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The U.S. campaign trail leads off tonight's edition, though not the big play for the White House, rather the play for the Big Apple and the State of New York.

As many expected, America's First Lady, Hillary Clinton, is having a tough time convincing the wary and deeply parochial voters of New York that an out of towner deserves one the State's two plum senate sport.

Pragmatic uptown New Yorkers don't mind her so much, it's the conservative upstaters that are proving hard to woo. And New York's all important Jewish vote is a prickly one as well.

It's a relatively short trip for the removalists from Pennsylvania Avenue, up the interstate to the Clinton's new million dollar house in New York. Trouble is it's the truckload of political baggage that comes with the Clinton name that's weighing down Hillary's senate campaign.

Here's U.S. correspondent Jonathan Holmes.

Bagpipers marching towards camera.

Music: Bagpipe band

02:00

Holmes: It’s the fourth of July, America’s independence day - in a small town in the far northern reaches of New York state, the obscure Republican candidate for the United States Senate, accompanied by his loyal spouse, is out garnering votes among the modest crowd.

Lazio giving hug to woman in street.

LAZIO: Okay, we're giving away hugs. Hugs for votes.

02:32

Music

Holmes: Meanwhile in New York Harbor, on board the USS John F. Kennedy, watched by tens of millions of Americans...

... the Democratic candidate and her loyal spouse are being accorded a somewhat more formal welcome.

Singer – National Anthem

Harbour shots, of boats and stealth bombers.

Holmes: In an orgy of patriotic symbolism, the Commander-in-Chief and his First Lady have come to celebrate America’s birthday at the gateway to the land of the free.

03:12

Singer – National Anthem continues

FX: Applause

Holmes: Of course Hillary Clinton is not campaigning - not today. Today, she says, is not political.

But what a grandstand for a candidate! What a crushing contrast with her opponent!

Lazio shaking hands with people, Mike Murphy walking along towards camera.

Try as he might, the Republican's chief strategist and spin master can’t quite keep the envy out of his voice.

04:03

Super:

Mike Murphy

Republican Strategist

Murphy: I think Mrs Clinton’s out on an aircraft carrier today being saluted, and Rick Lazio’s out in parades across New York meeting real people, talking to them - it’s the story of the two different campaigns.

Frankly we don’t have any super carriers, we have to make do with regular parades and we’re happy with that.

Holmes: Rick Lazio is a little known congressman from Long Island, drafted in by the Republican Party when Rudy Giuliani, the high-profile mayor of New York City, pulled out of the Senate race with prostate cancer.

Lazio shaking hands

Lazio: Spread the word…

Holmes: And Rick Lazio has a problem.

04:45

Young man: I never heard of Rick Lazio. He just came out of nowhere.

Old man: I swear I never heard of him.

Old man 2: I never heard of him.

As far as I’m concerned he never did anything for us.

Woman: Who’s she running against?

Holmes: Rick Lazio, he's a Long Island Congressman.

Woman: Lazio. Okay.

Military band playing and shots of New York celebrations.

Holmes: Everyone’s heard of Hillary Clinton. And with her fame comes money, buckets of it, for her campaign coffers.

She’s running in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one - and she’s married to a President who’s carried New York crushingly twice in eight years.

05:10

Super:

Jonathan Holmes

Holmes: With all those advantages, this senate race ought to be a lay-down misere for Hillary Rodham Clinton. But it isn’t. All the polls are showing that her support is stuck for months at about 45%, and her almost unknown opponent is now at level pegging. Why should this be? Well of course it says something about New Yorkers and their distrust of outsiders. But what it's really talking about is the extraordinary level of fear and loathing that the Clintons as a couple, husband and wife, seem able to inspire in their many enemies.

Music: Street drummer

Drummer in the street.

Holmes: You’ll hear it in the canyons of downtown Manhattan.

06:11

Man in station: There’s nothing honest about the woman or about the man. I mean they’re total liars and they’re total opportunists. They have no principles.

Holmes: And you’ll hear it in the little towns that dot the vast hinterland of New York State, way up by the Canadian border, where Rick Lazio’s bus, the so called mainstream express, is plying from rally to rally.

People waving flags. And people in the crowd talking.

Man at rally: I don’t trust her, I think she’s a liar.

Woman: Exactly, she lies just like her husband. Just like her husband, because why would she stay with him when he’s a liar. I wouldn’t stay with a husband that's a liar.

06:42

Holmes: All the pundits and pollsters agree that Rick Lazio, the fresh-faced young Congressman who no one’s ever heard of, has two things going for him. First, he’s a New Yorker, born and bred.

