Now That She’s In, Mrs. Clinton Needs to Shed Outsider Role

As the New York U.S. Senate race heats up, Republicans are directing heavy fire at a candidate who has no roots in the Empire State and whose political ambition is a ripe target. Yet others dismiss the whole carpetbagger issue as “truly ridiculous,” hoping that “cosmopolitan New Yorkers can rise above such a provincial attitude,” according to one writer.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton may take solace from these words as she unpacks boxes in her newly purchased home in suburban Westchester County--but the author won’t be cheering her on this fall. For the year was 1964, the carpetbagging Senate candidate was Robert F. Kennedy and the writer was a Manhattan College student (and liberal Democrat) named Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Today, Giuliani is the Republican mayor of New York and Clinton’s likely opponent in the November election. He routinely belittles her as an outsider who does not understand New York, and his supporters have brushed off his earlier comments, noting that political attitudes can change.

Issue Rarely Affects Outcome of Campaigns

But so do addresses, say a host of political observers, suggesting that the carpetbagger issue, while undeniably potent with some voters, is rarely the kind of attack that by itself determines the outcome of a campaign, in New York or anywhere else. It didn’t hurt Kennedy, who won by more than 700,000 votes, and Clinton hopes the state’s history of welcoming political outsiders will also be a factor in her race.

“It’s hard to base a campaign against your opponent on the carpetbagging issue, especially in New York, because millions of voters here are newcomers in one way or another,” said George Arzt a veteran New York political consultant. “New York has a long tradition of welcoming people. . . . It’s almost expected that you’re going to be from someplace else.”

Moving from one place to another is an American tradition. About 16% of the population moves each year--about 40 million people, more than any other country--according to the Census Bureau. The majority leave cities for suburbs, but before Clinton takes comfort in such demographic trends, she has much bigger problems to confront, says John Mollenkopf, professor of political science at the City University of New York.

“The first lady needs to articulate a better vision of who she is and what she stands for, so New Yorkers will feel that she is truly one of them,” he said, noting that Giuliani leads her, 49% to 40%, in the latest poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The mayor led her among white female voters--an astonishing fact to many observers, who expected Clinton to exploit a gender gap.

In a Daily News poll released Friday, however, Giuliani and Clinton were in a statistical dead heat, with the mayor holding a 46%-to-44% lead. Meanwhile, as she increased the tempo of her campaign, Clinton underwent bruising press interviews. She denied rumors she intends to separate from President Clinton or that she had ever used drugs. Tying to steer the debate back to the issues, she said such personal questions were out of bounds.

“She’s got some rough sledding ahead,” Mollenkopf said, but he stressed that while the residency question will play a role in the race--some experts expect the Giuliani campaign to run a TV political spot showing Hillary Clinton awkwardly putting on a Yankee baseball cap--it will probably not be a killer issue.

Under New York law, Senate candidates need only be a resident on election day. And Clinton is not the first to campaign as a newcomer. In fact, New York’s first U.S. senator, Rufus King, was a longtime Massachusetts resident who moved into the state just before his election in 1792.

Yet Clinton’s campaign is “unquestionably one of the purest forms of carpetbagging we’ve seen,” said Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine. He noted that Kennedy had at least grown up in nearby Bronxville and that James Buckley, a longtime Connecticut resident who won a New York Senate seat in 1970, practiced law in New York for 14 years. “Mrs. Clinton had no roots here; she began her campaign before she even moved into the state,” Ehrenhalt said, “and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that.”

The issue inflames Clinton’s die-hard opponents, but it hasn’t caught fire in Chappaqua, the first couple’s new home, because relatively few residents have put down longtime roots. As Manhattanites moved in during recent years, lured by elegant homes and excellent schools, the population has grown to more than 11,000. The upscale community, 35 miles north of New York, looks more like a leafy village than a suburb, with small shops and semi-rural neighborhoods--but it is filled with big-city lawyers, stockbrokers and other new arrivals.

Ever since the first couple moved in, residents have expressed sharply differing views of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. But few have said her outsider status would change many votes in a town where so many people hail from other places. Indeed, many believe that what Mrs. Clinton does, if anything, to blend into her new community may have more of an impact.

“There’s a lot of goodwill toward her here,” said Susan Wiseman, an attorney and mother of two who moved to Chappaqua 18 months ago. “But I think she needs to look as if she’s part of the community somehow, to get involved.”

Few seem to be harping on the residency issue, and that includes die-hard opponents. “I am a lifelong Republican, I have lived here 27 years, and I won’t support her,” said Patsy Kuntz, who plans to move to Vermont within two years. “But that [the carpetbagger question] is not the main reason. It’s just that I disagree with her on so many issues.”

On the Democratic side of the fence, attorney Bruce Cohen (late of Scarsdale and Manhattan) says too much has been made of the residency issue, suggesting that “the bottom line is what a candidate thinks, not how long she’s lived here.”

If they’re riled about anything, Chappaquetians grumble about the long traffic delays they’ve been experiencing since the Clintons moved into their $1.7-million Dutch Colonial on a cul-de-sac just off a main road. They worry that hordes of gawking tourists will destroy their hard-earned privacy.

“The other day, when Hillary was in town, a school bus was stuck in traffic for 40 minutes,” said Leslie Fitts, who recently moved to Chappaqua after 38 years in Southern California. “You also hear skeptical talk about her just moving in and running for Senate. It’s in the back of some peoples’ minds, but what she’s doing is perfectly legal.”

While voters have said in several surveys that Hillary Clinton’s biggest negative is her lack of New York roots, many pollsters believe these are people who already oppose her. In the most recent Marist survey, 53% said they were concerned by her recent arrival, but 52% liked the fact that she had moved to Chappaqua. This split has prompted some GOP strategists to approach the carpetbagging issue with great caution.

‘A Steppingstone to the U.S. Presidency?’

“I think countless New Yorkers hear the carpetbagger charge and they say, ‘Hello? I’m from somewhere else, my family was from somewhere else,’ so it doesn’t resonate all that much with them,” says Jay Severin a GOP political consultant. “If this charge is going to stick, Republicans should make it part of a larger question: Is she going to stay here? Or is this a steppingstone to the U.S. presidency?”

Beyond New York, numerous outsiders have fought off carpetbagging charges to win office. In Arizona, a war hero named John McCain was blasted for moving to Tucson in 1982 for the sole purpose of winning a congressional seat; he triumphed, telling voters that, as an Army brat and POW during the Vietnam War, Hanoi was where he had lived the longest.

In California, Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan moved into Orange County in 1984 after reapportionment squeezed him out of his Los Angeles district; he went on to beat a longtime incumbent. Currently, the 20th Congressional District seat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is held by Peter Deutsch, a New Yorker who graduated from Yale Law School in June 1982, moved to Florida and six months later was elected to the state Legislature.

Assuming that the residency issue fades, Hillary Clinton will have much bigger issues to confront, such as her surprising lack of support among New York women, said Wiseman. “Maybe it’s because of all the scandals,” she noted, “or the fact that women can often judge women more harshly than men.”

To put on a more human face, the first lady might try to become a familiar figure around town, Wiseman suggested. “Maybe she can make a speech at the high school, or invite people over for tea. But I don’t think I’ll run into her at Starbucks--there’s a limit to how neighborly she can be.”