns.

The new attitudes toward Mrs. Clinton may be forcing Republicans to reconsider how to deal with an opponent they had until now viewed as an enticing target because of the depth of negative feelings she inspires among large numbers of New York voters.

Independent political analysts say her strong standing may give pause to any big-name Republican thinking about challenging her in 2006, chief among them Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki. In fact, a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month found that Mrs. Clinton would defeat both Mr. Pataki and Mr. Giuliani in head-to-head contests.

"There isn't a long line of opponents forming to take her on in 2006," said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

But New York Republican leaders say that they are eager to challenge Senator Clinton, especially since Republicans from around the country will almost certainly provide plenty of money and other campaign support to defeat her, as they did in 2000.

New York Republicans also say that the senator has had a free ride so far and that her opponent in the campaign will have an easy time driving up her negative ratings - and halting her rise in the polls - by pointing out what they describe as her poor record of accomplishment and her liberal ideology.

"Clinton has been operating in a vacuum and there's been nobody taking her on," said the New York State Republican Party chairman, Stephen Minarik. "Frankly, her numbers don't intimidate me whatsoever. I'm looking forward to this challenge."

Mrs. Clinton's advisers say they are taking nothing for granted. "We know that Republicans are preparing to wage a well-funded and negative campaign," said Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. "Senator Clinton's continued hard work and strong record will serve as the best antidote to their groundless attacks."

Mrs. Clinton's current standing is a far cry from her situation in 2000, when her Republican opponent, Representative Rick A. Lazio, sought to build much of his campaign around the large number of New Yorkers who had a negative opinion of her, then about one in three.

The senator's closest advisers say her popularity stems from her success at swaying voters to her side with frequent trips around the state and attention to local concerns.

But other political analysts argue that the lift Mrs. Clinton is enjoying reflects a growing comfort with her among New Yorkers who may not have entirely believed her when she pledged in 2000 to serve out a full term and not seek a higher office.

During the race in 2000, Republicans constantly attacked Mrs. Clinton as a carpetbagger who was seeking to use the Senate seat in New York as springboard to the presidency, perhaps as early as 2004. But in the end, Mrs. Clinton kept a low profile during the last presidential election, even as many Democrats argued that she could have won her party's nomination handily.

"The No. 1 concern many people had about her - that she would run for president before finishing her term - has not happened," observed one Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "She kept her word and the worst suspicions about her have turned out not to be true."

As for the inevitable questions about Mrs. Clinton's future presidential ambitions, that does not seem to trouble New York voters nearly as much as it did in 2000. The recent Times poll showed that of the voters who do expect Senator Clinton to run for president in 2008, 67 percent said it would make no difference in whether or not they would vote for her for Senate in 2006, and 18 percent said it would make them more likely to vote for her.