Who Wears the Pants?; When it Comes to Politics in the Clinton Household Apparently It's Hillary : The Daily News

Looks like a Hillary night tonight on the blog.

A few weeks ago when the Dubai Ports deal was still hot, we ran a story from the Financial Times which exposed former President Bill Clinton's role in advising the folks in Dubai on how to sell the deal in the U.S. At the same time of course, Sen. Hillary Clinton - unaware of her husband's freelance work - was pushing hard and publicly against the deal.

The Daily News reports today that the staffs of each Clinton are working hard to see that something like that doesn't happen again, with Hillary and her staff having the final say on all things political.

******

Mayor Bloomberg is making some Hillary news today too. The AP reports the nominally Republican Bloomberg is keeping all his options open for this fall as far as endorsements are concerned and, according to an aide, would consider a couple of high-profile Democrats - Clinton for the senate and Eliot Spitzer for governor.

******

New York's junior senator is also highlighted in a major poll out today. FOX News has a presidential preference poll showing Clinton is well ahead of other Democrats who are, or who may be, in the race. In FOX's poll, Clinton - at 43% - is about 30 points ahead of her nearest challengers or would-be challengers, Al Gore, John Kerry and John Edwards.

Among registered Republicans, the FOX poll puts former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani ahead of John McCain 29% to 22%. Governor George Pataki checks in at 2%. The poll leaves out Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who says she isn't interested, but, strangely, includes Dick Cheney (and may I say NOBODY is interested in seeing that).

When pitted one-on-one, both McCain and Giuliani beat Sen. Clinton by about a dozen percentage points.

The poll goes a lot deeper with some good - and maybe not so good - questions. It even asks respondents if they think President Bush is "a nice person." FOX News - always asking the right questions.

******

Don't know if you are familiar with it, but there's a Web site out there called JustHillary.com. As you might guess it contains news exclusively about the senator - good, bad or otherwise. The site today lifted a story from the St. Petersburg Times in which New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, said the Democrats would do better to nominate a governor with executive experience rather than Clinton. Wonder who he might be talking about?

*******
Last night we told you about Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand and how she seems to be getting some attention in her bid to unseat U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, the Republican from New York's 20th District. Today comes word from the Times-Union's political blog, Capitol Confidential, that Gillibrand has a rival for the Democratic nomination. Doug Walters of Milan, who calls himself a progressive Democrat since 1968, came out swinging - not against Gillibrand, but against the war and Sweeney's support for it.