By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Senator John McCain, buoyed by new polls and endorsements, appeared in an increasingly commanding position on Sunday as he headed toward coast-to-coast contests that could effectively hand him the Republican presidential nomination, party officials said. In a display of confidence, Mr. McCain campaigned in the backyard of his chief rival, Mitt Romney.
A sweep of big states by Mr. McCain on Tuesday would reward him with a trove of delegates and could bring the Republican contest to a quick end. That would amount to a remarkable comeback for a campaign that had appeared expired just six months ago.
On the Democratic side, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were enmeshed in a tough national fight, illustrated by polls showing the race had tightened both nationally and in key states voting on Tuesday where Mrs. Clinton had once enjoyed a comfortable lead. They include California, Missouri, New Jersey and Arizona.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama said Sunday that they now believed that their contest, unlike the Republicans’, could extend well beyond the multistate contests on Tuesday, the day Mrs. Clinton had once expected to nail down the nomination.
The candidates, already struggling this week to deal with the challenges of campaigning in more than 20 states that hold contests on Tuesday, truncated their schedules in deference to the Super Bowl game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, with home audiences in some of the biggest states that vote Tuesday: Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
But they certainly made the most of their shortened time, holding rallies, starting new television advertisements and, in Mr. Obama’s case, accepting another endorsement from the Kennedy family. Maria Shriver, the wife of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and daughter of Eunice Kennedy, announced her support, adding force to Mr. Obama’s growing strength in that state.
Ms. Shriver appeared at a rally in Los Angeles with Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy that reflected another attempt by Mr. Obama to undercut Mrs. Clinton’s advantage among female voters.
Mr. Romney, in a last-minute switch of plans, decided to fly to California on Monday. His aides argued that Mr. McCain had left that flank vulnerable by deciding to head to Massachusetts. And Mr. Romney tried to discredit Mr. McCain among conservatives by attacking his record on immigration and the environment.
“Yesterday, Barack Obama said there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between he and Senator McCain on illegal immigration,” Mr. Romney said at a rally outside Chicago. “I’m afraid it’s going to be real hard to win the White House if there’s not much difference between our nominee and theirs, and that’s why I’m going to make sure that we stand for Republican ideals and win the White House on that platform.”
Mr. McCain was already looking to the future, incorporating an unusual attack on Mrs. Clinton as part of his standard denunciation of federal budget earmarks. He made the remarks in Fairfield, Conn., where he was escorted by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent.
“In her short time in the United States Senate, the senator from New York, Senator Clinton, has gotten $500 million worth of pork-barrel projects,” Mr. McCain said. “My friends, that kind of thing is going to stop when I’m president of the United States.”
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both tussled, at a distance, over which of them would be the better general election candidate in a campaign that many Democrats now think will be waged against Mr. McCain, a Republican with a history of drawing strong support from independent voters. Mrs. Clinton, her voice hoarse and raspy, responded to a question about this by pointing to her unexpected victory in her first Senate race.
“You know, I hear all these folks talking about who is and isn’t electable — and they said all the same things in New York,” she added, noting that voter support for her grew and deepened over time. “I trust the voters — frankly, that’s who matters.”
“One thing about me, I’ve already been through tough campaigns, and I think that says something about me,” she said. “My opponent hasn’t had to go through that baptism of fire. And in a general election, you know what’s going to happen to our nominee. Let’s not kid ourselves.”
Mr. Obama raised similar questions about Mrs. Clinton as he, too, raised the specter of a McCain candidacy this fall and reminded his audience that Mrs. Clinton had initially voted to support the war in Iraq.
“If John McCain is the nominee, then the Democratic Party has to ask itself, Do you want a candidate who has similar policies to John McCain on the war in Iraq or somebody who can offer a stark contrast?” Mr. Obama said. “See, when I’m the nominee, John McCain won’t be able to say that “You were for this war in Iraq,’ because I wasn’t. He won’t be able to say I followed the Bush-Cheney doctrine of not talking to leaders we don’t like, because I don’t.”
A blizzard of state and national polls showed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama in a tight race, but with significant voters still undecided about what they were going to do. In the CBS News poll, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are each the choice of 41 percent of the Democratic primary voters. Mr. Obama has narrowed the gap in a number of key states voting Tuesday.
The polls this weekend suggest the Republican contest is less in flux, with Mr. McCain having staked out a significant lead over Mr. Romney and a third candidate, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.
Mr. McCain was endorsed Sunday by Pete Wilson, former governor of California, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and the editorial page of Newsday.
“It’s not over yet, but it is certainly trending that way,” said Todd Harris, who was a senior adviser to Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, who dropped out of the race on Jan. 22. His view was echoed throughout the day by Republican leaders outside and inside Mr. McCain’s camp.
Mr. Romney’s situation was complicated by Mr. Huckabee, who — apparently seeing an opening should Mr. Romney falter — vowed again on Sunday to stay in the race. Mr. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has drawn conservative support from Mr. Romney and challenged his conservative credentials.
“I want to say something to Mitt Romney: The people who support me are supporting me because they know where I stand on human life and they don’t know where you stand,” he told reporters in Georgia.