CROWD CHANT: “We want Rick! We want Rick!”

Music

Singer: Tell your mama, tell your paw,

We’re gonna send you back to Arkansas....

Man: I’ll just say that we don’t need any outsiders to come in here and run New York. I’d rather see a Long Island guy come up here represent us, and we can trust him, that’s why we’re for this guy here. That’s all I got to say, mister.

And second, that he is NOT Hillary Clinton

Super:

Rick Lazio Republican Candidate

Wide shot of Lazio addressing the crowd.

LAZIO: We have lived through some good times and some bad times but in the end it is our values that sustain us.

07:42

In a million years I wouldn’t want anyone to represent me that didn’t have those values, didn’t have a sense of character.

TRICHTER: If you ask those voters why they’re supporting him, a plurality will say because they have anti-Hillary views

Super:

Jonathan Trichter

Independent Pollster

And her numbers show that while she is popular among a constituency she is also unpopular among another constituency to the tune of about 40% of voters who just don’t like her and never will.

I proposed that it wouldn’t matter if Muammar Ghaddafi or Mother Theresa ran against Hillary Clinton she’d still be stuck at 45%, other pundits have used other metaphors including a ham sandwich, a turkey, and a mannequin.

Holmes: They’d all do well against Hillary Clinton?

Trichter: So would you.

Hillary and Moynihan walking together.

Holmes: It’s a full year since the venerable Democratic senator for New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, drew the massed ranks of the nation’s press to his upstate farm to endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor.

08:37

Super:

7 July 1999

Daniel P. Moynihan

US Senator for New York

Moynihan: I hope she will go all the way. I mean to go all the way with her. I think she’s going to win, I think it’s going to be wonderful for New York.

08:52

Holmes: They asked her then, of course, why the wife of the governor of Arkansas should think she can represent the people of New York.

HILLARY: I think it’s a very fair question and I fully understand people raising it, and I think that I have some real work to do,

to get out and listen and learn from the people of New York and demonstrate that what I’m for is as important, if not more important as where I’m from.

Hillary talking to the crowds of people, with babies.

Holmes: And work she has, upstate and downstate, week in week out, working the crowds, hugging the babies, doing the hard yards that Americans demand of their politicians - and to all appearances, doing it well.

09:27

Woman: Yes it was a very big thrill, she’s a very lovely person and she’s shorter than I thought (laugh).

Woman 2: Very nice lady...very nice...very gracious woman.

Man: Well it certainly was nice to see that she took time to come to Broome County

and to be a part of our community for a day, and she’s been here other times, so that speaks well for her.

Large gathering of people at a Hillary campaign.

Holmes: And, if you believe her press secretary – admittedly, a dangerous thing to do in any American election - she’s even having a good time.

10:07

Super:

Howard Wolfson

Press Secretary, “Team Hillary”

WOLFSON: I think she loves it. When you’re at an event like this where you’ve got eleven hundred people in an area that’s typically Republican who have come out to see you – you know it doesn’t get any better than that.

Hillary: Hi, how are you all, nice to see you. What do you recommend today?

Diners: Spinach.

Hillary: I happen to like spinach.

Holmes: She’s spent most of her adult life campaigning with one of the masters of the art.

Hillary: Do you also do the calypso in between? Thanks, you’re welcome.

Holmes: Though she’s never had Bill Clinton’s magic ease with strangers - and though the secret service guards her every step of the way...

Guard: Step back for me all right take a step back

Holmes: …she is getting better.

Hillary: We had all the tall ships - they were so beautiful.

Hillary sitting down to lunch with group of people.

Holmes: Of course everyone likes to meet a star in the flesh.

Hillary: You can see how people would be moved to run away to sea when you saw those.

Holmes: But not every star, in the crush and the cameras, can give a mother advice about her runaway daughter…

11:04

Hillary: It’s tough. It’s tough. But I think it’s also really important that you tell her that you think it’s a mistake but that you’ll love her, you’ll be there for her.

Holmes: …in a way that has the desired effect - at least for Hillary.

Woman: I think she’s wonderful. She’s a great person, great personality and I think she’ll do a great job.

Hillary giving a talk to a room of people.

Holmes: And an hour later, she can neatly sidestep a hard headed defence industry employee who asks which of three different combat aircraft she’ll fight to fund.

11:42

Man: I’d like to know which of these programs you support and why.

Hillary: Well any that are designed, made and built in New York.

FX: Laughter

Holmes: But for all her hard work and her skills as a campaigner, Hillary’s polls are exactly where they were a year ago.

