More voters say Hillary Clinton is doing a good job, poll finds

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had just smiled her way through a photo session with starstruck Capitol Hill interns when an aide handed her a ringing cell phone.

The news was good: The Senate would take up her amendment seeking money to hire more food inspectors. In the hubbub of Senate activity on this Friday before spring recess, the topic would barely rate notice with her colleagues.

But Clinton is beaming.

"There's a real problem with meat inspections, especially in New York," she said.

One hundred days into her Senate career, Clinton has made the unprecedented transformation from first lady to senator and emerged as a blend of celebrity, workhorse and policy wonk.

Still gawked at by tourists and pursued by reporters, she nonetheless has settled into her new role, recording nearly perfect attendance at committee hearings and embracing local issues, like trying to get government help for New York apple growers and naming a Manhattan courthouse after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

"What you're seeing is who Hillary Clinton really is, and always was, which is a passionate policy person," said Lisa Caputo, her former White House press secretary. "She's just able to show it now."

Clinton, 53, got off to a stumbling start marked by repeated questions about her husband's presidential pardons and gifts taken from the White House. Although the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan still is investigating the pardons, the questions have hit a lull.

A Marist College poll released this week found that just 35 percent of New York voters think Clinton is doing either an excellent or a good job, but that was up from 30 percent in February.

Sipping hot tea from a Syracuse University mug in the freshly painted yellow office she inherited from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Clinton said she was "looking forward, not backward."

She said her Senate career at the moment is about little victories.

"But they add up and they create a pattern," she said. "That's what I'm trying to do."