Mr. McCain made a pre-Super Bowl stop at the Green Dragon, a Boston pub. The visit was a display of confidence by the senator from Arizona, given the spare number of days left before the vote. It reflected the calculation of Mr. McCain’s advisers that a loss by Mr. Romney in his home state on Tuesday could, if combined with other losses in other big states, effectively force him from the race.
Mr. Romney dismissed the visit as a stunt as his aides warned that Mr. McCain would come to regret flying to Massachusetts rather than spending time in California.
“I don’t know why he’s campaigning in Massachusetts — there are 22 states voting,” Mr. Romney said. “I expect that I’m to win in Massachusetts. I’m going to where I think the most delegates are up for grabs. To me this is not about trying to tweak somebody or get in their head. This is about getting delegates and becoming the nominee.”
Mr. Romney and his aides planned an aggressive final 24 hours, including using automatic telephone calls by prominent supporters to raise questions about Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials and his temperament — including one taped by Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania.
“John McCain voted against the president’s tax cuts, worked with Ted Kennedy to pass what many people call amnesty for illegal aliens,” Mr. Santorum says in the call, adding, “As a conservative, I don’t agree with McCain on many issues, and I don’t think he has the temperament and leadership ability to move the country in the right direction.”
On the Democratic side, Mr. Obama, flexing his financial muscle, bought Super Bowl advertisements in 24 markets to present an advertisement highlighting his opposition to the war and pledging to fight global warming. “We want to turn the page,” Mr. Obama says in the spot, speaking under a musical track that is faster-paced than most political advertisements. “The world as it is is not the world as it has to be.”
At Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Missouri, a woman used a profanity in describing Mr. Bush as she accused him of signing a secret agreement to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a new country. Mrs. Clinton did not respond to the cursing; she appeared to grin slightly at first as the crowd cheered, and her face went blank before assuring the questioner that her fears about the merger were ill-placed.
“Let me say I’ve heard that story and there’s not a lot of truth to it,” she said. “If I am president, if I discover there is such an agreement, it’ll be gone in a bird-dog minute.”
The Republican National Committee quickly sent around a news report noting that she said nothing when the woman swore about the president.
Reporting was contributed by Michael Cooper from Connecticut, Janet Elder from New York, Patrick Healy from St. Louis, Michael Luo from Chicago and Jeff Zeleny from Wilmington, Del.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Are Republicans Losing Panhandle Grip?
Are Republicans Losing Panhandle Grip?
By COREY DADEJanuary 31, 2008; Page A6
TAMPA, Fla. -- Even as Tuesday's primary here gave Arizona Sen. John McCain new momentum going into next week's Super Tuesday voting for the Republican presidential nomination, it revealed signs of stress in the party's pivotal grasp on Florida.
A toxic brew of economic anxiety, a deepening housing slump, skyrocketing home insurance, strained schools and the lingering effects of recent hurricanes have spawned a gloomy mood in Florida. Tuesday's primary results, in which Mr. McCain won with just 36% of the vote, showed Florida Republicans still splintered.
The absence of a broadly unifying Republican candidate has encouraged some disgruntled voters to break from typical voting patterns, including some formerly staunch Republicans who now are backing Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York or Barack Obama of Illinois.
It is too early to predict how voters in Florida will vote in November, but in recent months, a drift away from Republican leadership -- especially among the state's nearly two million independent voters -- has been apparent in some Florida polling data. In surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University periodically throughout 2007, Florida voters narrowly but consistently favored Mrs. Clinton over Mr. McCain in a general election.
In a general election pitting Mrs. Clinton against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, respondents said they would prefer Mrs. Clinton by eight percentage points, with 7% undecided. The last poll, in October, took place before Mr. Obama's rise to prominence following his Iowa primary victory. Even then, he was tied against McCain, at 42%, with 9% undecided. Mr. Obama led Mr. Romney by seven percentage points, with 11% undecided.
Other indicators make clear that Republicans are likely to face a tough contest to retain Florida this fall. On Tuesday, although no Democratic candidate actively campaigned in Florida, 1.7 million voters participated in the Democratic primary -- 189,890 less than in the hotly contested Republican race.
The state's roughly 10.2 million registered voters are divided among 4.1 million Democrats, 3.8 million Republicans, 1.9 million nonaffiliated voters and about 400,000 minor-party members.
Between the fall of 2006 and the end of 2007, Democrats added a total of nearly 17,000 voters, while Republicans lost nearly as many, according to party registration numbers.
The Republicans' advantage among Latinos also is thinning, as they lost voters by way of party defections, relocations out of state, or the state's periodic purge of outdated voter data.
At the same time, the Democrats made gains in registering new Latino voters, particularly in Miami-Dade County, where Cuban Americans have delivered a rock-solid Republican bloc for four decades.
The surge is strengthening what already was expected to be a fierce face-off between South Florida's two most well-known Cuban politicians, incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Democratic former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez.
State Republican officials dismiss the fluctuations in registration as normal between the start of an election cycle and when actual voting begins. They said voter interest in primaries is driven by the individual candidates rather than the party, which won't coalesce into full force until the general election.
