NEW YORK, NY July 14, 2006 —There’s a contested U.S. Senate race in New York this year. But you wouldn’t necessary know it by watching Hillary Clinton. In New York, Clinton’s been keeping strictly to policy and constituent service. Beyond the state’s boundaries – every appearance causes wild speculation. WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein has been on the road with the Senator.

REPORTER: If you’ve want to go hear see Senator – and candidate - Hillary Clinton speak, be prepared to travel long distances.

CLINTON: It is a red letter day in the Adirondacks.

REPORTER: Where six years ago, you had to be in marathon-runner shape to keep up with her campaign schedule in New York’s 62 counties, this time around she’s ambling through the state, marshalling events like the Frog and Tree Parade at the opening of the “Wild Center” natural history museum in Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks.

CLINTON: Trees to the right, no trees to the left. Are the frogs boycotting us?

REPORTER: Joking aside, these kinds of events are deadly serious to the Senator. Promoting tourism in the sparsely populated “north country,” is big on the Senator’s agenda.

CLINTON: So one of our very first ideas was: how can we try to link up the North Country to the 21st Century economy? And there were two pieces to that and one was to promote broadband expansion.

REPORTER: Clinton set up the Adirondack Trading Company on eBay to link local craftspeople to global markets. She started a “farm to fork” initiative to get North Country produce to tables in New York City. There’s a line she likes to use in almost every one of her speeches:

CLINTON: And our goal has been not to tell anybody what we think but to ask people what they think.

REPORTER: It’s an approach that’s so appreciated that Jim McKenna of the Lake Placid Visitor’s Club was driven to marvel:

McKenna: I think we’ve probably seen you more in the North Country since you’ve become senator than just about anybody else.

REPORTER: I asked Clinton why she’s spending so much time in these tiny counties that have so few voters they aren’t even on the map for many statewide officials.

CLINTON: Well, you know, one of my goals was to make it clear that we actually could get things done and we weren’t going to take anybody for granted and we were going to listen and then we were going to try to work together and that works if people feel you’re not just blowing in and blowing out and doing a press conference and a photo op and then never seeing them again.

REPORTER: But these days if you live in New York City it IS hard to see her. To be sure, Clinton has been vocal on restoring homeland security aid and pushing health care initiatives for 9-11 rescue workers. Her press mill churns out maybe half a dozen news releases a day on everything from Darfur to “the college cost crunch.”

CLINTON: That’s why I introduced legislation to increase the minimum wage and link it to future increases to congressional pay raises.

REPORTER: And she regularly makes herself available for press conference calls to discuss legislation. She’s gotten enthusiastic responses at some big events in the city, like last month’s gay pride parade.

MAN: I love you! I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long, you have no idea! CLINTON: Thank you so much!

REPORTER: But speaking before large and critical audiences in New York City? Hasn’t happened in awhile. There’s a reason for that. New York City residents care passionately about Iraq. Unlike national Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards, Clinton has not renounced her initial vote to authorize the war.

CLINTON: Nor do I think it’s smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country. REPORTER: When she spoke to the “Take Back America conference” in Washington, DC, a liberal crowd, she was booed. By carefully choosing her venues, Clinton has largely side-stepped confrontations with her constituents on Iraq. And she has avoided the fate of her Connecticut colleague Joe Lieberman, whose early support for the war has thrown him into a tough political primary.

Senator Clinton is far more comfortable showing off her credentials as a walking briefing book at forums like this one she organized in Woodbury to discuss health care reform and the high cost of care.

CLINTON: Here on Long Island that is adding insult to injury. You already face an extraordinarily high cost of living, housing being the single best example of that and in health care, individuals and families on Long Island pay 11 percent for individuals and six percent more per family.

REPORTER: To a largely approving audience of business and health care leaders, Clinton suggested a wide range of reforms, from easily sharable health records to saving money by cutting down on paper work and boutique medicines. That she has a history on this issue is something she never fails to remind people of.

CLINTON: I did a little work on this years and years ago and it took years to recover.

REPORTER: This is an old joke by now, but audiences love it anyway.

CLINTON: But seriously it is an issue that hasn’t gone away.

REPORTER: That’s to Clinton’s benefit. Health care is certainly one of the issues that has reached crisis proportions – just the kind of thing that can galvanize a national campaign.

CLINTON: Well I think it is urgent, that’s clear to me as I talk to people this is now on the top of their minds, which it wasn’t for a while.

REPORTER: Clinton’s Long Island health care forum was the third of three – the others were in Buffalo and Rochester. But while she’s traveling New York “being a Senator and working across the state” as her spokesman put it, she’s campaigning across the nation. There was this stop last week San Francisco:

CLINTON: And we’re all here for the same reason. We think Phil Angelides would be a great Governor for California. I’ve know Phil for 15 years, he was instrumental in the campaign that my husband ran here in California when he was chair of the Democratic Party.

REPORTER: In the last month alone, she’s also been in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Idaho and Massachusetts. And Ohio again, where, sounding both animated and folksy, she threw out the partisan red meat like she’s hardly done any time recently in New York.

CLINTON: And my good friend Stephanie Tubbs Jones held a hearing in Cleveland last year, and it would have broken your heart. People were lined up to tell us how they were lined up to vote and wait hours! Voice from audience: No machines! CLINTON: No Machines! You could drive down the road however and there were plenty of machines! Depended on who lived where and what their potential voting patterns.

REPORTER: Clinton was speaking before a largely African American crowd – the kind that loves the Clintons the most. But she was sounding a theme that has roused Democrats since 2000, and inserting herself into one of this year’s most hotly contested gubernatorial races, where the Republican candidate, Kenneth Blackwell, is the Secretary of State, setting election rules.

CLINTON: And I hope everyone here in Ohio you watch this election like a hawk. Don’t let them pull any wool over your eyes. One of the people running for office is watching the election that should not be permitted! That is a conflict of interest!

REPORTER: It’s not too hard to connect the dots about what she’s trying to say. Not long ago, two advisors, Jim Carville and Mark Penn, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post pushing back against the congealing conventional wisdom that she “can’t win” the presidency. Snarky national discussions aside, they wrote, voters love her.

At the democratic state convention in Buffalo earlier this summer that was certainly in evidence.

Aides aver that sometime soon, the Senator will campaign for her re-election more actively. For now, while talk swirls around, Senator Clinton soldiers on, as cautious as she was in 2000, but far more confident. For WNYC, I’m Andrea Bernstein

Thanks to North Country Public Radio, KQED in San Francisco, and National Public Radio for their assistance with this report.