New N.Y. Senate Challenger Running Even With Hillary Clinton in Polls

Despite the departure of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani from the closely watched U.S. Senate race in New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been unable to open up a gap over the Republican opposition, according to three independent polls.

When Giuliani pulled out of the race on May 19 to deal with his prostate cancer, Republican leaders put on game faces and predicted that by late summer or early fall their new candidate, Rep. Rick Lazio, would be running even with the first lady.

It didn’t take anywhere near that long for the little-known congressman from Long Island to become competitive. In fact, it didn’t really take any time at all.

Lazio formally announced his candidacy May 20. A pre-Memorial Day poll released May 25 by the Zogby International Group had the race a statistical dead heat,with Clinton at 46% and Lazio at 44%.

On June 4, a poll conducted by Blum & Weprin for the New York Daily News and cable television’s New York 1 news channel reported Clinton was at 46% and Lazio at 42%.

On June 7, the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute came out with its offering. It showed Clinton and Lazio tied at 44% each.

“I thought he’d draw even by Labor Day. I feel badly I was off by a full holiday--two if you count the Fourth of July,” said Kieran Mahoney, a New York-based GOP operative.

While Lazio has attributes that make him an attractive candidate in his own right--young, telegenic and eight years in Congress--his almost instant closing of the gap with the first lady added credence to the theory that no matter who the Republicans run against Clinton, it will be a close race.

“Her high negatives don’t change,” said pollster Lee Miringoff of Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion. “And, apparently that’s fairly easily transferable.”

“If you run against Hillary Clinton, and if you pass a fairly low hurdle of respectability, a lot of people are going to like you because they dislike her so much,” said Mahoney.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, 4 in 10 voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton. Her negatives have been running at that level for months.

That poll also found, however, that 58% of voters surveyed didn’t know enough about Lazio to form a favorable or unfavorable opinion.

With less than five months until the election, political veterans say the key to the race is how Lazio gets defined for the electorate.

“New Yorkers may not like her, but she’s got to make them like him less,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who has worked on many New York campaigns and was part of President Clinton’s successful 1996 reelection campaign team.

The Lazio camp and his allies are working hard at presenting him as a moderate Republican in tune with mainstream New Yorkers. His campaign bus is called the Mainstream Express. The candidate has T-shirts emblazoned with a “Made in New York” logo aimed at reminding voters that Clinton didn’t even live in the state until January. He also stresses that he has an eight-year record in Congress, while the first lady has no record and has never been an elected official.

On the other side, the Clinton camp argues that Lazio is a Newt Gingrich-loving conservative who voted for most of the “contract with America,” to shut down the federal government in 1995 and to slash funding for education and health care.