The race is already shaping up as a generational clash, with the Maloney in her fur and pearls in one corner, and Saujani with her dark business suits and trendy scarves in the other. Maloney is counting on the Democratic establishment, as well as reliable primary voters in the Upper East Side portion of the district, to send her back to Washington. Saujani, meanwhile, is banking on an influx of young professionals and immigrant voters—especially those residing in the Queens portion of the district—to buoy her insurgent candidacy to victory.

Saujani’s campaign launch at an East Village coffee shop in late January was full of just such a group of hip, silk-tied young people juggling coffee cups and Blackberries, there to support one of their own as she tries for Congress.

“I know that I’m young, and that I have a funnier name than Barack Obama, and that I’m 12 inches shorter [than him],” Saujani said, standing on a bench so she could be better seen by the crowd.

After riffing for 10 minutes on her unique immigrant biography and her support for key Democratic ideas (health care, job creation, women’s rights, etc.), Saujani asked the crowd to envision how the city might look 10 years from now.

To her supporters, Saujani is not only a new face in politics, but a representative of the pushback against the Democratic establishment in support of the city’s much-maligned financial sector. She says she plans on running on, not away from, her Wall Street record, even as Maloney’s supporters attempt to link her to some of the financial sector’s more ethically questionable firms. In the past few years, Saujani bounced between several investment funds before her most recent stint at Fortress Investment Group, which managed one of the firms involved in the recent loan default of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. (Saujani recently stepped down from Fortress to campaign full-time.)

After 18 years, Saujani now reasons, voters deserve a choice.

“If you walked outside and asked them who their congressional representative is, maybe one in nine will know,” Saujani said after her coffee shop speech. “There’s never been a real viable primary.”

Behind the scenes, the battle lines are already being drawn. Saujani’s camp is blasting Maloney for what they see as her do-nothing role on the House Financial Services Committee, as well as her disconnection from her district, which they say now includes more fiscally conservative voters who are not loyal to any one party. Maloney’s campaign, on the other hand, is seeking to portray Saujani as a Wall Street stooge with no record to run on and no real roots in the district.

Already, the primary is causing rifts among members of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee, with the older Maloney loyalists lashing out at a handful of younger members for defecting to Saujani’s campaign. Both candidates are scrambling to sew up the support of highprofile East Side women. Maloney allies say that even though she has the reputation as a “ditzy blonde” who sometimes forgets names, she is more politically astute than her critics credit her for.

“Have no doubt, underneath the blonde veneer, she’s a street warrior,” said Assembly Member Micah Kellner.

Both sides are also staffing up at a rapid pace. Saujani’s team, so far, includes PR guru Matthew Hiltzik, whose client list, which includes Alec Baldwin, Katie Couric, Harvey and Bob Weinstein and conservative commentator Glenn Beck, reads more A-list Hollywood than Washington, D.C., political power.

Kevin Lawler, who has run campaigns from Brooklyn to the Adirondacks, was brought on to manage Saujani’s campaign. And Benjamin Yarrow, former communications director for the William J. Clinton Foundation, will be helping out with speech writing and policy advice.

Cathy Lasry, president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee, Saujani’s campaign co-finance chair and wife to billionaire hedge fund manager and devout Clinton supporter Marc Lasry, said that Saujani’s experience raising money for both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns has prepared her for the eventual street fight that an Upper East Side primary race is likely to become.

“She gets it,” Lasry said. “She may not have run for Congress before. But she does understand. I’ve listened in on strategy meetings. She gets it.”

Maloney has not backed off the battle for Clinton credibility, featuring Hillary Clinton in a campaign video released in February. Bill Clinton appeared at a fundraiser for her last summer, at the height of her Senate deliberations.

And she has continued to try overwhelming her upstart opponent with an avalanche of big-name endorsements. Not willing to leave anything to chance, she made sure to secure key endorsements as early as October. And the day after Saujani’s modest campaign kick-off, Maloney held a “Women for Maloney” breakfast fundraiser at the Yale Club, netting the congresswoman over $100,000 and featuring Gloria Steinem, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s girlfriend Diana Taylor.

Maloney’s campaign team is a mix of veterans and fresh faces. George Arzt is handling communications, while Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who last worked for failed Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, is doing the congresswoman’s polling. Relative newcomer Matt Tepper has been brought on to manage the campaign.

Most East Side observers predict an easy win for Maloney, given her decades in office and Saujani’s inexperience. But the fear still exists that if she does not win by a commanding margin, she could open herself up to more formidable opponents in the future, especially if the district is redrawn after this year to include more Queens and less Manhattan. And if Saujani loses this year, there are some who think she could potentially run a better campaign in 2012, when a redrawn district may include a larger, more diverse portion of Queens.

Current and former Maloney aides, though, say a narrower-than-expected margin could be more a result of the growing anti-incumbency mood among voters than any particular weakness of Maloney herself.

“Obviously Carolyn would prefer to have a big margin,” said one former senior Maloney campaign staffer. “But this year’s going to be a mess anyway for everyone.”