"We've got a stronger ground game than the Democrats and that will show once again once we have a nominee," state party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said. "That's when the real work begins."
WASHINGTON WIRE
The Journal's political team reports from the campaign trail. Latest posts:
• Which Candidate Came Out on Top?
• Republicans are Unanimous: Blame China
• Schwarzenegger to Endorse McCain
• At Reagan Library, Republicans Respect 11th Commandment
• All Campaign 2008 postsMORE ON ELECTIONS
• Vote: Do endorsements factor into your choice for president?
• McCain Takes the GOP Lead
• Trio of Front-Runners Put Climate on Front Burner
• Giuliani Fund-Raisers Sit on Fence for Now
• Edwards's Exit Weighs on Outcome
• Complete coverage: Campaign 2008
Republicans have controlled Florida politics for a decade by knitting religious and social conservatives in the northern panhandle and Cuban Americans in the south with moderate suburbanites across the center. Political power flowed from Governor Jeb Bush and delivered the pivotal edge his brother, George W. Bush, needed for two terms in the White House.
In the razor tight 2000 election, Florida's 25 electoral votes tipped the balance for Mr. Bush to take the presidency. Four years later, Mr. Bush carried the state with a comfortable five-percentage-point margin.
"They are going to have to work hard," Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said of the Republicans. Nonaffiliated voters, he said, "are 22% of the electorate. The Democrats have actually been doing better than the Republicans in increasing their numbers. I think it's a leading indicator."
Jeb Bush's successor, Charlie Crist -- who endorsed Mr. McCain days before the primary -- is trying to hold together key constituencies feeling the pinch of his severe funding cuts aimed at closing a billion-dollar budget deficit.
Reconstituting the traditional Republican coalition won't be easy under current economic conditions, especially in places such as the Interstate-4 corridor that stretches from Tampa in the west through Orlando to Daytona in the east.
In 2006, Arlene Andrews moved to suburban Tampa from Long Island, N.Y., when her husband got a job running a plant that makes cardboard and foam packaging. The Andrews settled on a four-bedroom white stucco home in the new Meadow Pointe subdivision, a huge gated complex of smaller communities, four public schools and a supermarket on the way. They closed the deal in May of that year for $365,000. Two months later, she noticed homes at the back of the subdivision selling for $304,000.
Property-insurance rates in the county, Pasco, are the second-highest in the state. More than a half-dozen nearby homes are in the early stages of foreclosure. One sits on the street behind the Andrews' home.
"The middle-class is falling further and further behind," said Mrs. Andrews, 50 years old. Long a registered Republican, and self described fiscal and religious conservative, Mrs. Andrews changed her party affiliation to Democrat last fall and said she will vote for Mrs. Clinton.
By COREY DADEJanuary 31, 2008; Page A6
TAMPA, Fla. -- Even as Tuesday's primary here gave Arizona Sen. John McCain new momentum going into next week's Super Tuesday voting for the Republican presidential nomination, it revealed signs of stress in the party's pivotal grasp on Florida.
A toxic brew of economic anxiety, a deepening housing slump, skyrocketing home insurance, strained schools and the lingering effects of recent hurricanes have spawned a gloomy mood in Florida. Tuesday's primary results, in which Mr. McCain won with just 36% of the vote, showed Florida Republicans still splintered.
The absence of a broadly unifying Republican candidate has encouraged some disgruntled voters to break from typical voting patterns, including some formerly staunch Republicans who now are backing Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York or Barack Obama of Illinois.
It is too early to predict how voters in Florida will vote in November, but in recent months, a drift away from Republican leadership -- especially among the state's nearly two million independent voters -- has been apparent in some Florida polling data. In surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University periodically throughout 2007, Florida voters narrowly but consistently favored Mrs. Clinton over Mr. McCain in a general election.
In a general election pitting Mrs. Clinton against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, respondents said they would prefer Mrs. Clinton by eight percentage points, with 7% undecided. The last poll, in October, took place before Mr. Obama's rise to prominence following his Iowa primary victory. Even then, he was tied against McCain, at 42%, with 9% undecided. Mr. Obama led Mr. Romney by seven percentage points, with 11% undecided.
Other indicators make clear that Republicans are likely to face a tough contest to retain Florida this fall. On Tuesday, although no Democratic candidate actively campaigned in Florida, 1.7 million voters participated in the Democratic primary -- 189,890 less than in the hotly contested Republican race.
The state's roughly 10.2 million registered voters are divided among 4.1 million Democrats, 3.8 million Republicans, 1.9 million nonaffiliated voters and about 400,000 minor-party members.
Between the fall of 2006 and the end of 2007, Democrats added a total of nearly 17,000 voters, while Republicans lost nearly as many, according to party registration numbers.
The Republicans' advantage among Latinos also is thinning, as they lost voters by way of party defections, relocations out of state, or the state's periodic purge of outdated voter data.
At the same time, the Democrats made gains in registering new Latino voters, particularly in Miami-Dade County, where Cuban Americans have delivered a rock-solid Republican bloc for four decades.
The surge is strengthening what already was expected to be a fierce face-off between South Florida's two most well-known Cuban politicians, incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Democratic former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez.
