First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday all but picked up the endorsement of the city’s largest municipal labor union for her likely Senate campaign.
Two years after District Council 37 backed Mayor Giuliani for re-election, the union’s new leader, Lee Saunders, enthusiastically welcomed the first lady at the union’s annual legislative conference downtown.
“We haven’t endorsed you because you haven’t announced,” he said. “When you announce, District Council 37 endorses,” Saunders said to wild applause from about 200 members.
Clearly alluding to Giuliani, Saunders praised Mrs. Clinton saying: “Unlike some politicians I could name, she’s been listening to all New Yorkers. Unlike some politicians I could name, she’s compassionate rather than belligerent.”
For her part, Mrs. Clinton did her best to make distinctions between herself and her likely Republican opponent – without ever mentioning his name.
“Anybody who praised Reaganomics and supply-side economics must not have a good memory of what was happening in New York in the 1980s,” she said.
At a speech in the Ronald Reagan Library in California last month, the mayor praised the former president’s economic policies, saying they helped jump-start the national economy.
“I don’t think studying the minimum wage to death instead of raising it is fair to working people,” Mrs. Clinton said later.
“I’m not a candidate yet,” she said. “I’m laying out the positions that I believe in that I think most New Yorkers agree with.”
Giuliani’s press secretary, Sunny Mindel, dismissed the first lady’s comments. “She’s not a candidate and she’s not a resident -so how could she be possibly speaking for most New Yorkers or, for that matter, any New Yorkers?”