POLL-VAULTING RICK LEADS HILLARY!

Drudge Report

Friday,October 20,2000

By GREGG BIRNBAUM, ROBERT HARDT Jr. and MAGGIE HABERMAN

Rick Lazio has tied up the Senate race with Hillary Rodham Clinton - gaining crucial ground with voters upstate, where he's focused his attention over the last two weeks, a new Post poll shows.

In fact, the statewide poll shows Lazio leading Clinton 43-42 percent. With a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 points, the race is deadlocked, pollster John Zogby said.

The poll shows Lazio gaining critical ground with voters upstate - a Republican stronghold where Clinton had made inroads in recent weeks - and now leads his Democratic rival by 18 points, 50-32 percent. A Sept. 9 Post poll showed Lazio leading upstate by just 7 points, 49-43 percent. But the most surprising results show the pool of undecided voters swelling with people who had said before that they supported Clinton. "The remarkable thing about this is that Lazio did not go up - Hillary went down," Zogby said.

The number of undecided Jewish voters has grown to 17 percent, Zogby said, although Clinton still leads that voting block, 60-23 percent. Zogby attributed Clinton's overall drop to more "effective" campaigning by Lazio - including TV ads raising her "carpetbagger" status - and controversies surrounding her positions on the Middle East. "She's been taking a bit of a pounding in the Jewish community," Zogby said.

Lazio also may have gotten a bump from GOP presidential hopeful George W. Bush, who has closed the gap in New York against rival Al Gore to just 12 points. But he noted that Lazio's overall numbers have stayed virtually unchanged since he entered the race in late May - even after a weeks-long "positive" advertising blitz. "It suggests that he's either not doing enough or not doing it right - that he's essentially pulling the anti-Hillary vote, and that's about it," he said.

The poll, taken Wednesday and yesterday among 504 likely voters, also showed Clinton's New York City numbers slipping to 60 percent, while Lazio has 28 percent. In the suburbs, Lazio edges Clinton out, 46-40 percent. Meanwhile, both candidates campaigned around New York City yesterday.

Two days after Clinton delivered a speech on foreign policy, Lazio moved to show he's also up to speed on world affairs - picking up an endorsement from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Both Senate candidates, along with Gore and Bush, last night attended the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner, a Catholic-charities fund-raiser - and each presidential candidate also had a little fun at Clinton's expense.

Gore told the crowd there was a woman in the audience "whose husband is about to lose his job, she's struggling to get out of public housing and get a job of her own. "Hillary Clinton - I want to fight for you," Gore said to laughter.

Bush, for his part, took a dig at Clinton's claim of being a Yankee fan, saying "there's no place like New York, especially for baseball fans like me and Mrs. Clinton."

HENCH adds: Could it all be unraveling for the First Felons? Watch out, Bill will bomb someone in the next two weeks!

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