If it were possible to hold one’s breath for three weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton probably wouldn’t exhale until Election Day.
After almost two years of campaigning, Clinton has finally achieved a slight, ever-so-fragile lead in the race to become the junior U.S. senator from the Empire State. But the suspense in this high-profile contest is far from over.
Now, the question seems to be whether her opponent, Republican Rep. Rick Lazio, or outside events pose the bigger threat to her chances of winning.
Outside events intervened again Wednesday when a report by Independent Counsel Robert Ray concluded that the first lady gave “factually inaccurate” testimony on her role in the dismissals of White House travel office workers. But he also found that she may not have intentionally misled investigators.
Ray announced in June his decision not to indict the first lady. But the release of his final report on the travel office controversy was delayed until Wednesday so a three-judge panel could review it and the subjects of the investigation could write responses.
Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, challenged Ray’s conclusion on her testimony as “highly unfair and misleading.”
Kendall said in a written rebuttal that the report’s conclusion “is contradicted by the final report itself, which recognizes that she may not even have been aware of any influence she may have had on the firing decision.”
The report was released a day after a poll was published showing that Clinton leads Lazio, a congressman from Long Island, 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters, with a 4 percentage-point margin of error. But the survey, conducted by Newsday and New York television station WB11, shows Clinton has a continuing weakness among one of the linchpins of the state’s Democratic coalition–Jewish voters.
Clinton leads Lazio 60 percent to 36 percent among the state’s likely Jewish voters, well below the normally crushing advantage that winning Democrats roll up. In a race that political observers still say is too close to call, how events play out in the Middle East–and how she and President Clinton respond to them–could prove decisive.
In recent weeks, Clinton has made inroads in traditionally Republican territory in Upstate New York, and polls indicate that she came out ahead of Lazio in two televised debates.
Republican leaders have expressed concern that Lazio, a four-term congressman, seems to lack a clear message as the campaign enters its final days. His fundraising letters to Republicans nationwide say the reason they should send money to support him can be summed up in six words: “I’m running against Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Locally, that pitch guarantees him the “ABC” vote, or Anybody But Clinton, the 40 percent to 45 percent of New Yorkers who recoil at the thought of Clinton as their senator. Finding a compelling pitch about what he would do as a senator has proven tougher.
“The best news for Lazio is that his campaign has not been without its problems, but he’s still within striking distance,” said Lee Miringhoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
That’s why cementing the Jewish vote, which typically accounts for 10 percent to 12 percent of the statewide turnout, is “crucial for Clinton,” said John Mollenkopf, a political science professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “The biggest defectors from the Democratic Party over the last 10 years have been Jewish voters. They’re the ones who voted for [New York Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani.”
Clinton caused an uproar in New York when she hugged Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, during a visit to the Middle East.
But aggrieved Jewish voters also point to the first lady’s long-standing support for a Palestinian state as further proof that she would not represent their views in the Senate.
Clinton’s vulnerability among Jews was on display at a recent New York City rally in support of Israel.The rally, in front of the Israeli consulate in Manhattan, drew an estimated 15,000 people, some of whom carried anti-Clinton signs with such slogans as “Hillary: Arafat’s Pal.”
Both Senate candidates spoke to the crowd, but they drew starkly different responses. First, Lazio was cheered when he lambasted the Clinton administration’s decision to abstain on a United Nations Security Council vote critical of what it deemed excessive use of force by the Israelis.
Moments later, when the first lady was introduced, the crowd erupted in boos and catcalls. Hurrying through a short speech, she criticized the Security Council resolution but not the U.S. decision to abstain.
For Michael Chenkin, who handed out fliers headed “Hillary Clinton vs. Israel” at the rally last week, the first lady’s position on Israel is in keeping with what he sees as her “phenomenally dirty record.”
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“On the issue of Israel, she has a history of moral equivalence,” said Chenkin, a securities consultant who lives in New York City. “And her personal behavior over 20 years–Whitewater, the White House travel office and so on–suggests to me that this is a person whose character thoroughly disqualifies her from being in the Senate.”
The report Wednesday on the White House travel office controversy again brought the character issue into play.
The release of the report keeps Ray’s office on a schedule he announced earlier this year, to wrap up the independent counsel’s investigations of the Clinton administration by shortly after the time President Clinton leaves office.
The travel office controversy began in 1993, when the new administration dismissed seven employees of the office that makes travel arrangements for reporters traveling with the president. The employees were accused of financial mismanagement and replaced with Clinton associates.
The staff of the travel office serves at the pleasure of the president, so the legality of the dismissals was not challenged. But Republican congressional critics accused the White House of heavy-handed tactics. The office’s former director, Billy Dale, was tried and acquitted on charges of mishandling the office’s petty cash account.
The first lady told congressional investigators and investigators for former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr that she did not have a “role” in the firings.
But Ray, who has taken over Starr’s investigation, concluded there was “overwhelming evidence” that concerns the first lady expressed did play a role in White House officials’ decision to fire the workers.
Ray said he found evidence of “eight separate conversations” in which she discussed problems in the travel office with White House officials. Ray concluded those conversations were “a significant–if not the significant–factor” in “influencing the pace of events.”
But Ray said it was unclear whether she was aware of the impact of her conversations on the officials who decided to fire the workers and also unclear whether her statements to investigators were “knowingly false.”