In eight years as New York’s U.S. senator, Hillary Clinton was sole sponsor of just three laws: a post office designated for a military hero, a historic site honoring a labor leader and an upstate road named for Tim Russert, the deceased host of NBC’s Meet the Press.
Yet her behind-the-scenes efforts -- co-sponsoring bills and using committee assignments, corporate connections and celebrity -- give her an edge against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in New York’s April 19 presidential primary. In a state where convention delegates are apportioned to the candidate who wins each congressional district, she has endorsements from all 18 of the state’s Democratic members of the House of Representatives.
Clinton left the Senate as one of the state’s most popular politicians after helping push the Bush administration to fund the rebuilding of lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She’s also credited with supporting farmers and manufacturers in depressed upstate areas. Voters gave her a 62 percent approval rating just before she left to become U.S. secretary of state for President Barack Obama, up from 30 percent when she took office in 2001, according to the Marist College poll.
“What impressed me was how much she did her homework, how hard she worked and how little she cared about the spotlight,” said Nabil Nasr, an entrepreneur and expert on manufacturing and technology at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Nasr can’t remember whether he’d even voted for Clinton when he first met her, weeks after she took office, at a gathering of executives she invited to discuss renewable energy and industrial recycling. “What began that day is still paying dividends today,” said Nasr, who last week attended a campaign rally for her.
New Arrivals
As U.S. Representative Charles Rangel tells it, the idea to turn the Illinois native and Arkansas resident into a New York senator began in 1997, just a year after her husband, Bill Clinton, won a second presidential term. In September 1999, less than a year after Bill Clinton was impeached, they became New Yorkers, purchasing a $1.7 million 11-room Dutch Colonial home in Chappaqua, a Westchester County hamlet. In November, she announced her Senate candidacy.
“She went around the state on a ‘listening tour’ to dispel the depiction of her as a carpetbagger.” said Rangel, a Democrat who’s represented Harlem since 1971.
Clinton cruised to victory in 2000, beating former Republican U.S. Representative Rick Lazio, 55 percent to 43 percent after a far-tougher competitor, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, decided not to run. She won a second term in 2006 with 67 percent to 31 percent for former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer.
In Washington, Clinton accepted a small office on Capitol Hill, fetching coffee for colleagues and reaching out to befriend the same Republicans who had pushed to impeach her husband, said journalist Carl Bernstein, author of “A Woman in Charge,” a 640-page biography.