By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

he intimate gathering at a private home in Corning, N.Y., was pretty typical for an upstate fund-raiser featuring Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: dozens of donors clustered in the terrace, listening to her speak, as they sipped wine and nibbled on hors d'oeuvres.

But one thing made the event unusual: The host was a prominent Republican businessman whose brother Amo Houghton was the popular nine-term Republican congressman from the area who, it turns out, gives Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, an "A-plus" for the job she is doing.

His brother James, chairman of Corning Inc., agreed. "When I introduced Hillary, I told the crowd that the last time a Houghton had a fund-raiser for a Democrat was about 1812," he said.

With her 2006 re-election campaign approaching, New York Republican leaders vow to rally party loyalists in a broad effort to topple Mrs. Clinton, who has long engendered deep antipathy on the right.

But as the fund-raiser last year in the heavily Republican town of Corning illustrated, the party may have a bit of a problem on its hands.

In the four years since taking office, Mrs. Clinton has managed to cultivate a bipartisan, above-the-fray image that has made her a surprisingly welcome figure in some New York Republican circles, even as she remains exceedingly popular with her liberal base.

A recent poll by The New York Times, for example, showed that Mrs. Clinton's popularity had sharply improved among Republicans voters surveyed, with 49 percent saying they approved of the job she was doing, compared with 37 percent who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.

But perhaps nothing demonstrates her improved standing with the opposition as much as the close ties she has forged with many leading Republican officials in the state, who say that they have been pleasantly surprised by what they describe as the nuts-and-bolts pragmatism of her style.

Only five years ago, for example, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of Buffalo mocked Mrs. Clinton as a "a tourist who has lost her way," alluding to the fact that she had not lived in New York before deciding to run for the Senate.

But these days, Mr. Reynolds, a Republican who is frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for speaker of the House, says he considers Ms. Clinton an ally in his effort to deliver aid to western New York

In fact, he said that his work with Mrs. Clinton had prompted the local newspaper in his district to call them the "odd couple.""I like Senator Clinton," said Mr. Reynolds, a friend and adviser to Gov. George E. Pataki. "I've found that when she says she will take on a job with me, she does it."
But surely Mr. Reynolds wants a Republican to take Mrs. Clinton's seat, no? "New York is a big blue state," he responded, referring to the states with large Democratic voter enrollment. "I will work with whoever the electorate puts in those positions."

Nobody expects top Republicans like Mr. Reynolds to cross party lines and endorse Mrs. Clinton. But some political strategists say the Republican Party will have a hard time making a strong case against her, since she will be able to point to the positive reviews she has gotten from her Republican colleagues over the year.

"It certainly helps to neutralize the attacks against her," said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

The emerging view of Mrs. Clinton among leading New York Republicans would have been unimaginable four years ago, when her political rivals cast her as a carpetbagger who had no real interest in New York beyond seeing it as a springboard to the presidency.

Political analysts say that Mrs. Clinton's improved standing reflects her meticulous efforts to win over critics - as well as the tendency among politicians to look past party differences and find common interests once in office.

But these strategists also say that the unusually open support she is enjoying among Republicans highlights a lack of party discipline that has been plaguing the New York Republican Party in recent years.

Mr. Miringoff said that many rank-and-file Republicans apparently felt they had less to lose in bucking the party leadership than in straining relations with a highly popular United States senator.

"It's a party that is really hurting," Mr. Miringoff said, referring to Republicans. "And so self-interest and self-preservation are taking over."

The Republicans giving Mrs. Clinton high marks include Representative John M. McHugh, who represents New York's economically beleaguered North Country, a politically conservative region that Mrs. Clinton visits frequently.

In an interview, the congressman said that Mrs. Clinton had been helpful to him from her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee in steering money to Fort Drum, an Army base in Watertown that provides an economic lift to the area.

"Our other senators have been helpful," he said, referring to the work Mrs. Clinton's predecessors have done on behalf of Fort Drum. "But they have not had the advantage of being on the authorizing committee."

As for the 2006 Senate race, he did not sound particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of campaigning against Mrs. Clinton. "We share constituents," explained Mr. McHugh, "and, frankly, the challenges are big enough without erecting artificial partisan barriers."

