Clinton, Royal share little beyond election bids

NEW YORK, May 10 (Reuters) If Hillary Clinton looks to France to learn from Segolene Royal, who lost her campaign to become the European nation's first woman president, the clearest lesson is that a woman cannot count on the support of female voters.

Royal failed to win a majority of the women's vote in France's election last weekend, and U.S. Sen. Clinton, with her eye on the White House in 2008, can't assume she has women's votes without wooing them on substantive grounds, experts say.

''One of the biggest lessons to be learned is that a woman can't take the women's vote for granted. That's a cautionary note,'' said Barbara Kellerman, an author and a John F Kennedy School of Government lecturer at Harvard University.

''There's a lot of babble all the time about sisterhood and a certain set of assumptions about women gravitating toward women, which we've just seen now does not particularly hold.'' In France, only 48 percent of women voted for the Socialist Royal, according to one poll, while 52 percent supported rightist rival and overall winner Nicolas Sarkozy.

Royal may have paid a price for focusing on gender at the expense of her policies, experts said. She played up her feminist credentials, defending policies she would want as a mother, accusing critics of male chauvinism and focusing on the symbolism of her possibly becoming the first female president, they said.

While Clinton makes appeals to female voters, she plays up her gender less on the campaign trail, experts note.

''Hillary Clinton is running a fundamentally different candidacy than Royal did,'' said Kathy Dolan, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and author of ''Voting for Women: How the Public Evaluates Women Candidates.'' ''Royal played more to the classic femininity, agent of change, mother to the country, caring kind of thing,'' Dolan said. ''Hillary Clinton has, first and foremost, tried to make sure that she's running a substantive and serious campaign.

''She's doing the very traditional, very typical, substantive-based, issue-oriented campaign,'' she said.

'DROWNED OUT' The Clinton campaign is happy to agree with the view that Clinton and Royal share very little.

''One has nothing to do with the other,'' said campaign spokesman Phil Singer. ''Other than the fact that they are both women, they don't have much in common.

''Sen Clinton is a strong, smart, experienced leader who is ready to deliver the change the American public wants.'' A lesson might be learned from Royal's displays of emotion, added Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who managed the presidential campaign for former Vice President Al Gore.

''When Ms Royal lost her cool in the last presidential debate, she displayed what is often seen in women candidates as a weakness,'' said Brazile. ''Unfortunately, her positions on major issues were not well known and got drowned out by the emotion she displayed.

''Royal would have pulled an upset if she had proven that she had substance to support her flair,'' Brazile said.

Political and personality differences aside, Clinton and Royal may have shared a desire to be their nation's first woman president, but their nations are quite different places, said Susan Carroll, professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

''Basically, France moved in a more conservative direction, and it looks like the US is probably in the mood to go the other direction,'' Carroll said. ''We're tired of having a conservative president.'' Reuters NC DB0943