Hillary Gets Nod From RFK Jr.
N E W Y O R K, Sept. 6, 2000 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting a boost from the son of the last out-of-stater to win a Senate seat in New York.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late senator who was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, endorsed the first lady’s Senate bid in an outdoor campaign event today at the 79th Street Boat Basin in Manhattan.
“I believe Hillary will give our state and our communities and our nationthe kind of environmental leadership that New York State is famous for,” said Kennedy, a lawyer who has been advising Mrs. Clinton on environmental issues.
Mrs. Clinton said she was “honored to be here today with Bobby Kennedy,” adding that she has been grateful “for his commitment to protecting and preserving our environment.”
Kennedy is the chief attorney for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Garrison, N.Y., that has worked to clean up the Hudson River.
Kennedy Criticizes Lazio
Kennedy also took time today to bash Mrs. Clinton’s Republican rival, Rep. Rick Lazio.
“Rick Lazio can’t point to a single instance in which he hasever demonstrated environmental leadership on any environmental issue,” Kennedy said.
In an interview with ABCNEWS today, Kennedy said Lazio “went along with the anti-environmental positions in the ‘Contract With America’ which if passed, would have eviscerated 25 years of environmental law in this country.”
But Kennedy did acknowledge writing a letter to Lazio to thank the congressman for his support of efforts to save New York’s watershed.
Raising money today in Alabama, Lazio jokingly called the endorsement a “real surprise.”
On whether the historic race reminds him of his father’s run for Senate, Kennedy told ABCNEWS his father “inspired the same kind of reaction with people either despising him or loving him.”
He called it an “inexplicable phenomenon.”
Kennedy also says he may appear in an ad supporting Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy.
Mrs. Clinton Receives Sierra Club Nod
Mrs. Clinton, who is hardly known for her work on behalf of environmental issues, picked up the endorsement on Tuesday of the Sierra Club — a leading environmental group that has backed Lazio in past congressional elections.
Lazio, who frequently reminds voters that he has clammed in the waters of New York, points to his record on the environment as an example of his moderate positions and reportedly fought hard for the group’s nod.
But the Sierra Club went to great lengths to make clear that Mrs. Clinton was, in its view, the better choice. A Sierra Club official said that in lengthy interviews with both candidates, the first lady demonstrated a better grasp of the environmental issues across the state.
The move was not exactly a surprise. The Sierra Club ran ads against Mrs. Clinton’s first opponent, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and seemed to be laying the groundwork for an endorsement long before Lazio took his place.
And the endorsements keep on coming. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton will receive the backing of James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters, at an event on Long Island. Hoffa has so far refused to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore.
Teamsters spokesman Bratt Caldwell says Hoffa, who will speak at Thursday’s rally, “has supported Mrs. Clinton since October of 1999 and the fact of the matter is that we have found common ground with her on a number of policies … It doesn’t have any relationship to our decision on whether to endorse Al Gore.”
—Eileen Murphy, ABCNEWS
Lazio’s Southern Strategy
Continuing his aggressive fund-raising efforts, New York’s GOP Senate candidate, Rep. Rick Lazio, met with contributors in three Southern states today, closing by meeting an unexpected backer in Texas.
Lazio is attending events in Alabama and Louisiana before winding up in Texas this evening at a fund-raiser co-hosted by Charles Wyly, one of two brothers behind a controversial television ad that aired before New York’s presidential primary in March.
Wyly and his brother Sam, through a group called “Republicans for Clean Air,” funded an ad on behalf of Texas Gov. George W. Bush attacking the environmental record of his then-rival, Sen. John McCain.
McCain bitterly attacked the ad at the time, saying it was paid for with “dirty money.”
Adding a twist to the story, McCain has campaigned with Lazio and appeared in a recent television ad in which he says there is “only one candidate in New York who wants campaign-finance reform — Rick Lazio.”
And Lazio’s chief media strategist, Mike Murphy, was a key adviser in McCain’s presidential bid.
Lazio: ‘Fundamental Difference’ in Fund-Raising
For several weeks, Lazio has been challenging Mrs. Clinton to forego so-called soft money contributions, and has avoided setting up a committee of his own to receive such donations.
In August, Lazio signed a pledge calling on both candidates to implore special-interest groups, such as the one run by the Wylys, to stay on the sidelines during the race.
After his first fund-raiser, in Mobile, Ala., Lazio made a distinction between the hard money he is raising and the “soft money” he says his opponent relies upon.
“The difference between what Mrs. Clinton does and what I’m doing here and will do today, is that we are raising hard dollars, hard dollars that are protected by campaign-finance reform,” Lazio told ABCNEWS. “The kind of money that Mrs. Clinton has been raising to wage her campaign is through soft money … There is a fundamental difference between those two things.”
Lazio added, “Any money that we raise through Mr. Wyly is going to be hard dollars.”
Hard-money donations are limited to $2,000 per individual, while soft-money contributions, which can be made by corporations, do not have a limit.
—Stephen Yesner, ABCNEWS