God and Hillary Clinton (22 page)

In May 2000, shortly before the primary, the political situation for Republicans hit a snag when a diagnosis of prostate cancer forced Giuliani out of the race. The party replaced Giuliani with Representative Rick Lazio, a candidate who was also pro-choice. Maneuvering to win the issue, Hillary soon moved to prove to the state that she was more pro-choice than Lazio. It did not take long for Hillary to highlight some of the crucial distinctions. Lazio opposed using federal Medicaid funds to pay for poor women's abortions and favored a ban on partial-birth abortion. Clinton differed on both. Also, she made clear that she would never vote to confirm an anti-abortion nominee to the Supreme Court, while Lazio said there should be no such litmus test for possible appointees.
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With Hillary in the running, the pro-choice lobby would always be represented.

Charges of Anti-Semitism

As she sought to win the heart of the state, Hillary's campaign was momentarily derailed by Paul Fray, a man who had managed Bill's first but unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1974, who now stepped up to confirm rumors that Hillary had once called him an “f–ing Jew bastard.” The incident almost died down under Hillary's strong denial, as well as the involvement of leading New York Democrats like Chuck Schumer. “It did not happen,” she said of Fray's allegation. “I have never said anything like that. Ever, ever.”

Bill also denied it, but with a curious reassurance: “She might have called him a bastard. She's never claimed that she was pure on profanity. But I've never heard her tell a joke with an ethnic connotation…. She's so straight on this, she squeaks.”
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Just as the controversy was beginning to heat up, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson weighed in on the allegation, stating that he was hardly surprised by Fray's charge, since he had often heard Hillary and Bill call each other “Jew bastard” and “Jew motherf–—.” Patterson said this was common parlance for Arkansas's first lady, from whom he said he heard anti-Semitic slurs “at least twenty times.”
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While the story was carried widely in newspapers like the
New York Post
and on talk radio, where it became known as the “FJB” incident, it failed to garner mention in outlets such as the
New York Times, Newsday
, the Associated Press, and the national TV networks. The campaign's immediate response was to use the incident to her advantage, portraying her as a victim of dirty campaign tactics by Republicans, but the reality was that the GOP had nothing to do with it. Fray was a Democrat who had campaigned for Bill Clinton and voted for him twice.
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When this initial argument failed to gain traction, Hillary's campaign tried an alternative tactic: One of her advisers, Karen Adler, reportedly circulated a memo to certain Jewish supporters of Hillary, asking them to telephone people in the media and to reach out to the magazines
Forward
and
Jewish Week
in particu
lar, for the purpose of telling them that Hillary loved and admired Jewish people. According to published reports, the memo instructed these supporters to conceal from journalists the fact that the campaign had asked them to make these calls.
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Shortly after the FJB story exploded, Hillary made one of the first of many trips to a house of worship during the Senate campaign. She ventured to the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, a congregation run by Marc Schneier, a prominent liberal rabbi. Predictably, she did not risk trying a hard-core Orthodox synagogue.
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Important to the bigger picture was the positive effect of Mrs. Clinton's trip to this synagogue: She and her staff were sure that this outreach had healed the damage. It was a successful political move, and it was just the beginning of her religious campaigning, which took her literally right inside houses of worship.

Church Campaigns

As Election Day approached, Hillary began working churches like a preacher, employing her faith for political purposes in ways she had never done before. She did so with no objection from the intensely secular, religiously hostile New York press.

No observer captured this as well as Beth Harpaz, who wrote the 2001 book
The Girls in the Van: Covering Hillary
. Harpaz recorded in her journal one day:

Harpaz goes on to describe an unparalleled routine of church visiting during Hillary's 2000 Senate run, stating that Hillary was “not content to hit a half dozen churches” like a typical Democratic candidate. In the two months leading up to Election Day, the first lady visited more than twenty-seven African-American churches, from the smallest storefront tabernacles to the most prominent parishes in the city.
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Clearly this was an intense and focused strategy to pick off votes at Sunday services, and yet this behavior elicits a curious question: Why does the mainstream press seem to have a problem with Republicans who simply talk about their faith, while religious Democrats like Hillary remain unscathed when they go so far as to vigorously campaign in churches? Perhaps the press was unaware of Hillary's church politics? Not at all. As Harpaz matter-of-factly noted in her next sentence: “As always, the row of seats taken up by the press corps is just about the only part of the church occupied by white faces.” Besides, she added, “Democratic politicians usually visit” churches; indeed, this is the best-kept secret in the press corps.
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Not only did the media not object to Hillary's annihilation of any barriers separating church and state, but they loved it, and sometimes even cheered her on. Consider Harpaz's report on the October 1 Hillary gathering at Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem: “Most of the worshipers are on their feet, clapping and singing, and rocking to an electric guitar, piano, and drum ensemble driven by the steady, happy jangle of a tambourine. ‘Lift Him up!' the several hundred voices sing as one, and within minutes, I and most of the other reporters stand up, too, clapping and swaying along with them, the music is irresistible.”
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Blame the music, but it is hard to imagine the press reacting quite the same way to, say, an appearance by John Ashcroft at the campus chapel at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, or a “church tour” by a Republican campaigning through white Baptist churches in the South. The fact is that the appearance in itself would not be problematic if
the press's response were not so laden with hypocrisy. Campaigning in churches was shrewd politics for Hillary, but she was largely enabled by a press corps that she knew would not portray her as violating the church and state barrier that is so important to many mainstream Democrats. Safe and relatively confident that the appearances would not result in a church vs. state debate, Hillary made churches a focal point of her campaign strategy. Events like the one in Harlem helped Mrs. Clinton, and the journalists sat quietly, approvingly, either not even realizing or at least ignoring the stunning double standard they applied to politicians they liked and disliked.

