With several thousand supporters chanting her name, Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton formally launched her campaign to win a seat in the US Senate. Calling herself a "new Democrat", Mrs Clinton is determined to correct the negative image many voters in New York seem to have of her.
After six months of an informal campaign and what she has called a "listening tour", Mrs Clinton has seen her poll ratings fall behind that of her Republican rival, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The latest poll shows him ahead by 7 per cent in the whole of New York state but she has 53 per cent in New York city.
The campaign for the New York Senate seat between two such strong personalities is expected to be one of the most exciting in US politics. Both candidates have already begun running TV ads highlighting mistakes by the other.
Mrs Clinton launched her campaign at a university near her new home in suburban Westchester county with her husband at her side. The President helped in the preparations for her speech, according to a White House spokesman, but did not want to speak as he believed the spotlight should be on her as the candidate and her vision for the future.
Mrs Clinton was also flanked by her daughter, Chelsea, and her mother, Dorothy. Also on the platform was Senator Daniel Moynihan, whose seat Mrs Clinton hopes to win when he retires in November.
As part of the effort to inform voters about her own achievements both before and during her seven years as First Lady in the White House, an 18-minute video was played for the large attendance. Mrs Clinton appeared relaxed, telling viewers about her lack of cooking and singing skills. The campaign will also distribute almost half-a-million brochures telling voters about Mrs Clinton's life story from her childhood in Chicago, through her university studies, her work for the Watergate investigation committee, her time in Little Rock, Arkansas, as wife of Governor Clinton, where she worked to improve education facilities for poorer children, and finishing with her duties as First Lady and her campaigns at home and abroad for women's rights and for children in need.
In her speech, Mrs Clinton listed her aims for New York, including better schools and health care and stricter gun control. She mentioned Northern Ireland as one of the areas where she and her husband have worked to bring about peace.
In an interview with the New York Times published yesterday, Mrs Clinton said many voters, particularly women, have a negative view of her merely because they have a superficial view of her. "In the small groups I've been meeting with - primarily of women - a lot of women become very sceptical because they have an idea in their mind of what I am going to be like," she said.
"They think I must kind of be carried around in some kind of a chariot with liveried servants, or something. So when they meet me and we start talking about what life is like and what my experiences have been like, we have an immediate bond."
Senator Edward Kennedy entered a Washington hospital yesterday with a flu-like viral illness but was resting comfortably, his office said. The Massachusetts senator was suffering from a cough, fever and chills. Mr Kennedy's office said the senator, who turns 68 this month, was in good spirits.