Hillary Clinton Links Giuliani to Right Wing

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that Rudolph W. Giuliani is tapping into a network of right-wing, non-New Yorkers to help pile up his fund-raising lead in their Senate contest.

The first lady said the Republican New York mayor is utilizing a “broad national network of people who are opposed to what I would do in the Senate.”

“He is playing on their fears and sending out these direct-mail requests and people that are seeing them are responding to it,” said Mrs. Clinton, who has raised $12 million to Giuliani’s $19 million. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”

Giuliani’s fund-raising letters are “more in line with the right wing of America than the mainstream of New Yorkers,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Giuliani campaign manager Bruce Teitelbaum responded: “Mrs. Clinton is obviously disappointed in her campaign and its ability to attract more support, so now she’s reverting to that old Clinton ruse of blaming the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Also Monday, Mrs. Clinton said life on the campaign trail has been harder than she expected.

“I’m having a great time, but I’m also seeing how hard it is” to be a candidate, the first lady told an audience of about 100 people at a community forum in the village of Coxsackie, just south of Albany.

“I’m almost embarrassed to think back--all the times that I would say to my husband, ‘Well, you could have said this differently, or you could have done that.’ Now, I would like to take all those words back because it’s very tough for both men and women,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton also repeated her support for gun licensing, a position shared by Giuliani.

She attacked the National Rifle Assn. for being stuck on a “theological view” about gun control, but she also warned against “people on the other extreme who want to take everybody’s guns away.”

“I’ve gone hunting,” she said. “I don’t have anything against guns if guns are used by responsible people.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.), who over the weekend reignited talk of entering the race, said Monday that the contest between Mrs. Clinton and Giuliani is shaping up as a personality-driven “food fight.”

Lazio said he offers voters a clear alternative.

“I am not trying to be difficult, I am not trying to be defiant,” he said. “I am simply trying to be what I think is a good public servant and good Republican in saying I think we have had a wake-up call.”