State Republican officials dismiss the fluctuations in registration as normal between the start of an election cycle and when actual voting begins. They said voter interest in primaries is driven by the individual candidates rather than the party, which won't coalesce into full force until the general election.
"We've got a stronger ground game than the Democrats and that will show once again once we have a nominee," state party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said. "That's when the real work begins."
WASHINGTON WIRE
The Journal's political team reports from the campaign trail. Latest posts:
• Which Candidate Came Out on Top?
• Republicans are Unanimous: Blame China
• Schwarzenegger to Endorse McCain
• At Reagan Library, Republicans Respect 11th Commandment
• All Campaign 2008 postsMORE ON ELECTIONS
• Vote: Do endorsements factor into your choice for president?
• McCain Takes the GOP Lead
• Trio of Front-Runners Put Climate on Front Burner
• Giuliani Fund-Raisers Sit on Fence for Now
• Edwards's Exit Weighs on Outcome
• Complete coverage: Campaign 2008
Republicans have controlled Florida politics for a decade by knitting religious and social conservatives in the northern panhandle and Cuban Americans in the south with moderate suburbanites across the center. Political power flowed from Governor Jeb Bush and delivered the pivotal edge his brother, George W. Bush, needed for two terms in the White House.
In the razor tight 2000 election, Florida's 25 electoral votes tipped the balance for Mr. Bush to take the presidency. Four years later, Mr. Bush carried the state with a comfortable five-percentage-point margin.
"They are going to have to work hard," Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said of the Republicans. Nonaffiliated voters, he said, "are 22% of the electorate. The Democrats have actually been doing better than the Republicans in increasing their numbers. I think it's a leading indicator."
Jeb Bush's successor, Charlie Crist -- who endorsed Mr. McCain days before the primary -- is trying to hold together key constituencies feeling the pinch of his severe funding cuts aimed at closing a billion-dollar budget deficit.
Reconstituting the traditional Republican coalition won't be easy under current economic conditions, especially in places such as the Interstate-4 corridor that stretches from Tampa in the west through Orlando to Daytona in the east.
In 2006, Arlene Andrews moved to suburban Tampa from Long Island, N.Y., when her husband got a job running a plant that makes cardboard and foam packaging. The Andrews settled on a four-bedroom white stucco home in the new Meadow Pointe subdivision, a huge gated complex of smaller communities, four public schools and a supermarket on the way. They closed the deal in May of that year for $365,000. Two months later, she noticed homes at the back of the subdivision selling for $304,000.
Property-insurance rates in the county, Pasco, are the second-highest in the state. More than a half-dozen nearby homes are in the early stages of foreclosure. One sits on the street behind the Andrews' home.
"The middle-class is falling further and further behind," said Mrs. Andrews, 50 years old. Long a registered Republican, and self described fiscal and religious conservative, Mrs. Andrews changed her party affiliation to Democrat last fall and said she will vote for Mrs. Clinton.
Monday, January 28, 2008
At this sad and trying moment in Kenya's history people need help
At this sad and trying moment in Kenya’s history people need help, support and understanding. They need help to restore peace and tranquillity, to normalise their lives and to reconcile inter-ethnic relations. The crisis is much deeper than the apparently flawed presidential election. The orgy of violence, pillage and plunder are testimony to a dormant volcano of tribal animosity, hatred and suspicion that was bound to erupt at one time or another.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
In South Carolina, Race Seen Through Economic Lens
By SHAILA DEWAN
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Officially, the state of South Carolina calls the fancy new building the Orangeburg Workforce Center. Around here, people know it as the unemployment office. And everyone in Orangeburg County, it seems, can tell you how to get there.
On Wednesday, Lashon Marshall, a home health care assistant with four children, was paying one of her regular visits to the center, scanning the computer for something that would bring more than the $8 an hour, with no benefits, that she makes after seven years on the job.
Ms. Marshall said she was glad to hear the candidates running in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary here talk about helping working people but skeptical that anything would come of it.
“We need somebody in the chair who is going to really just stand up and do what they say they’re going to do,” she said. “The war, I’m not thinking about too much now. But it seems like more and more people should step up and talk about this health care thing.”
For years, job woes have plagued this blue-collar central South Carolina county, which, like much of the state, has lost its textile and manufacturing economy to cheap overseas labor and is still struggling to find a replacement. But the economic losses have not been equally distributed and have helped to divide the state along racial lines.
In Orangeburg, unemployment has disproportionately affected blacks, even though, at more than 60 percent of the population, they hold the balance of political power. In 2006, unemployment among blacks here was pushing 20 percent, while among whites it was 3.3 percent. Thirteen percent of white households were below the poverty level, compared with 38 percent of black households.
Such dismal statistics have encouraged some voters to listen closely to the candidates’ proposals to give tax rebates, fix the trade imbalance and increase the minimum wage. But with the two Democratic front-runners, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in general agreement on many of those issues, some say discontent over the persistent racial divide — along with anger among some black voters over criticism of Mr. Obama by former President Bill Clinton — will contribute to race-motivated voting on Saturday.