Hillary: I want to represent New York obviously.

Media following Hillary down corridor. Hillary in front of the press.

Holmes: You won’t, of course, get much of an explanation from the candidate.

Hillary: Hullo everybody, just like old times.

Holmes: She does give the occasional press conference.

Hillary [singing]: Back on the trail. How are ya?

Holmes: But despite the strained jollity, she’s suspicious of the press.

Hillary: Well I thought you know since we’re all together we could have a little chorus.

12:16

Holmes: She doesn’t give one-on-one interviews - not even to the stars of the American media, and certainly not to a humble Australian hack.

Holmes: Mrs Clinton, how do you account for the fact that you’re so well known even the Australian media are here.

Hillary: Are you from Australia?

Holmes: Certainly am.

Hillary: Are you from Sydney?

Holmes: Yes that’s right.

Hillary: Welcome.

Holmes: How is it that this virtually unknown contender is running level with you in the polls already. How do you account for that?

Hillary giving her answer.

Hillary: It’s a competitive election and you know there are big differences between Democrats and Republicans and I have to work hard to earn the vote of every New Yorker I can reach and that’s what I intend to do for the rest of the time as I have been doing for the last year.

12:58

Holmes: But do you think it’s the case that you’ve already run up against a ceiling, that it’s going to be very hard for you to get any more votes?

Hillary: I think that I’ll win in November and we just have to get there between now and then, and it’s going be a lot of hard work and a lot of talking about what I would do in the Senate and that’s what I think will be of most interest to the people of New York .

Clips from the ad - Hillary in front of microphone, talking to crowd.

Super:

Paid for by Friends of Hillary

Hillary ad: How many of you have known somebody...

Holmes: Of course it’s the ads that do most of the talking - and team Hillary makes lots of them.

13:32

Super

Hillary’s job plan

Tax cuts for new jobs

Ideas to lower airfares and utility rates.

For a copy call 1-888-Hillary or go to www.Hillary2000.org

Hillary ad: I believe it’s important to tell you where I stand and what I’ll do...

Holmes: Ads expensively produced to look like amateur video concentrate on promoting Hillary’s issues.

MAN’S VOICE: Hillary’s fighting to make sure our children can build their futures here.

MAN’S VOICE: The State Senate just passed tougher penalties for hate crimes. Hillary fought for the Bill. Rick Lazio was opposed.

Holmes: And even more ads, cheaply produced to look like teletype, examine Rick Lazio’s record.

MAN’S VOICE: Rick Lazio, the more you know, the more you wonder.

Lazio’s campaign – talking to group of people on verandah.

Holmes: Or as Lazio indignantly claims, distort it.

14:12

Lazio: I understand on the other side they’re running scared right now, they’re getting a little desperate, they’re on their sixth negative commercial in two weeks, and I know there are some folks who would love to drag me down in the mud with them but you know what? I won’t go there.

LAZIO: I think this is going to be a really, really good story - know what the name of it is? Hullo toes!

Holmes: Both sides are crafting campaign fairy stories. Lazio’s spin masters have cast their man as the positive prince, and negative Hillary as the Wicked Witch.

LAZIO: I’ll slip off your socks and shoes, squish into the muddy ooze – ooh.

Holmes: But Rick Lazio’s Mr Nice-guy image is about to be sullied. The travelling press has just discovered a Lazio fund-raising letter which says that Bill and Hillary Clinton have disgraced their posts and shamed America.

Lazio’s campaign bus passing on road.

Holmes: So who’s getting down in the mud now, the New York press want to know - and Rick Lazio starts squirming.

15:23

Super:

Rick Lazio

Republican Candidate

PRESSMAN: Were you aware of this? It sounds like you were not fully aware that this letter was sent out.

LAZIO: Well I mean letters...I mean letters get passed by me, it’s like a quick read of some things...

So I just think it’s incredibly unfair to try and characterise the message of the campaign by a phrase in a solicitation letter.

I’m not the one, Hillary Clinton’s the one who’s out there trying to distort my record, trying to attack me every day.

Lazio still talking to the press in his bus.

Holmes: The truth is, Rick Lazio doesn’t need to attack Hillary Clinton’s image: there’s a whole industry doing it for him.

Walk into any bookshop in New York and you can buy a whole slew of Hillary biographies. Almost all of them portray her as a most unpleasant woman: driving in her ambition, dogmatic in her politics, deceitful in her attempts to worm her way out of the scandals that she and her husband have left in their wake.

15:57

The author of “The First Partner”, New Yorker Joyce Milton, claims to be a Democrat - but for her, the Clintons are classic narcissists.

