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BUFFALO -- In the homestretch of her history-making run for the Senate, Hillary Rodham Clinton has enlisted would-be Senate colleague Charles Schumer, heartthrob actor Ben Affleck, daughter Chelsea and even husband Bill. But here at St. John Baptist Church, backed by a gospel choir and encouraged by "uh-huhs" from an enthusiastic congregation, the name she invokes is Harriet Tubman, heroine of the Underground Railroad.

Clinton describes Tubman as "a former slave who made it to freedom right here in New York" and has adopted her rallying cry: "When you hear the gunshots behind you, keep going. Keep going, keep going, keep going until you reach freedom!"

Sixteen months after she began her unlikely campaign and less than a year after she moved out of the White House to pursue it, the first presidential wife to run for elective office looks as though she might just keep going right to the U.S. Senate.

Most polls show her in the lead as the nation's most expensive, most publicized Senate race ever heads into its final weekend. But the margin is razor-thin. Clinton's Republican opponent, Rep. Rick Lazio, is portraying himself as a home-state David up against a big- name Goliath. "No one from Little Rock, Ark., or Washington, D.C., or Hollywood, Calif., is going to tell us New Yorkers who we should send to the Senate," Lazio declares.

Clinton's campaign exudes a confidence that's missing from Lazio's. She talks about what she "will" do in the Senate "when" she arrives.

Some rough edges remain: The first time Clinton told the Tubman story, for example, she mistakenly made the heroine another emancipated-slave-turned-reformer, Sojourner Truth. Last week, the first lady had to return a $50,000 contribution from a Muslim organization that has some members who advocate the use of violence against Israel.

Both campaigns say the race is so tight that the outcome will depend on who gets more supporters to the polls Tuesday. "Those people who are still undecided aren't going to make their decision until they walk into the polling booth," says Sylvia Tokasz, a Democratic National Committee member. "It's down to get out the vote."

Street politics

Clinton is hitting churches, union halls and Democratic rallies. She's shaking hands at pumpkin stands. She has launched an ad with the endorsement of retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who introduced her as his potential replacement at his upstate farm in July 1999.

Her opponent, whose latest ad features New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the man whose place he took as GOP Senate candidate, is eating platefuls of pasta at "Lasagna with Lazio" and "Rigatoni with Rick" events in reliably Republican precincts from Brooklyn to Buffalo. Between mouthfuls, Lazio tells audiences: "This race is the most important Senate race in the nation."

Even his staunchest supporters would not argue that it's because the Long Island lawmaker is in it. As it has been since Clinton began her first "listening tour" of the state, this race continues to be all about the first lady who now wants to be known simply as Hillary.

She's why journalists with European wardrobes and exotic accents have turned up in spots like Elmira and Utica. She's why people across the country have poured about $80 million in campaign contributions into the Empire State. She's why, according to a Field Poll taken last month, more Californians were paying attention to the Senate race in New York than the one in their own state. She's why the president of the United States is planning to spend Election Night in a Manhattan hotel ballroom.

Cautious politicians

Despite all the interest and suspense, the race is curiously static.

Lazio, 42, and Clinton, 53, are both exceedingly cautious politicians who staked out their issues early and are refusing to budge. As a result, the major themes in the New York campaign haven't changed much from May, when Giuliani announced he was dropping out of the race to battle prostate cancer (and cope with marital woes) and Lazio took his place.

She's still insisting that Lazio is a tool of Congress' conservative Republican leadership; he's still accusing Clinton of being a carpetbagger. Mindful of the state's large and influential Jewish population, both are still campaigning as if Israel were New York City's sixth borough.

With her celebrated name and her 11-month head start on the campaign trail, Clinton might be more familiar to some New Yorkers than Lazio, who brags about having roots "that go deep into New York soil" and who woos voters by telling them "I'm the only candidate who has actually paid New York state income taxes." (Clinton, who bought a house in Chappaqua, a New York City suburb, last December, has paid property taxes, and her campaign spokesman has publicly brandished the tax bills to prove it.)

Lazio's supporters don't need to know him to prefer him. A poll released this week by Marist College in Poughkeepsie found that half of his backers plan to vote for him because of their negative views toward the first lady.

Upstate, in Glens Falls, Christine Merrill, 39, says she and her husband are voting for the Long Island congressman "because we hate Hillary." Adds her mate, registered Democrat Tim Merrill, 43: "I'd vote for Dennis Rodman before Hillary."

Like her husband, Clinton inspires strong passions. Mike Long, chairman of New York's influential Conservative Party, tells one group of Lazio backers that she is "like a virus." At another Lazio rally, a homemade poster urges: "Send the Queen Back to Arkansas."

