May 14, 1999
Web posted at: 6:11 p.m. EDT (2211 GMT)

WASHINGTON (May 14) -- They are so different in personal style and political substance. But Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth Dole have both excited and invigorated women voters.

"There is a feeling among a lot of women that other women understand their problems, the issues that they are dealing with -- whether it has to do with elderly parents or young children," said Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy's Elizabeth Sherman.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton

Dole, a likely hopeful for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination, has said, "I am not running because I am a woman and I don't expect people to vote for me because I am a woman."

But Dole knows being the first woman with a real chance at a major party presidential nomination is a strength.

"It is a very big plus for me that she happens to be a woman," one woman at a Dole Iowa event told CNN.

And Dole uses her experience as a women in traditionally male-dominated institutions. "I haven't been outnumbered by this many men since I was one of 24 women in a class of 550 at Harvard Law School," she said at one stop.

Dole was a Washington power player long before her late marriage to Bob Dole. She has never had children.

Her ambition has been cloaked by a genteel Southern manner many women like.

"Elizabeth Dole will appeal to more conservative women -- probably older women, more affluent suburban women, professional women. Certainly Republican women," Sherman said.

Though Dole seems to some women a bit of an anachronism, it is Clinton who for years merged her ambitions with her husband's and endured silently the humiliation of a publicly troubled marriage.

But Clinton is the outspoken in-your-face feminist who many liberal women simply adore.

At an event in New York -- a state in which the first lady is considering a possible Senate run -- one woman described Clinton's message: "Stand on your own, to be able to think for yourself, to be your own person."

Elizabeth Dole

In the issues she raises -- education, health care, Social Security -- and in other remarks she makes Clinton appear to be trying to reach out to a broad range of women.

"Will we admit once and for all there is no single cookie-cutter model for being a successful and fulfilled woman today," Clinton asked one group.

The conventional wisdom is that both Clinton and Dole could attract large chunks of female votes -- both Republican and Democratic.

But is it correct to assume that women will vote as a block, for a woman or anyone else?

Erica Henri of the Women's Campaign fund said: "A woman in the South is going to vote differently than a woman in California. A woman that's a businesswoman is going to vote differently than a person that's not."

But look around at a Hillary Clinton event, or an Elizabeth Dole event, and on the face of the women attending you will see excitement, admiration and a real pride that these successful women is one of us.

Friday, May 14, 1999

• Negotiations continue despite Senate vote to close 'gun-show loophole'
• The truth about gun shows
• Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole exciting women voters
• First lady looks to make Senate decision 'sooner'
• Ex-teen killer opposes trying juveniles as adults
• White House nears choice for Fed governor
• Hacker linked to White House attack indicted
• Julie Nixon Eisenhower deposed by government lawyers
• Kosovo bill gives win to GOP on defense, Democrats on budget surplus
• House ethics panel cautions DeLay, other members
• Clinton puts in his two cents' worth for Gore
• Minnesota capitol evacuated after bomb threat
• Top judge says courts shouldn't give up independence to gain public trust
• Congress to vote on Kosovo spending bill next week
• Highlights of Kosovo spending bill
• Clinton helps Michigan lawmaker raise campaign money
• Hillary Clinton tours Macedonian refugee camps

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