EW YORK - Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is drifting to the right in an apparent attempt to lure upstate voters and conservative money nationwide. And yesterday, Hillary Rodham Clinton made an issue of it.
The provocation came with a fund-raising letter, in which Giuliani wrote, ''Hillary Clinton further revealed her hostility towards America's religious traditions when she attacked Governor George W. Bush's idea that we should look toward America's faith-based charities more than government programs to address social problems.''
Clinton has shied away from attacking the mayor directly, but yesterday she made an exception, telling a crowd in Rochester, ''As a person of faith, I am appalled that he would make false statements about me and my respect for religion, in order to raise money for the campaign ... I am outraged that he would inject religion into this campaign in any form whatsoever.''
A statement released by her campaign further said that Clinton has never attacked Bush's proposal and that she explicitly supports social work by religious charities, ''if it is done within the constitutional framework.''
Several biographies of Clinton, including harshly critical ones, have said that her social and political philosophy has roots in her Methodist upbringing.
At a news conference here, Giuliani laughed off his opponent's anger, saying he has sent out the letter last October and still stands by everything it says. ''It's the Clinton campaign that injected it into the race ... The reality is, nobody attacked her,'' he told reporters.
News of the letter was published yesterday in the Village Voice by a columnist, Wayne Barrett, then was picked up, and passed around, by Clinton campaigners. Barrett wrote that his father, a conservative Catholic, had received it last month in the mail at his home in Virginia, shortly before he died.
The letter appears to be part of a general rightward drift that Giuliani seems to have pursued, at least rhetorically, since the Senate campaign began.
This week, he attacked Clinton for playing Billy Joel's ''Captain Jack,'' a song that he described as glorifying the use of drugs, at her campaign-launching event last Sunday.
Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, replied that she did not choose the song. It was played over the public-address system, along with other Joel tunes, well before she took the stage.
The fund-raising letter contains various statements that might surprise many of the mayor's more centrist supporters. For instance, he complains about judges who ''have banned the posting of even the Ten Commandments in our public schools.''
He also states, ''I guess what I'm most angry about is how the Clintons have attacked and belittled Ronald Reagan and his legacy.''
The striking thing is that, until the Senate campaign, Giuliani never tried reaching out to the more conservative wing of the GOP.
As mayor, Giuliani has outspokenly supported gay rights, immigration rights, abortion rights, gun control, and even, in a departure from his otherwise consistent stance on free-market economic theory, rent control.
He has not altered his stance on any of these issues. In fact, he has resisted pressures from New York state's Conservative Party to condemn partial-birth abortion. As a result, the chairman of the Conservative Party, Mike Long, announced Monday that he had given up on offering his party's endorsement to the mayor and would seek another candidate.
Not since 1974 has a Republican won statewide office without the Conservative Party's support. Many independent voters, and even quite a few Democrats who have problems with Clinton, have voiced admiration for the mayor's having stuck to these principles.
However, some of these independents may wonder at his adoption of such Republican rhetoric now.
Representative Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, suggested this may increasingly be a theme in Clinton's campaign. At her announcement last Sunday, Rangel said New York needs a senator ''who will stand up to Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, not stand with them.''
