Faves in '08 face nays
BY HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
June 6, 2006

Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are all big favorites in early presidential polling, but the three face growing problems with the party activists who will actually choose a nominee.
Two anti-war protesters crashed Clinton's vast midtown fund-raiser yesterday, yelling at the senator as she spoke to 1,500 people at a Women for Hillary luncheon.

Clinton didn't bat an eye, and the small protest barely registered in the sea of adoring supporters who put another $350,000 into her overflowing campaign coffers.

But it was a reflection of a growing liberal unhappiness with her war vote, which may hurt her if she runs in 2008.

That unhappiness is fueling her would-be challenger in the Senate primary, anti-war activist Jonathan Tasini, who kicks off a ballot signature drive today in Union Square. He'll be joined by Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mom who camped outside President Bush's ranch last summer and now has Clinton in her cross hairs.

"She's rubber-stamping Bush's policy, and it's murderous and it's wrong," Sheehan said.

In New Hampshire over the weekend, the issue of the war was front and center. Democrats who will cast the first 2008 primary votes gave Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold five rapturous ovations at their state convention when he stressed he's the only 2008 hopeful who voted against invading Iraq.

On the GOP side, animosity for McCain and Giuliani for being too liberal on issues like gay marriage bubbled up at Minnesota's Republican state convention.

While the Arizona senator and New York's ex-mayor top every national 2008 survey, they both got trounced in a straw poll by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

McCain and Giuliani were favored by impressive numbers of Democrats and independents in recent polls, but like Clinton, they have to shore up their own party base before taking on the opposition.

With Angie Wallace