If so, Mr. Obama will have an edge in this primary, the first with a substantial number of African-American voters. Virtually all black voters here are Democrats, while a large majority of whites vote Republican.
On Thursday, on a dirt road near the small town of Bowman, Townsend Pelzer sat in his truck with his two lap dogs while his beagle chased rabbits in the woods. Mr. Pelzer, 83 and black, a retired maintenance worker for the state highway patrol, said he was going to vote for Mr. Obama.
Asked why, Mr. Pelzer shrugged, smiled and pointed to his face, saying, “Color of my skin, I guess.”
Scott Mattingly, 22, a white economics teacher at a virtually all-white private school in Bowman, said that many of his fellow volunteers at the Obama campaign office were “ignorant of the issues and are far more excited about the concept of a black leader.”
But Mr. Mattingly added that, in a county where the large businesses are run by white men and “ancient parochial attitudes” persist, voter enthusiasm for Mr. Obama had a logic that went beyond simple loyalty. Offering a sort of trickle-down theory of eradicating racism, he said an Obama victory “would set a precedent that an African-American can lead.”
Race is far from the only factor voters are considering, however. Bishop Michael C. Butler of Victory Tabernacle, a black Pentecostal church, said he had counseled his congregation to look beyond that issue in the voting booth. Mr. Butler, a Clinton supporter, said most of the members were professionals.
“They’re concerned about the stability of their jobs, whether they will be able to maintain the lifestyle that they currently have,” he said.
George R. Dean, 66, who owns a men’s clothing store in downtown Orangeburg where all the merchandise is now 50 percent off, said he had watched the battle for civil rights shift into the economic arena.
“This is not the South I grew up in in the ’50s and ’60s,” Mr. Dean said. “The struggle has come, and the struggle has gone. And the struggle has returned.”
Mr. Dean, who is black, added: “This county grew politically very fast, but we did not grow economically. This has always been my pet peeve. This ain’t about democracy, this is about what? Capitalism.”
Mr. Dean is a board member of the Orangeburg County Development Commission, which has scored some major successes by attracting large businesses specializing in warehouse distribution. The long-term goals — more jobs, higher pay and a bigger tax base — will not materialize for three to five years, Mr. Dean said. But, he added emphatically, “The growth in this area will be diverse.”
A 2006 study conducted for the commission estimated that while there were about 28,000 people in the area actively looking for work, even more were underemployed. Among them is Ms. Marshall’s husband, who works at a lawnmower plant, a seasonal business where production levels change frequently.
“Last week they was off, this week they worked, and no telling about next week,” she said. Health insurance, which her family buys on their own, has edged out salaries as an employment consideration, Ms. Marshall said.
“My cousin works at McDonald’s,” she said. “She said some people like working there because they get benefits. That’s what they go for now.”
Because Orangeburg is a blue county in a red state, it has been visited by all the Democratic candidates, some more than once. Health care, gasoline prices and trade imbalances are all pocketbook issues here.
“I work at a paper mill, but I know a lot of people that have lost their jobs,” said Larry Rivers, 46. “I’ve heard Obama talk about the companies that have taken jobs overseas, saying he was going to stop giving them the tax breaks and start giving tax breaks to the companies that have stayed here.”
Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a state legislator who represents part of Orangeburg County, said some of the unemployment among blacks stemmed from poor education by the state’s money-starved rural schools. The school system was recently portrayed in a documentary about education along Interstate 95 called “Corridor of Shame,” a phrase Mr. Obama used in the debate in Myrtle Beach on Monday.
“The issue is education and the effect of a lack of a quality education on the level playing field,” Ms. Cobb-Hunter said.
At the Clinton campaign office in Orangeburg, Sade Willis and her friend Robyn Capers, both black, 21-year-old psychology students at nearby South Carolina State University, assembled lawn signs. “She’s about better pay and education for the kids,” Ms. Willis said of Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Capers added, “And she has been for 35 years.”
Ms. Willis, whose mother’s job in one of the county’s manufacturing plants is at risk of moving overseas, said, “I know how it is to actually not be able to afford school.”
Back at the job center, Wilmer Freeman, 59, continued a job search that has been going on for nearly two years, since his position as a purchasing agent was cut at Voorhees College, where he worked for 28 years. Mr. Freeman said he was leaning toward Mr. Obama, or at least his campaign message.
“I don’t care what it is, how it is, or how it looks,” Mr. Freeman said. “We do need a change.”
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Officially, the state of South Carolina calls the fancy new building the Orangeburg Workforce Center. Around here, people know it as the unemployment office. And everyone in Orangeburg County, it seems, can tell you how to get there.
On Wednesday, Lashon Marshall, a home health care assistant with four children, was paying one of her regular visits to the center, scanning the computer for something that would bring more than the $8 an hour, with no benefits, that she makes after seven years on the job.
Ms. Marshall said she was glad to hear the candidates running in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary here talk about helping working people but skeptical that anything would come of it.
“We need somebody in the chair who is going to really just stand up and do what they say they’re going to do,” she said. “The war, I’m not thinking about too much now. But it seems like more and more people should step up and talk about this health care thing.”
