LBANY, N.Y. - Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is ''coldblooded and hotheaded'' and a ''shrill and scheming person'' trying to ''lie her way into high office,'' New York's Republican Party chairman says.
In a fund-raising letter, William Powers denounces Clinton as ''abrasive and annoying, brash and bitter, calculating and scheming, distant and deceitful, polarizing and power hungry.''
Powers, a supporter of Representative Rick Lazio's campaign against the first lady, said in a statement yesterday that ''our letter just tells it like it is.''
''She's lying when she calls herself a New Yorker because she's not one of us,'' the GOP leader added.
''I guess this is going to be their strategy, to hurl insults instead of talk about issues,'' Clinton said during a campaign stop in New York City.
Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, saying that ''these kind of personal attacks have no place in politics,'' called on Lazio to disavow the letter.
There appeared little chance of that.
''The letter is chairman Powers's letter, and it reflects his opinions,'' said Dan McLagan, Lazio campaign spokesman. ''He's more than capable of expressing his opinions himself and is welcome to do so.''
The letter provided further evidence of how negative the Senate campaign has become in the eight weeks since Lazio entered the race after New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani withdrew.
