Midler's Match

12/15/1998 at 12:00 AM EST

Bette Midler really likes New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, but she's not supporting him or Hillary Rodham Clinton for U.S. Senate. "I'm seeing how the chips fall. I'm not a political person," Midler told New York's Daily News. "I just like to be under the radar screen that way, and do what I do." Midler got to know the mayor when she returned to New York in the early '90s and set up the privately funded New York Restoration Project as a way of helping clean up the city. "I'm doing it because when I first came back, I was appalled," she says. "The city was decrepit and filthy." Then she met Giuliani, whom she describes as "fabulous. As long as you don't ask him for any money, you're okay," she says. "And I've never asked the city for a dime."