Manhattan Democrats Unhappy With Hillary
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
NewsMax.com
Manhattan Democrats are so unhappy with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's move to the right and her budding relationship with conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch that they are turning their backs on her campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate.
"She is not in Arkansas anymore," Yayoi Tsuchitani, campaign chairwoman of the Village Independent Democrats told the New York Daily News, which reports that her group voted this month to back Jonathan Tasini, Clinton's little-known Democratic challenger for her Senate seat.
"This is New York we are dealing with, and the majority of New Yorkers are against the war," Tsuchitani added.
According to the Daily News, the Downtown Independent Democrats also voted recently to endorse Tasini, an anti-war 49-year-old freelance writer and longtime labor organizer from upper Manhattan.
They are not alone in being unhappy with Clinton. The Daily News reports that other established political clubs in Manhattan -- including the Upper West Side's Three Parks Independent Democrats and downtown's Gramercy Stuyvesant Independent Democrats -- chose to endorse no one for Senate rather than support Clinton.
"Some people wanted to send a message," Sylvia Feinman, president of the Gramercy club, which has backed Clinton in the past, told the News. "I think there is still support for her, but there were also some feelings expressed that she was moving away from the views of her base."
As widely reported, Clinton has been moving to the middle as part of her probable run for the White House in 2008, staking out new, moderate positions on several key issues and sounding alarm bells among some liberals in the process.
The News reports that she has called abortion "a tragic choice," has sponsored a bill to make flag burning a crime, pushed for a crackdown on violent video games and, worst of all in the eyes of ultra-liberal Manhattan Democrats, supported the war in Iraq.
To make matter worse in their eyes it was revealed that Murdoch -- whose conservative Fox News Network regularly chastises Clinton and her husband, Bill -- plans to sponsor a fund-raiser for her.
The senator would not talk about the Manhattan defections.
"Oh, I'm very excited about going to Buffalo," she told the Daily News, referring to this week's Democratic Party state convention. A state Democratic Party spokesman told the News that Clinton remains extremely popular in polls and is expected to be the overwhelmingly renominated in Buffalo.
"Sen. Clinton enjoys overwhelming support among Democrats throughout the state and city," party spokesman Blake Zeff told the Daily News. Zeff noted that one recent Quinnipiac University Poll showed Clinton's job approval rating among Democrats at a stratospheric 81 percent.
Tasini, who spent most of last week biking from New York City to Buffalo to underscore one of his campaign slogans, "Bikes, Not Bombs!" was pleased by the defections to his ranks.
"I think I stand with the majority of Democratic primary voters on the war," Tasini said, "while Hillary Clinton stands with [President] Bush, [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice."