Perhaps Hillary's talks in these churches somehow managed to carefully avoid politics? Again, not at all. Politics was the stated purpose.

Harpaz continued her description of the moment, as Hillary appeared behind the podium:

Here Harpaz elaborated on Hillary's stump speech that she used in almost every African-American church that she visited, a speech tailored to African-American voters that touched on slavery, Harriet Tubman, freedom for nineteenth-century blacks. During the speech, she would recall her trip to Auburn, New York, where she went to see
the house where Harriet Tubman lived after she escaped from slavery. She described Tubman's bravery, and her willingness to sacrifice her own life for the greater good of other slaves. It was a riveting speech for many reasons, but especially because of the clarity with which she tied this historical narrative to herself and the present day. According to Harpaz, Hillary went on, “We all have to keep going until we are a just nation,” practically shouting as people began to stand, cheering and clapping and loving every word out of her mouth. “But I need your help. And if you will help me, I will be there for you!” The church exploded into applause at Hillary's closing exhortation: “Let's keep going! Let's have a great big turnout in the election! If you fight for me in the next five weeks, I will go to the Senate and fight for you for the next six years! Thank you, everybody! Thank you
so-o-o-o-o much!
”
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This was the finale, as Hillary would always end with a cry of support and the roar of the band before climbing into her van with the energized secular media straggling behind her, trying to keep up en route to the next service.

This church stop template that Harpaz described changed depending on location. For example, at the next Sunday worship-service/ rally that same October 1, a more staid Episcopal church, where the bishop told the gathered they were about to experience a “visitation” from Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hillary was shrewd enough to save the “Keep going!” routine for churches like the previous one. Here, said Harpaz, “Instead, she trots out another one of my favorite Hillary church-shticks, which goes something like this: ‘Someone asked me the other day if I prayed. I said, yes, I do pray. I was fortunate enough to be brought up in a home where the power of prayers was understood. But I have to tell you, if I hadn't prayed before I got to the White House, I would have started after I arrived.' It's a funny line, and even in this buttoned-up place, people laugh.”
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At times, these events got out of hand, with statements from liberal pastors that were extremely mean-spirited. One such occurrence
that Harpaz reported was during a stop at Emmanuel Baptist Church in New York City, where co-pastor Darlene Thomas McGuire—after issuing the standard claim that she was not speaking for the church, judged Hillary's opponent evil. Actually, it was more than that: In a hymn, McGuire directly substituted Hillary's opponent, Rick Lazio, for no less than the Prince of Darkness himself. McGuire, immediately after claiming, “I'm not speaking for the church today,” led Hillary and her entire congregation in a unique rendition of an old-time hymn:

McGuire then led her flock in a revised second verse, belting out the new lyrics loudly and proudly, in a state of near political-religious ecstasy:

In a question-and-answer session after the appearance, Harpaz asked Hillary what she thought of the new lyrics. “She paused for a second,” said Harpaz, “then smiled and replied, ‘I love hymns.'”
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So did the press, which, uplifted by that old-time religion, was experiencing an old-fashioned conversion; none of the other reporters voiced any questions about comparing Lazio to Satan.

At these church rallies, minister after minister—men and women
of God—made the questionable claim that Hillary's campaign stops at their churches should not be construed as a political endorsement. Nevertheless they called her everything from “a woman of God,” to, as one reverend said at the Metropolitan AME Church in Harlem, “another Joshua.” When Michael Kelly had dubbed Mrs. Clinton “Saint Hillary” seven years earlier, he had merely been a bit premature.

Like Joshua being chosen by God to lead Jews after Moses' death, Hillary said she would lead this group of African Americans to the Promised Land—directly implying that God had chosen her for that mission. However, she warned them, it was up to them; they could not sit on their hands. It was not enough, she told them, to pray to God to help them. No, she said, in a line she saw her husband use in church after church, “We also have to move our feet and hands.” This was a not-so-veiled way of telling them that they needed to walk to the polling booth and pull that lever for her and other Democrats.
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When she finished, the pastor—again, claiming to be nonpolitical—conceded that he agreed with Mrs. Clinton. Wrote Beth Harpaz, again a witness: “When she sat down, the pastor, Robert Bailey, got up again and told his flock that God had given them a second chance to elect another Clinton. Hillary, he said, was their Joshua.”
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A typical example of how the press reacted to all of this was the
New York Times
coverage of a Hillary church rally on Sunday, November 5, the last Sunday before the election. As Texas governor George W. Bush made routine campaign stops in Florida—deliberately avoiding church stops, no doubt fully understanding he could never get away with a similar campaign strategy—on that day, senatorial candidate Clinton appeared at as many New York churches as she could. The
Times's
coverage began: “In a day of gospel and politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton preached and prayed her way through seven churches in seven hours yesterday, moving to close out her campaign by urging black parishioners in New York City to turn out to support her tomorrow.” From Brooklyn to the Bronx, said the
Times
, at
churches large and small, the first lady “pleaded and cajoled churchgoers to vote the Democratic line…. The same striking scene was repeated again and again throughout the day.”
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