Oct 15, 2007 5:32 pm US/Eastern
Hillary Kicks Off Week Devoted To Women's Issues
Senator Says She Draws Strength From Eleanor Roosevelt
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is courting the female vote, starting right here in the Big Apple.
"I am not running because I am a woman," she said. "I am running because I think I am the best qualified and experienced person to do the job that needs to be done starting January 2009."
The senator kicked off a week-long celebration of women changing America.
That includes announcing new proposals for working parents, discussing healthcare, and attending a fundraiser with nearly 1,000 female campaign donors.
Clinton told the crowd Monday she wants to restore America's image abroad, and vowed to end the Iraq war immediately if elected.
Clinton told an audience of women political activists Monday that she relied on the wise words of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to help her through tough times on the campaign trail.
"She said, 'You know, if you're going to be involved in politics you have to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros,"' the presidential candidate said. "So occasionally, I'll be sitting somewhere and I'll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I'll look down at my hand and I'll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have."
The speech was one of a series of campaign events this week aimed at burnishing Clinton's standing among female voters, which polls show are already one of her strongest constituencies.
The New York senator began the day with an appearance on ABC's "The View," a televised chat show with a heavily female audience. She was later honored at a luncheon for the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Fund, which raises money for Democratic women candidates running for office in New York.
She planned to spend Tuesday in New Hampshire, where she was to deliver a major policy speech on balancing work and family.
The Clinton campaign released a memo Monday from senior strategist Mark Penn outlining how she had become the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination largely on the strength of her support among female voters. He noted polling showing her leading the GOP front-runner, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in hypothetical matchups largely due to her support among women.
"She enjoys her deepest support among working and middle class women -- people who care most about issues like health care and child care, issues that Hillary has worked on throughout her life in public service," Penn wrote.
Clinton typically tells audiences that while she's proud to be running for president as a woman, she should be elected because she's the best candidate. Monday, she spoke more openly of the challenges of being a woman in a campaign environment long dominated by men.
"I think there still is probably a tougher standard for women, especially running for president," Clinton said on "The View."
"I mean, we've all been through it in some way or another where you go and you try to break a barrier and you try to do the best you can and people are saying, 'I don't like her clothes' or 'I don't like her hair."'
And speaking to the Eleanor Roosevelt lunch, Clinton said she gets through hard times on the campaign trail by thinking about the challenges other women face.
"People ask me all the time if it's hard. Of course it's hard," she said to laughs. "But when it gets really hard I think about a lot of these women who went before. I think about all the women I have met -- women working as hard as they can, or raising children alone."
Clinton also criticized the Bush administration's record on women's issues, noting that the Supreme Court under Bush had taken steps to limit abortion rights and reverse progress on equal pay.
"Americans are ready to stand up and say, 'Enough. We did not sign up for this dangerous experiment in extremism,"' she said.
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