Opponent John Spencer Tells Reporter "Hillary Clinton Is Ugly"

In this year’s Senatorial race in New York, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer is trailing Democratic incumbent Hillary Rodham Clinton by a wide margin in the polls. That margin probably started growing even wider the minute Monday’s edition of the New York Daily News hit the stands.

According to reporter Ben Smith, he sat beside Spencer and his wife last Friday on a flight to Rochester for the Senate campaign debate with Clinton. During the flight, Smith and Spencer chatted about the upcoming debate, and Spencer remarked to Smith that he thought Clinton was ugly and she must have had "millions of dollars" in plastic surgery to make herself more attractive. The paper said that in talking about her younger days, Spencer told Smith, "You ever see a picture of her back then? Whew. I don’t know why Bill married her." The Clintons have been married for more than 31 years.

In a subsequent interview with the Associated Press, Spencer flatly denied having made any such comments to Smith. He said that although he did chat with the reporter on the flight, he said nothing disparaging about Clinton and did not call her ugly. "It’s a fabrication. I would never call Hillary Clinton ugly," Spencer told the AP. "That’s outrageous. I didn’t do it."

Howard Wolfson, an advisor to Clinton, said that the senator has never had any plastic surgery, and that Spencer is proving once again to be orchestrating his campaign around personal attacks rather than discussing his political agenda. "Sadly, this is just the latest in a long line of insulting and offensive comments that John Spencer has made throughout his career, and it's unfortunate that he has chosen to run a campaign based on personal attacks," Wolfson said.

Clinton, who will turn 59 this week, responded to the tabloid article when campaigning north of Albany at a senior citizens’ center on Monday. "It’s unfortunate that when you don’t have anything positive to say about the issues that we can get off in some pretty swampy territory," she said.

In his second debate with Clinton on Sunday, the day before publication of the article alleging his scathing comments, Spencer told reporters that he "liked" Clinton and that she would make a "tremendous" candidate for president. But he said that he would never vote for her himself.

Smith told the AP that he didn’t record the comments by Spencer as they spoke on the plane, but he did take notes.