(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Can Hillary save Freddy? After weeks of behind-the-scenes appeals by the Ferrer camp, Hillary Clinton’s advisers are in final negotiations with Ferrer aides over a series of new Hillary events designed to give his challenged candidacy a last-minute boost. Sources say the senator’s aides helped get Ferrer a starring role at the massive annual Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee lunch on October 17, hosted by former Democratic state chair Judith Hope, with whom Ferrer had feuded. “There was bad blood between the Ferrer camp and Hope from the 2001 mayoral election,” one top Dem says. Hillary will now introduce Freddy at the event. The first Hillary-authored fund-raising e-mail for Ferrer is going out this week to thousands of her New York donors. And on October 21, she’s hosting a $250-a-head cocktail party for him at Table XII on East 56th Street. The stepped-up support—along with Bill’s plans to campaign with Ferrer—might placate Dems who found her endorsement of Ferrer had been undermined by her refusal to criticize Michael Bloomberg. In any case, her ’06 campaign will need a united party (and Latino support).

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Greg Sargent
• Table of Contents: October 24, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!