For years, job woes have plagued this blue-collar central South Carolina county, which, like much of the state, has lost its textile and manufacturing economy to cheap overseas labor and is still struggling to find a replacement. But the economic losses have not been equally distributed and have helped to divide the state along racial lines.
In Orangeburg, unemployment has disproportionately affected blacks, even though, at more than 60 percent of the population, they hold the balance of political power. In 2006, unemployment among blacks here was pushing 20 percent, while among whites it was 3.3 percent. Thirteen percent of white households were below the poverty level, compared with 38 percent of black households.
Such dismal statistics have encouraged some voters to listen closely to the candidates’ proposals to give tax rebates, fix the trade imbalance and increase the minimum wage. But with the two Democratic front-runners, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in general agreement on many of those issues, some say discontent over the persistent racial divide — along with anger among some black voters over criticism of Mr. Obama by former President Bill Clinton — will contribute to race-motivated voting on Saturday.
If so, Mr. Obama will have an edge in this primary, the first with a substantial number of African-American voters. Virtually all black voters here are Democrats, while a large majority of whites vote Republican.
On Thursday, on a dirt road near the small town of Bowman, Townsend Pelzer sat in his truck with his two lap dogs while his beagle chased rabbits in the woods. Mr. Pelzer, 83 and black, a retired maintenance worker for the state highway patrol, said he was going to vote for Mr. Obama.
Asked why, Mr. Pelzer shrugged, smiled and pointed to his face, saying, “Color of my skin, I guess.”
Scott Mattingly, 22, a white economics teacher at a virtually all-white private school in Bowman, said that many of his fellow volunteers at the Obama campaign office were “ignorant of the issues and are far more excited about the concept of a black leader.”
But Mr. Mattingly added that, in a county where the large businesses are run by white men and “ancient parochial attitudes” persist, voter enthusiasm for Mr. Obama had a logic that went beyond simple loyalty. Offering a sort of trickle-down theory of eradicating racism, he said an Obama victory “would set a precedent that an African-American can lead.”
Race is far from the only factor voters are considering, however. Bishop Michael C. Butler of Victory Tabernacle, a black Pentecostal church, said he had counseled his congregation to look beyond that issue in the voting booth. Mr. Butler, a Clinton supporter, said most of the members were professionals.
“They’re concerned about the stability of their jobs, whether they will be able to maintain the lifestyle that they currently have,” he said.
George R. Dean, 66, who owns a men’s clothing store in downtown Orangeburg where all the merchandise is now 50 percent off, said he had watched the battle for civil rights shift into the economic arena.
“This is not the South I grew up in in the ’50s and ’60s,” Mr. Dean said. “The struggle has come, and the struggle has gone. And the struggle has returned.”
Mr. Dean, who is black, added: “This county grew politically very fast, but we did not grow economically. This has always been my pet peeve. This ain’t about democracy, this is about what? Capitalism.”
Mr. Dean is a board member of the Orangeburg County Development Commission, which has scored some major successes by attracting large businesses specializing in warehouse distribution. The long-term goals — more jobs, higher pay and a bigger tax base — will not materialize for three to five years, Mr. Dean said. But, he added emphatically, “The growth in this area will be diverse.”
A 2006 study conducted for the commission estimated that while there were about 28,000 people in the area actively looking for work, even more were underemployed. Among them is Ms. Marshall’s husband, who works at a lawnmower plant, a seasonal business where production levels change frequently.
“Last week they was off, this week they worked, and no telling about next week,” she said. Health insurance, which her family buys on their own, has edged out salaries as an employment consideration, Ms. Marshall said.
“My cousin works at McDonald’s,” she said. “She said some people like working there because they get benefits. That’s what they go for now.”
Because Orangeburg is a blue county in a red state, it has been visited by all the Democratic candidates, some more than once. Health care, gasoline prices and trade imbalances are all pocketbook issues here.
“I work at a paper mill, but I know a lot of people that have lost their jobs,” said Larry Rivers, 46. “I’ve heard Obama talk about the companies that have taken jobs overseas, saying he was going to stop giving them the tax breaks and start giving tax breaks to the companies that have stayed here.”
Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a state legislator who represents part of Orangeburg County, said some of the unemployment among blacks stemmed from poor education by the state’s money-starved rural schools. The school system was recently portrayed in a documentary about education along Interstate 95 called “Corridor of Shame,” a phrase Mr. Obama used in the debate in Myrtle Beach on Monday.
“The issue is education and the effect of a lack of a quality education on the level playing field,” Ms. Cobb-Hunter said.
At the Clinton campaign office in Orangeburg, Sade Willis and her friend Robyn Capers, both black, 21-year-old psychology students at nearby South Carolina State University, assembled lawn signs. “She’s about better pay and education for the kids,” Ms. Willis said of Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Capers added, “And she has been for 35 years.”
Ms. Willis, whose mother’s job in one of the county’s manufacturing plants is at risk of moving overseas, said, “I know how it is to actually not be able to afford school.”
Back at the job center, Wilmer Freeman, 59, continued a job search that has been going on for nearly two years, since his position as a purchasing agent was cut at Voorhees College, where he worked for 28 years. Mr. Freeman said he was leaning toward Mr. Obama, or at least his campaign message.
