To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > News Dec. 3, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/12/03/hillary Hillary's spokeswoman calls it quits Marsha Berry leaves the first lady's office in the latest sign that Hillary is becoming a full-time Senate candidate. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Joan Walsh Hillary Clinton's decision to cast off the confining costume of the first lady, don a Yankees cap and jump into the New York Senate race had a tangible impact this week, when communications director Marsha Berry resigned to take a job with the U.S. Export Import Bank. Berry's departure has not been announced, but sources close to her told Salon News she has been trying to leave the White House for many months. She waited until Clinton got her New York Senate campaign staff together, and when the hiring of campaign manager Bill de Blasio was announced Friday, she made her move. Berry will go down in history as the woman who handled Hillary Clinton's media relations during the Lewinsky scandal, as the story of the president's relationship with an intern moved from the Internet to the floor of the Senate for an impeachment trial. She also presided over the first lady's rehabilitation as Clinton became a national heroine for standing behind her philandering husband, her victimhood setting the stage for the independent political career the feminist first wife had always wanted. But as Clinton moved north away from her White House base of operations, she began to stumble. Her embrace of Sula Arafat, the controversy over the pardoning of Puerto Rican revolutionaries and the perhaps-fatal gaffe with the Yankees cap made observers wonder whether she was ready for New York politics, a contact sport that could make impeachment look like a tryout for the Methodist church choir. Though Berry will no doubt be officially replaced, the departure of the high-powered veteran underscores Clinton's decision to scale back her first lady duties in order to challenge New York mayor Rudy Giuliani for the Senate seat now held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The nation will have to learn to do without a full-time first lady, a post for which there is no formal plan of succession. salon.com | Dec. 3, 1999