Why Don’T Soccer Moms Like Hillary?

Sun., April 9, 2000

Lenore Skenazy New York Daily News

The cookies are back on the plate.

The cookies that Hillary once casually mentioned she didn’t stay home baking.

The cookies that went on to become code words for the appropriate role of the first lady, the proper amount of ambition and maybe even Motherhood Itself. Those cookies.

Maybe they can explain why Hillary Rodham Clinton is trailing Mayor Rudy Giuliani by 20 points among suburban women.

This is very strange. A Marist poll taken last week shows Hillary ahead of Rudy, 46 percent to 43 percent, among New York women overall. But among suburban women, the welcome mat is missing. Why?

“I got a bad feeling about her from the start,” says Maria, a mother of three in Pleasantville who votes as an independent. “I like sincere people. I loved Barbara Bush.” Hillary’s political ambitions, as well as her cookie crack, irk Maria to this day.

“I don’t care for the way she conducted herself during President Clinton’s personal problems,” adds Anne Carmody, another mom in Pleasantville. “I don’t respect her.” Maria again: “Any normal woman would have left her husband.”

If all this sounds a bit personal - it is. This just happens to be the kind of stuff most of us know best about Hillary, so far.

“Rudy is judged by his work,” says Mitchell Moss, head of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. “Hillary has never been elected, so the criteria by which she’s judged are far more personal.”

Hillary’s suburban popularity problem could stem from the fact that while demographically, she is a Chappaqua soul sister - well-educated, middle-age, with a kid in college and a big-shot husband - personally, her life has been anything but soccer mom.

“Maybe they just feel straight out that she doesn’t understand them,” says Georgia Witkin, author of “The Female Stress Syndrome.”

They could resent that. On the other hand, maybe it’s a case of Hillary seeming too similar. Or it could simply be that lots of suburban ladies, just like lots of suburban men, respect Giuliani.

Whatever the reason suburban women aren’t hot for Hillary, one thing is clear: Until we get to know her better, the personal is political.

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