Clinton's critics are convinced that the job she really wants is her husband's. "She's only using this as a steppingstone to higher office," GOP state Senate candidate Bob DiCarlo tells a crowd in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge.

The same thought occurs to Sandra Gwitt, breakfasting at the Polish Village II restaurant with her family when the Clinton entourage sweeps in. "I'm thinking her future ideas are not in the New York Senate," says Gwitt, 51, a retired real estate agent.

Clinton has said that, if she were elected, she would serve her full six-year term.

For Lazio, the anti-Clinton sentiment has been an enormous boon. Despite being virtually unknown outside his Suffolk County congressional district, he had more than 40% support in the polls within days of his entrance into the race. In less than five months, he raised more than $30 million. One fundraising letter told potential donors that everything they needed to know about him could be summed up in six words: "I'm running against Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Warming up a crowd of Conservative and Republican party activists for Lazio, Kings County Conservative Party chairman Jerry Kassar said: "Six months ago, you knew what you were voting against. In 10 minutes, you're going to know what you're voting for."

Celebrity candidate

Last weekend, Lazio was unable to fill a high school gymnasium in his home district even with Gov. George Pataki accompanying him. Clinton, on the other hand, is the kind of celebrity who attracts huge crowds and sends people surging toward her seeking autographs and snapshots.

When Chelsea, 20, is along, the crowds are agog over her as well, even though she doesn't say much beyond, "Hello sir," and "Hello ma'am," and, to children, "Hello, dear."

Haunting the race is the presence of President Clinton. Though she has eliminated his last name from her campaign posters, the first lady has relied heavily on her politically talented husband. She calls him daily to discuss the campaign and has leaned on him to help her raise money. He has appeared on the stump with his wife at key points of the campaign.

Earlier this week, he was the featured attraction at a get-out- the-vote rally in Harlem and a Manhattan fundraiser. He's scheduled to be back in New York on Saturday. Next week, he'll spend Election Eve and Election Day with her and be at her side when the returns come in.

Lazio and his supporters depict the Clintons as outsiders who shouldn't be meddling in New York politics. In a Queens banquet hall that features crystal chandeliers, a linoleum floor and the intoxicating aroma of three kinds of rigatoni, state Sen. Seraphin Maltese embraces Lazio as "one of our own."

At a rally at Cornell University in Ithaca, Affleck, one of Clinton's celebrity supporters, denounces the "one of us" appeal. He says it's "the kind of divisive, exclusionary language that has been used by men like Rick Lazio since the beginning of this country to divide and separate people."

Clinton's advisers believe the carpetbagger rap still packs some punch. In the closing weeks of the campaign, they're airing a TV ad in which Robert Kennedy Jr., the son of another political celebrity who moved to New York to seek -- and won -- a Senate seat, declares: "It is against everything we stand for as a state to say that you can't participate in public life in this state because you weren't born here."

In her final debate with Lazio last week, Clinton referred to the world champion Yankees. "People who weren't born here can deliver for New York," the candidate said.

Upstate game plan

The first lady also has tried to bolster her New York bona fides by traveling relentlessly up, down and across the state.

She's been to all 62 New York counties and doesn't fail to remind her audiences of it. Her stump speeches often begin with recollections of previous visits to whatever town she is in. "I want to be here so much you'll get sick of me," she tells a union crowd in Buffalo.

Clinton has made inroads with New York voters. In the back of the West Babylon High School gymnasium, where Lazio was appearing, Steve Pirkl says he's backing Lazio, a Long Island neighbor. But while his wife, Jeane, put Lazio baseball caps on 8-month-old triplets, Jack, Grace and Anna, to draw the congressman over for a picture, she confides that she's leaning toward Clinton: "I think she's maybe more for women's issues. She's tough. Her husband's a jerk, but she's got more values."

The first lady has worked hard upstate because that's the game plan Schumer used to beat Al D'Amato in 1998: run strong in Democratic New York City, eke out a win in the surrounding suburbs, and don't get killed in traditionally Republican upstate areas. Lazio, meanwhile, is trying hard to cut into her support from Jewish voters in and around New York City, to press his hometown advantage in the suburbs and to turn out Catholic voters who make up 45% of the state's electorate.

Both candidates are running flat-out as this New York marathon nears the finish line. They're doing so with no help from the top of the ticket: Because New York is considered a lock for Vice President Gore, he and Gov. George W. Bush have largely stayed away.

The race that will keep New York vote-counters up late is Hillary vs. Rick. Veteran political observer Maltese speaks for political experts on both sides when he says, "I think it's going to be very close."