Some Say Clinton Model Is Flawed
Strategy for Appeal in Upstate N.Y. May Not Translate for '08 Bid

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2007

JAVA, N.Y. -- Doug Merlau always leaned Republican, but that was before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton came to talk about the mystery of the tainted milk.

The state's junior Democratic senator seemed "genuine about wanting to help" when she met with Merlau and 10 other dairy farmers in 2002 about the antibiotics showing up in milk from this part of western New York, Merlau recalled recently during a break on his 325-acre farm. The cause of the contamination was never discovered, but it did not recur. Merlau repaid Clinton by voting for her reelection last year, helping her win the vast, largely rural and -- compared to the rest of New York -- conservative area known simply as Upstate.

Now, running for president, Clinton is invoking the inroads she has made Upstate as a kind of talisman against worries in her own party that she is too polarizing to win next fall. If she can appeal to Republicans in Cattaraugus and Boonville, her campaign argues, her electability -- and her ability to unite the country -- are undeniable.

But seen from ground level in this swath of rolling farmland and small towns between Buffalo and Rochester, it is unclear whether that argument holds up.

Merlau, when asked if he and his neighbors would vote for her for president next fall, responded, "There are more people that like her" now than when she first came to New York, "but you still hear people say, 'I don't know if I want her to be president.' "

In Clinton's seven-year career in elected office, Upstate New York was her biggest political test. When she arrived from Washington in 1999, she was the wife of the president who had barely escaped a scandal that had focused attention on their marriage, and she had no real connections to the state and no experience running herself. Many people Upstate regarded her as a carpetbagger.

Clinton has won over many such critics, but often through federal grants and constituent service, tools she cannot rely on in a presidential campaign. Her reelection last year, when she won 61 percent of the Upstate vote, came against a weak candidate. And the region is by some measures more moderate than parts of key swing states such as Ohio and Florida -- Republicans barely outnumber Democrats (who are clustered in Upstate's cities), and there are few religious conservatives.

"I don't think the fact that she knocks them dead in Oneonta means that she's going to do it in Massillon," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, referring to towns in New York and Ohio, respectively.

Finally, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Upstate is not exactly Clinton country. There are voters who voice admiration for her, but there are many others who are ambivalent -- and some who reject her with a vehemence that seems to startle even themselves.

Take the Genesee County Chamber of Commerce's annual luncheon this month in Batavia, a town of 16,000. While GOP-leaning, the chamber is not necessarily enemy territory for Democrats. Clinton addressed it in 2004, and attendees last week spoke highly of her fellow New York Democrat, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who has spent even more time Upstate than Clinton. But kind words for Clinton were scarce.

"I don't like her. I don't think she's honest," said Jim Morelli, a construction equipment salesman.

"I'm not a fan at all. She shifts a lot of her policies depending on what the question is," said Wendy Leffler, a development officer with a hospice care agency. "I don't feel her values are consistent."

"She should have stayed in Arkansas. I just don't care for her. I don't know if she follows through on what she says she's going to do," said Steve Watson, a business development manager for a bank, who added: "I would vote for Barack Obama. I just like his style."

Clinton and her supporters dismiss such sniping as exceptions to her overall ascent in Upstate New York. In a Fox News interview last month, Clinton rejected a question about her reputation for polarizing politics by saying, "If you look at what I've done in New York . . . I won reelection with nearly 67 percent of the vote, carrying a lot of the same counties that George Bush had carried just two years before." And on a Labor Day campaign tour, Bill Clinton invoked the same Upstate totals to counter the argument of Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, that nominating Hillary Clinton would incite the opposition. "This electability thing is a canard," Bill Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton has been working to stake a claim to Upstate since arriving in New York. To prove her commitment to the state, she embarked on a "listening tour" that took her to Upstate's smallest hamlets. She pledged to help bring 200,000 jobs to the beleaguered region.

Clinton presidential campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, who worked on her 2000 campaign, said last week that Clinton said from the start that she could exceed expectations Upstate. "I remember her saying quite explicitly that she thought she could do well there and wanted to spend time there, and that decision being questioned by people," he said. "It was a lesson for how she would campaign in the general [next year]. She will go to places that Democrats typically do not go to make her case."