Another Republican, Representative Peter T. King of Nassau County, struck a similar note in recent interview. He described Mrs. Clinton as a celebrity senator who is willing to take a subordinate role on an issue she cares about, rather than allowing her involvement to become a distraction.

For instance, Mr. King recalled an occasion when Mrs. Clinton suggested that he find another senator to be a co-sponsor of legislation that would benefit New York, because she figured that her presence on the bill would fire up the opposition. "There are very few politicians in public life who have the composure to step back, knowing that they will win in the end," he said.

Mr. King also said that Mrs. Clinton had been anything but the liberal extremist that her conservative critics accused her of being. "I'm not going to vote for her and probably disagree with her on 70 percent of the issues," he said. "But I think that too many Republicans who criticize Hillary Clinton sound like Michael Moore criticizing George Bush."
source New York Times

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) (D-NY), center, meets a group of international women's rights leaders during New York University's Center for Global Affairs 'Women's Rights are Human Rights' forum, Sunday, March 6, 2005, in New York. (AP Photo/John Marshall Mantel

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), left, with Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh at the latter's residence in New Delhi, India, Friday, Feb. 25, 2005. Clinton is in India as the Chief Guest at a conclave, which includes speakers from across the world. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup

Hillary Clinton's Popularity is Up in New York State, Even Among Republicans
 By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and the conventional wisdom about how polarizing a figure she is?
Well, think again...

Recent polls have shown that Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, may have turned a corner politically, sharply reducing the number of voters in the state who harbor negative views of her.

Pollsters say the change is remarkable for a woman who has long been shadowed by a seemingly implacable group of voters - commonly referred to as Hillary haters - who dislike her, no matter what she does, and who pose a potential obstacle to any presidential ambitions she may harbor.

A measure of how far Senator Clinton has come was on display Sunday when Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona, said on "Meet the Press" that he thought Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, would make a good president, although he said that he would support his party's nominee. She returned the compliment, saying when asked by the program's host, Tim Russert, that Senator McCain would be a good president.

The changing view of Mrs. Clinton coincides with a period following the November election in which she offered a series of speeches filled with references to faith and prayer, while putting less emphasis on polarizing social issues like gay marriage and abortion.

The result of these comments has been an emerging image of Senator Clinton that is far different from the caricature that Republicans have painted of her: that of a secular liberal whose stances are largely at odds with a public that they say is concerned about the nation's moral direction.

Political analysts say the themes Senator Clinton has emphasized - combined with the hard-working image she has sought to project - appear to be causing large numbers of voters to re-evaluate her in New York, although not nationally, where the number of people who disapprove of her is still high. In a Marist poll last fall, roughly 4 in 10 Americans had negative views of her.

Her progress appealing to once skeptical New Yorkers was illuminated by a New York Times poll released last week that showed that 21 percent of New Yorkers had an unfavorable opinion of how she is handling her job, down significantly from the 29 percent of voters who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.

(In two recent back-to-back surveys, pollsters for Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn., also found a notable decline in the number of New York voters who expressed a negative view of Mrs. Clinton.)

At the same time, Senator Clinton's job approval rating has increased to 69 percent from 58 percent in October 2002, according to the Times poll. That is higher even than the 63 percent approval rating of Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York who was re-elected last year to a second term with a record 71 percent of the vote and who is known for his attention to upstate concerns.

The new attitudes toward Mrs. Clinton may be forcing Republicans to reconsider how to deal with an opponent they had until now viewed as an enticing target because of the depth of negative feelings she inspires among large numbers of New York voters.

Independent political analysts say her strong standing may give pause to any big-name Republican thinking about challenging her in 2006, chief among them Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki. In fact, a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month found that Mrs. Clinton would defeat both Mr. Pataki and Mr. Giuliani in head-to-head contests.

"There isn't a long line of opponents forming to take her on in 2006," said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

New York Republicans also say that the senator has had a free ride so far and that her opponent in the campaign will have an easy time driving up her negative ratings - and halting her rise in the polls - by pointing out what they describe as her poor record of accomplishment and her liberal ideology.
Continued at the New York Times
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