“I don’t care what it is, how it is, or how it looks,” Mr. Freeman said. “We do need a change.”
Friday, January 25, 2008
Egypt Moves to Close Gaza Border
By STEVEN ERLANGER
RAFAH, Egypt — Tensions rose at the breached border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on Friday, as Egypt trucked in security forces and soldiers and riot police tried to block Palestinians from entering, while the Palestinians broke another part of the border barrier.
The border guards had formed a human chain along most of the length of the border at Rafah, but were sill allowing the Palestinians to leave with the goods they had purchased in Egypt. For some time, they were able to stop people who still wanted to cross from Gaza but increasing numbers got through.
Egyptian security forces announced to the crowd of Palestinians over loudspeakers that the border would close at 3 p.m. local time, although a similar announcement was made on Thursday and the border still stayed open, Reuters reported.
Egyptian officials estimated that about 120,000 Palestinian had crossed into Egypt since the border was toppled by Hamas militants on Wednesday, but other estimates have put the number much higher. Over the three days since then, Palestinians have been returning with a cornucopia of consumer goods that have been in short supply since Israel moved to close its own border with Gaza last week — everything from cigarettes to televisions, generators, washing machines, milk, cheese, sheep, goats, cows, diesel fuel and gasoline.
As the Palestinians continued to cross back on Friday, there were scuffles at the border with Egyptian police officers and with troops, who had brought out water cannons and other heavy equipment that had not been visible in the past few days. There were some reports of gunfire.
On Thursday, the second day of the breach, tens of thousands more Palestinians had flooded across the border crossing. Already by then, many more Egyptian police officers were at various ruptures in the barrier at Rafah, more of them in riot gear and some using batons with small electric charges to keep the huge, pushing crowds in some form of order.
And more members of Hamas security forces were visible on the Gaza side, maintaining calm and doing random checks for weapons possibly being smuggled in for Fatah, the rival faction Hamas forced out of Gaza in June.
But neither group tried to stop the shoppers and businessmen restocking their wares in Egypt, nor did Hamas make any visible effort to control or tax the goods coming into Gaza.
On Thursday, Hamas gunmen could be seen quietly taking delivery of hundreds of bags of cement. Israel has sharply restricted cement imports to Gaza, even for aid projects, because it says Hamas diverts the supply to build fortified tunnels and emplacements for use against any major Israeli military action.
As the crowds flooded into Egypt, exchange rates and prices rose, as did the amounts Gazans were buying, with the clear intent to resell in Gaza. So intense was the trading that even some Palestinians worried that there would be a backlash from impoverished Egyptians in Rafah.
“This is not so good for the Palestinian people,” said Ahmed Shawa, a Gaza engineer who entered Egypt on Thursday. “Prices are becoming very high while people in Egyptian Rafah don’t have bread. If I go to your country and buy everything and you don’t have bread, you’re going to hate me.”
Hamas officials said they took action to open the Egyptian border after Israel decided last week to stop nearly all shipments into Gaza, including industrial diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s main power plant and gasoline, in an effort to push Gazan militants to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns and farms.
Under severe international criticism, Israel relented, but only temporarily. It agreed to supply a week’s worth of fuel, but limited supplies again after the border breach.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt considered his options. But Egyptian officials made it clear on Thursday that while Egypt would not hinder Palestinians seeking food and other goods, it would not accept a lawless border, open to arms traffic and unregulated travel of gunmen and political extremists.
Israel and the United States said it was Egypt’s responsibility to bring the border situation under control.
Gen. Ahmed Abdel Hamid, the governor of northern Sinai, estimated that as many as 120,000 Palestinians were in Egypt, but he said they were not being allowed to travel beyond El Arish, which lies slightly west of Rafah. He said on Thursday that he thought the border might stay open for another “four or five days” and then be closed pending another agreement on what to do.
“You have to see where this problem came from,” he said. “Before the dispute between Hamas and Fatah, the border was open every day with no problem. Since the dispute, the border has been closed.”
In fact, before the fighting between the Palestinian factions over the summer the Rafah crossing was closed more often than it was open. But General Abdel Hamid emphasized that Egypt was not favoring one faction or another, saying, “Egypt is with the legitimate authority,” presumably the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.
Mr. Mubarak’s officials said Egypt would not accept responsibility for supplying Gaza and let Israel off the hook, as some Israeli officials hope.
“This is a wrong assumption,” said Hossam Zaki, the spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons. The border will go back to normal.”
But the definition of normal was left unclear. When Israel pulled its settlers and troops out of Gaza in 2005, the Rafah crossing was opened with great fanfare to allow people in and out of Gaza. European Union supervisors were put in place, and Israeli video cameras monitored the traffic. But for security reasons, the crossing was often closed, and it has been shut completely since Hamas took over Gaza.
