A Race Of Her Own

Charlie Rangel knew he had Bill Clinton cornered. Air Force One was streaking toward Mexico early last week when Rangel, the 14-term Harlem Congressman with the incomparably raspy voice, buttonholed the President on board and began advocating for his favorite cause: that Hillary Rodham Clinton should run for the Senate from New York in 2000. But the President didn't need any persuading. "He was more excited than I've ever seen him about anything," Rangel says. So Rangel moved on to the First Lady. For weeks he had been goading her about running. Now he told her, "We gotta hold back the President. He's rippin', rarin' to go! He says we gotta have an agenda. We gotta let him know, because he's ready to go!"

Hillary turned to Rangel. "Charlie," she said, her mouth widening into a big, playful grin, "you're baaaaad!"

But Rangel was telling the truth. At a photo op in Merida, Mexico, the next day, Clinton was asked about Hillary's prospects. "It's a decision she'll have to make," he said, before blurting out his feeling that "she'd be great if she did...I think she would be terrific in the Senate."

So began a week in which talk about a Hillary run--which had been at a low buzz since January--rose to a clamorous din and then to a round-the-clock media roar. Just when the Republic thought it could safely turn its attention toward more pressing matters (How could the Yankees trade David Wells? What will ER do without George Clooney?), the Clintons snagged the headlines and talk shows for themselves--but with some good news for a change. Daniel Patrick Moynihan anointed the First Lady heir to his Senate seat, gushing over her "magnificent, young, bright, able, Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm." When Virginia Senator Chuck Robb appeared at a White House forum on Social Security, he noted that he was the only one there from the Senate. "Of course, that's only the current U.S. Senate that I am referring to," he said, to gales of knowing laughter--and, hey, was that Bill and Hillary winking at each other behind his back?

The speculation grew so fervid that the First Lady on Tuesday issued a statement announcing that--gasp!--she was thinking about it: "I will give careful thought to a potential candidacy in order to reach a decision later this year." Released shortly before 6 p.m., perfectly timed to be read by the network news anchors, the statement revved the Washington-New York gossip machine. By Friday, when Hillary met for a private lunch with Moynihan, and Clinton again signaled his support during a press conference with French President Jacques Chirac, political hacks were salivating at the prospect of a celebrity death match between Clinton and New York City's imperious mayor, Rudolph Giuliani--a notion that makes the state's Democrats as giddy as 12-year-olds at an 'N Sync show. According to a TIME/CNN poll of New York voters last week, if the election were held now, Hillary would whip Giuliani (52% to 43%), and she would be in a dead heat with New York Governor George Pataki (49% to 47%).