Opinion: Summer fun for Hillary and Rudy

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Even as they concentrate, for now, on winning converts within their own parties, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani inevitably eye one another as they push forward with their White House campaigns.

Both are New York-based politicians who have lived through widely publicized tumult in their personal lives. They almost directly clashed in the political arena once before -- Giuliani was the presumed GOP challenger when Clinton first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, but he withdrew from the contest, largely because he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now, with each leading in national polls as they seek presidential nominations, there’s a good chance they will go toe to toe in the 2008 general election.

Saturday night, they’ll be almost within shouting distance of one another in the Hamptons, the famed summer colony on the east end of Long Island that long has been renowned as a playground for the rich. The folks Clinton and Giuliani will be hanging with almost assuredly will meet that profile.

Clinton -- along with her husband, the former president -- will be raising campaign money at a pricey dinner at the East Hampton home of billionaire investor Ronald Perelman. (As we wrote about previously, she starts her day with a fundraiser masquerading as a pancake breakfast.)

Giuliani -- along with wife Judith -- will be in nearby Southampton, where they will be the guests of honor at a nonpolitical ‘evening of dining & dancing,’ a gathering of social elites that will benefit a local hospital.

It undoubtedly is a long-standing engagement for the Giulianis, because as Newsday’s Tom Brune notes in a blog, the candidate has a rather important engagement early the next morning in Des Moines. That’s where the GOP presidential contenders will meet up for a debate on ABC’s ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos.’

We’ll be checking for bags under Giuliani’s eyes.

-- Don Frederick