In the end, Clinton lost the Upstate vote by three percentage points to Rick Lazio, a Long Island congressman who entered the race late (after New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani bowed out), was little known Upstate and ran a flawed campaign. It was a higher total than Democrats had won Upstate in recent statewide elections, reflecting the unusual amount of time she invested in the region, but lower than what Al Gore won Upstate on the presidential ballot. Just before Giuliani dropped out, he led Clinton Upstate 49 percent to 37 percent in polls by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Clinton's courting of Upstate continued after the election. She made 130 visits during her first 18 months in office, and while she fell far short of the jobs pledge, she had a hand in some victories, such as getting price supports for dairy farmers into the 2002 farm bill. In Genesee County alone, she visited Batavia High School to announce a new computer lab in 2004, gave the 2006 commencement speech at the community college and pushed legislation awarding $250,000 for a rural-health-care initiative.

"My sense from her was that she understands the issues, is poised and is committed to making things happen," said Steven G. Hyde, chief executive of the county's Economic Development Center. Added Kelley Walker Zanghi, an English instructor at Genesee County Community College, "Even though I know it's just a steppingstone for her to the next level, she has worked hard here."

But pollsters and political scientists question whether Clinton's ability to win over Upstate voters with intensive campaigning and effective representation translates into strength in a presidential race. "It's a big country, and you can't do across the nation what you're doing in isolated counties in Upstate New York," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute.

In her reelection last year, Clinton won 58 of the state's 62 counties, including 35 Upstate that were carried by President Bush in 2004. But it was a terrible year overall for New York Republicans -- Democrat Eliot L. Spitzer won the race for governor with 69 percent of the statewide vote, more than Clinton's 67 percent (in 2004, Schumer won reelection with 72 percent). Clinton's opponent was former Yonkers mayor John Spencer, who received much less party support than Lazio had and raised less than $5 million, far short of the nearly $30 million spent by Clinton.

"She had an absolute Humpty Dumpty as opposition," Quinnipiac's Carroll said.

Assemblyman Dan Burling, a moderate Republican who represents Wyoming and Genesee counties, gave the same assessment from his Warsaw district office decorated with a John Wayne replica rifle, the heads of two big bucks and a 30-inch brown trout. He predicted that Clinton's Upstate totals in a presidential election would not come close to her 2006 results.

"She's been slugging away with lightweights. She was the default choice," he said. "She's basing her credibility on races against Class C candidates."

Clinton supporters scoff at this, saying the 2006 numbers speak for themselves. "She may have run against a weak candidate, but the fact is, they don't have to vote for her, and they came out and voted for her," said Joseph Nicoletti, a former Democratic assemblyman and Syracuse city councilor.

As for those who voted against Clinton last year despite the weak opposition, Clinton supporters argue that such voters are unlikely to vote for any Democratic nominee. But interviews with voters in the region serve as a reminder of just how strong the antipathy toward Clinton is in some, who vow they will fight much harder to stop her than they would other Democrats.

To explain their dislike, some cited Clinton's staying with her husband after the Monica Lewinsky affair, a decision they said revealed her calculating ambition. "She's nothing but a fraud," said Graham Smith, a retired custodian doing yard work at his home in Pavilion, east of Batavia. "She says she's going to do all sorts of things but doesn't do any of them. All she's trying to do is get people's votes."

Others complained that Clinton had not done nearly as much for Upstate as she says, especially now that she is busy campaigning. But often they had trouble articulating their ill will. "She's just put herself in a spot where you either like her or you don't," said Morelli at the chamber luncheon.

That, say political scientists and pollsters, is the bottom line of Clinton's Upstate legacy. She has solidified her initial support, won over voters who were willing to give her a chance -- and made little headway with those who disliked her from the outset.

"She's working hard and is probably in a little better shape than she was six or seven years ago," said Syracuse University political scientist Jeff Stonecash. "But there's still something out there that she's got. It's hard to figure out what it is that they dislike so much."