This is one check that definitely won’t be in the mail.

In an August 19 fund-raising letter, Jeanine Pirro told potential supporters of her race to unseat Senator Clinton, “I cannot win without your support.”

Mrs. Pirro sent one of those appeals to:
Hillary Clinton 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20500-0030

That, of course, is the White House, where Mrs. Clinton used to be first lady. The Pirro letter came to light just three days after the Westchester County district attorney reported raising $438,555 for the three-month period ending September 30 in her bid for the GOP nomination to challenge Mrs. Clinton’s 2006 re-election effort. Mrs. Clinton reported raising $5.3 million. “No wonder Mrs. Pirro raised so little money,” quipped Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman Howard Wolfson yesterday. In her “Dear Hillary” letter, Mrs. Pirro asked for donations of up to $1,000. “Whether it was my first campaign for district attorney in 1993 or my most recent re-election in 2001, your support has been a source of comfort and proved to be critically important to my election victories,” Mrs. Pirro wrote. Mr. Wolfson said that as far as Mrs. Clinton can remember, she has never contributed to a Pirro campaign.

“But today, Hillary, I need to know if I can count on you to stand by my side in my campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Mrs. Pirro added.

“I need you and every New Yorker on my side,” Mrs. Pirro wrote. “But most important in this difficult campaign, I need people like you who I can trust.”

Since beginning her campaign on August 7, Mrs. Pirro has been arguing that Mrs. Clinton is really interested not in winning re-election to the Senate, but in running for president in 2008.

Or, as Mrs. Pirro wrote in her appeal to the Hillary Clinton of 1600

Pennsylvania Ave.: “You and I both know the U.S. Senate isn’t Hillary’s real goal.”

Mr. Wolfson said the letter was forwarded to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate office.

Mrs. Pirro’s campaign manager, Brian Donahue, said the fund-raising appeal was sent because someone registered the information on Mrs. Pirro’s campaign Web site.

“Who knows? It could have been Hillary Clinton herself, doing a Freudian slip during a commercial break on the ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show,'” Mr. Donahue added.

During a taping of Ms. DeGeneres’s show last week, Mrs. Clinton was asked, “So you are preparing for 2008?”

“I am,” Mrs. Clinton quickly responded, before catching herself. “No, no, no. I am preparing for 2006.”