First Lady Hillary Clinton Savors Historic Senate Victory

NEW YORK — Addressing the media as a Democratic senator-elect, first lady Hillary Clinton spoke of coalition building, discussed her initial bill as New York’s junior senator. Clinton said she expected a “positive reception” in her new position, despite the efforts of many of her new congressional colleagues to remove her husband Bill Clinton from the presidency, and other partisan issues.

“I see this as a real opportunity to work in a bipartisan way with people who are interested in many of the same concerns that I have been for a lifetime, and will be taking with me to the Senate,” said Clinton, who defeated homegrown New York Republican Rick Lazio on Tuesday.

Clinton added that she was still hopeful for a 50-50 split between the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. A winner may not be determined for days in the Washington race between Republican Slade Gorton and Democrat Maria Cantwell.

“This is so close, no one will be able to get anything done without building bipartisan coalitions,” Clinton said, adding that she believes she has “allies on both sides of the aisles.”

Resentful Republicans and jealous Democrats may play a factor in spoiling the excitement over Clinton’s win, which made her the only first lady ever to win elective office.

“She’ll be one of 100 co-equals. She’ll have to get used to that,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., warned Wednesday. “Getting a lot of attention and getting something done in the Senate don’t always go hand in hand. If she’s smart, she’ll keep a pretty low profile for a while.”

Clinton said her first bill would seek targeted economic help for upstate New York, including programs to add jobs and high-tech infrastructure to the area. On the national level, she said she believed a “broad coalition” would “build toward quality and affordable health care.”

Asked about a run for the presidency in 2004, Clinton said she would serve her six years as New York’s junior senator.

Hailed by some, demonized by others and second-guessed by many for her loyalty to her husband despite the sex scandal that nearly cost him the White House, Hillary Clinton has been one of the most polarizing figures in American politics.

Aggrieved wife. Overbearing feminist. Outstanding lawyer. Financial manipulator. Independent thinker. Inflexible bureaucrat. And now, U.S. senator.

Love her or hate her, most Americans have an opinion about Clinton. A lightning rod for controversy during her years in the White House, Clinton will remain so in her new role as the only first lady to seek or win political office.

Breaking an unofficial rule of politics that winners don’t begin their victory speech until the loser has finished conceding, Clinton began her Tuesday remarks while Lazio was still making his concession speech.

“I will work my heart out for you for the next six years,” said Clinton, who took the stage with the president and their daughter, Chelsea, before a packed room of cheering supporters at a Manhattan hotel.

“I promise you tonight that I will reach across party lines to bring progress for all of New York’s families,” she said. “Today we voted as Democrats and Republicans. Tomorrow we begin again as New Yorkers.”

She concluded by saying, “I want to thank my husband and my daughter,” without naming them. The president, who wiped tears from his eyes, did not address the crowd.

Clinton was introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer, the freshman Democrat from New York on whose behalf she campaigned extensively in 1998.

“She won this election not because she was first lady, but because she worked hard,” said Schumer, who was one of Clinton’s earliest supporters in her Senate bid. “She won this election the old-fashioned way, she earned it.”

In Clinton’s stronghold of New York City, voters turned out in large numbers, a factor political observers say may have significantly helped her.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani stepped out of the race against Clinton six months ago after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, paving the way for Lazio, a congressman from Long Island, to take his place.

Lazio advertised himself as the “real New Yorker,” a moderate Republican who traveled the state on a bus called “The Mainstream Express.” In fund-raising letters, he denounced the Clintons for “embarrassing the nation.” Republican allies said the first lady wanted to use the Senate seat as a stepping stone to run for president.

Clinton repeatedly sought to portray Lazio as out of step with New Yorkers, noting that he had served as a deputy whip under former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Stressing the economic prosperity enjoyed on her husband’s watch, she asked New Yorkers to let her help continue that.

Although her decision to test the political waters by running for the Senate from New York initially surprised many of her closest friends, they acknowledged that her decision to break with tradition came as no surprise.

What Drives Her?

After seven years under a microscope in Washington, the first lady remains an enigma.

Hillary Rodham was born Oct. 26, 1947, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist in Park Ridge, Ill., near Chicago.

Now the nemesis of conservative Republicans, Clinton began her political life among them — as a “Goldwater Girl” in 1964 for Republican presidential contender Barry Goldwater.

But during her years at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, she changed her politics. The first student at Wellesley to deliver remarks at a commencement address, she used the moment to challenge the 1960s establishment and urged her classmates to do the same.

The speech was the start of her crusade to break stereotypes, especially about limits imposed on her gender.

After graduation, she went on to Yale Law School, where she was on the law review and met a student from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. They married in 1975.

After her marriage, she was a highly successful lawyer at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, becoming family breadwinner for her husband and her daughter, Chelsea, while Bill Clinton focused on winning at the polls.

But the role of breadwinner also brought problems. When she made $100,000 in the cattle futures market by risking only $1,000, some complained she might have received insider help. And then there was Whitewater.

The Arkansas land deal that she invested in with her husband in the 1980s would haunt the couple long after the project failed financially.

It triggered the investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr that dogged the Clintons throughout their White House years, culminating in the president’s impeachment over his sexual relationship with a White House intern.

From the start of their foray into national politics in 1992, the Clintons antagonized some by talking about a dual presidency. The soon-to-be first lady aggravated the situation by saying she would not be staying home and baking cookies.

First Lady With A Mission

After moving into the White House, she polarized people within months by taking control of the administration’s plans to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, a mission that failed in part because of her own refusal to compromise with the Washington Establishment.

That battle made her one of the least popular first ladies in history, with pollsters finding her less liked than her husband, a dramatic break with the norm.

She attributes the visceral reaction she generated to the fact that she was trying to break the mold that entrapped so many of her predecessors and limited their public role.

Ironically, the humiliation inflicted on her by her husband’s trysts with former intern Monica Lewinsky elevated her popularity to its highest levels since she moved to the White House in 1993, softening some of her harshest critics.

Deeply private when it comes to her personal life, Clinton made no effort to hide her anger in the months following her husband’s public confession about Lewinsky.

But in an interview in Talk magazine in 1999, she blamed some of her husband’s “weaknesses” on his difficult upbringing.

She Loves New York

Speculation has been rampant about “the marriage,” with self-appointed experts saying, “It will never last,” “She’ll be gone once their White House days are over” or “Establishing residency in New York is just a prelude to their separate lives.”

But she has denied tabloid speculation, telling interviewers earlier this year that she intended to spend the rest of her life with her husband. And she recently said she would like to live the rest of her life in New York state, whether or not she lost the Senate race.

While she has the reputation of having a fiery temper, much like her husband, she also generates an impressive loyalty among people around her.

After much uncertainty among New Yorkers about her plans, Clinton began her unprecedented bid for the Senate with what she called a “listening tour” of the state in July 1999.

She established a residence there, as required for candidates, purchasing with the president a $1.7 million home in the prosperous New York suburb of Chappaqua.

The first couple spent their first night in their new home in January, beginning a commuter marriage like so many other couples whose work divides them between Washington and New York. She was formally nominated by New York state Democrats as their Senate candidate in May.