Milton sitting in chair.

Super

Joyce Milton

Author “The First Partner”

Milton: Narcissists are people who tend to be indignant at any criticism, and that does seem to be a feature of the Clintons. They feel that they are not traditional politicians, they’re policy professionals, technicians if you will, who are doing us a favour by being in politics. When they’re caught doing anything, instead of apologising and cutting their losses they’re indignant, I mean I think that’s really the main reason why so many people who know them well have soured on them.

16:35

Holmes: That indignation was on full display just last week, when Hillary lashed out against her latest attacker.

Hillary: You’re darn right it’s not true, it’s absolutely false, and I am just tired of this kind of politics.

Holmes in the bookshop beside Hillary biographies.

Holmes: In this case some people may feel that the indignation is justified. It was provoked by this book, whose author is a reporter for the National Enquirer – one of the sleaziest tabloids in America. One passage was widely leaked before the book even hit the stands. It alleges that twenty-six years ago, in the aftermath of young Bill Clinton’s failed run for Congress in Arkansas, a furious Hillary Rodham turned on one his campaign aides – a man called Paul Fray -- and hurled racial abuse at him.

17:23

It’s unlikely that the ultra-PC Hillary Clinton would call anyone a Jew bastard - and Paul Fray is not even Jewish.

Besides, some years ago Fray wrote the Clintons a letter in which he admitted that he’d falsely defamed them in the past.

But out in the smart suburbs of Long Island, where Republicans voters cluster in their waterside mansions, the allegation had found fertile ground.

Girls playing softball

Just ask the parents of the Bay Shore girls’ softball team, as they watch their champion pitcher demolish the opposition.

18:19

Woman: She’s proven over and over that you can’t trust her. I think this whole thing that just blew up in her face, the whole Jewish comments and all that stuff, when they have three people that were eye-witnesses and then she turns around and denies it, people don’t believe it, I think she did say it, I think there’s a real nasty side to her, but then

when she’s interviewed or the cameras are on her and the smile comes on and all that stuff.

Holmes: But there are some people for whom Hillary can do no wrong.

Crowd: We love you Hillary, we’re gonna fight for you.

Music

Band playing in this riverside café

Holmes: In a riverside cafe on the banks of the Hudson, in uptown Manhattan where the tourists seldom venture, the political elite of Harlem gathers to raise funds for a statue to memorialise America’s first black Congressman.

WOMAN: Once again we welcome you. Enjoy the music, the food, and the lovely people.

19:20

Holmes: None of these Harlem movers and shakers could care less about Whitewater, or Travelgate, or Monica Lewinsky. They are unambiguously for Hillary.

JEAN: Everything has its origin and of course it’s her husband.

He has really been approachable, and he has really embraced the black communities throughout the country, by hiring us, by thinking in terms of our needs,

so it’s trickled down, or trickled up to Hillary.

Street scenes, cars and roads, shots of Harlem.

Holmes: But can support in Harlem, and Brooklyn and Queens, be turned into votes? Hillary needs a huge turnout here to counteract the Republican majority in the wealthy suburbs. If she were running against the abrasive Rudy Giuliani - the mayor whose police force is regarded on these streets as an occupying army - there would have been no problem. But now?

20:13

JEAN: Well it’s a very good question. I knew people who were going to raise from the dead to come out and vote against Giuliani - blacks of course - and are now some of the thrill has gone.

Holmes: Besides, it’s summer time in New York City. People have better things to do just now than worry about a senate race that's being going on for a year, and has three months still to run.

Shot of people on the beach,

Hillary addressing an audience.

HILLARY: Look it’s only July. There’s going to be a lot more of this, just get ready.

21:04

And I’m going to continue to do what I’ve done for a year, which is to talk about the issues and to run a campaign on issues.

Holmes: But insist though she may, this particular election is hardly about issues at all. It’s a referendum on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

About how many love her....

Woman: What is it we like about her? We like everything about her. She does a good job so far. Doesn’t matter where she comes from as long as she’s running.

Holmes: And how many hate her...

Man: She’s a horror story. Hillary the Horror Show - that’s her nickname.

The New York celebrations by the harbour.

Holmes: United States senators are elected for a six year term - and incumbents are rarely defeated. If Hillary wins in November, America may well have to cope with the Clintons - husband and wife - love story or horror show - for a long, long time to come.

21:57

Band music

Credits

Reporter: Jonathan Holmes

Camera: Peter Curtis A.C.S

Sound: Vincent Magwenya

Editor: Woody Landay

Producer: Dugald Maudsley