A Definite Hillary Clinton Says She Is in Senate Race

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Tuesday that she definitely will be a Senate candidate in New York and that she intends to scale back her duties as first lady so she can move to the state and campaign “as vigorously as possible.”

The first lady acted to put to rest mounting speculation that she would decide against running, after a series of missteps that wounded her candidacy and polls that show her facing an increasingly competitive race against New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the likely Republican candidate.

“I intend to run,” she told supporters here. The first lady said she would make her formal announcement early next year.

Mrs. Clinton said she would be taking up residence in the house in Chappaqua that she and President Clinton recently purchased. “I’m going to be moving into my house as soon as the Secret Service tells me that it’s ready and available to be moved in to. Obviously, I will still be in Washington from time to time. I have to be. There are many things that I will still have to tend to. But I will be living in Westchester, and I’ll be traveling around the state and campaigning.”

Her announcement, which came during a campaign event before the United Federation of Teachers, seemed intended to reassure the party faithful, not to mention contributors, that she was not going to back out.

In what had the feel of an orchestrated question, the union’s president, Randi Weingarten, asked: “Is it yes or is it no?”

The first lady took the long road to her short answer. “You know, Randi, in the past months I have been--at last count--in at least 35 counties all over this state, and everywhere I’ve gone people talk to me about issues like what we’ve discussed today. And that’s very exciting to me because I believe that if we work together we really can make a difference for the children and families of New York. So, the answer is: Yes. I intend to run.”

The audience of educators burst into cheers as the downtown union meeting room became the unexpected backdrop for an unprecedented but troubled campaign’s attempt to buoy itself.

The announcement comes after the rockiest period of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, when even key Democrats here publicly questioned whether she is up to the task of running against the New York mayor. Critics have decried, among other things, the campaign’s lack of a full-time manager. But sources close to Hillary Clinton said last week that she has selected a campaign manager, Bill de Blasio, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s top official in New York, though she has not publicly announced it.

In the latest campaign misstep, the first lady appeared to have damaged her support among a core Democratic constituency--New York Jews--many of whom questioned her handling of Middle East issues. And some Democratic officials who have been shepherds of her campaign began publicly prodding her to roll up her sleeves, stop acting like a first lady and get more focused on the campaign.

Recent polls show Hillary Clinton slightly behind Giuliani or at best in a statistical dead heat. That is a far cry from her early leads last spring.

A spokesman for Giuliani’s campaign, Bruce Teitelbaum, called Hillary Clinton’s comments Tuesday “a non-announcement.”

“What happened today was an announcement about a press conference to announce that Mrs. Clinton intends to announce next year,” Teitelbaum said.