It will be difficult politically now for Mr. Mubarak to reseal the border completely, shutting off any outlet for Gaza. Egypt, with a strong opposition element from the Muslim Brotherhood, does not want to offend its Palestinian wing, Hamas. But Mr. Mubarak would prefer to work out an arrangement with the legal authority, President Abbas. In addition, Mr. Mubarak has promised Israel that Egypt will coordinate its actions on the Gaza border to preserve security interests of both countries.
In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Mubarak said that “peace efforts cannot endure any other failure, and Egypt will not allow the starving of Palestinians in Gaza or that the situation in the strip turns into a humanitarian crisis.”
He called on Palestinian factions to work together and said, “No one can outbid Egypt in its support for this silent nation and their just cause.”
Egypt, he said, “is doing its utmost in its movements and contacts to end their suffering and to lift the Israeli measures of collective punishment and to bring back the supply of fuel and electricity and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”
Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York and Nadim Audi from Al Arish, Egypt.
RAFAH, Egypt — Tensions rose at the breached border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on Friday, as Egypt trucked in security forces and soldiers and riot police tried to block Palestinians from entering, while the Palestinians broke another part of the border barrier.
The border guards had formed a human chain along most of the length of the border at Rafah, but were sill allowing the Palestinians to leave with the goods they had purchased in Egypt. For some time, they were able to stop people who still wanted to cross from Gaza but increasing numbers got through.
Egyptian security forces announced to the crowd of Palestinians over loudspeakers that the border would close at 3 p.m. local time, although a similar announcement was made on Thursday and the border still stayed open, Reuters reported.
Egyptian officials estimated that about 120,000 Palestinian had crossed into Egypt since the border was toppled by Hamas militants on Wednesday, but other estimates have put the number much higher. Over the three days since then, Palestinians have been returning with a cornucopia of consumer goods that have been in short supply since Israel moved to close its own border with Gaza last week — everything from cigarettes to televisions, generators, washing machines, milk, cheese, sheep, goats, cows, diesel fuel and gasoline.
As the Palestinians continued to cross back on Friday, there were scuffles at the border with Egyptian police officers and with troops, who had brought out water cannons and other heavy equipment that had not been visible in the past few days. There were some reports of gunfire.
On Thursday, the second day of the breach, tens of thousands more Palestinians had flooded across the border crossing. Already by then, many more Egyptian police officers were at various ruptures in the barrier at Rafah, more of them in riot gear and some using batons with small electric charges to keep the huge, pushing crowds in some form of order.
And more members of Hamas security forces were visible on the Gaza side, maintaining calm and doing random checks for weapons possibly being smuggled in for Fatah, the rival faction Hamas forced out of Gaza in June.
But neither group tried to stop the shoppers and businessmen restocking their wares in Egypt, nor did Hamas make any visible effort to control or tax the goods coming into Gaza.
On Thursday, Hamas gunmen could be seen quietly taking delivery of hundreds of bags of cement. Israel has sharply restricted cement imports to Gaza, even for aid projects, because it says Hamas diverts the supply to build fortified tunnels and emplacements for use against any major Israeli military action.
As the crowds flooded into Egypt, exchange rates and prices rose, as did the amounts Gazans were buying, with the clear intent to resell in Gaza. So intense was the trading that even some Palestinians worried that there would be a backlash from impoverished Egyptians in Rafah.
“This is not so good for the Palestinian people,” said Ahmed Shawa, a Gaza engineer who entered Egypt on Thursday. “Prices are becoming very high while people in Egyptian Rafah don’t have bread. If I go to your country and buy everything and you don’t have bread, you’re going to hate me.”
Hamas officials said they took action to open the Egyptian border after Israel decided last week to stop nearly all shipments into Gaza, including industrial diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s main power plant and gasoline, in an effort to push Gazan militants to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns and farms.
Under severe international criticism, Israel relented, but only temporarily. It agreed to supply a week’s worth of fuel, but limited supplies again after the border breach.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt considered his options. But Egyptian officials made it clear on Thursday that while Egypt would not hinder Palestinians seeking food and other goods, it would not accept a lawless border, open to arms traffic and unregulated travel of gunmen and political extremists.
Israel and the United States said it was Egypt’s responsibility to bring the border situation under control.
Gen. Ahmed Abdel Hamid, the governor of northern Sinai, estimated that as many as 120,000 Palestinians were in Egypt, but he said they were not being allowed to travel beyond El Arish, which lies slightly west of Rafah. He said on Thursday that he thought the border might stay open for another “four or five days” and then be closed pending another agreement on what to do.
“You have to see where this problem came from,” he said. “Before the dispute between Hamas and Fatah, the border was open every day with no problem. Since the dispute, the border has been closed.”
In fact, before the fighting between the Palestinian factions over the summer the Rafah crossing was closed more often than it was open. But General Abdel Hamid emphasized that Egypt was not favoring one faction or another, saying, “Egypt is with the legitimate authority,” presumably the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.
Mr. Mubarak’s officials said Egypt would not accept responsibility for supplying Gaza and let Israel off the hook, as some Israeli officials hope.
“This is a wrong assumption,” said Hossam Zaki, the spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons. The border will go back to normal.”
But the definition of normal was left unclear. When Israel pulled its settlers and troops out of Gaza in 2005, the Rafah crossing was opened with great fanfare to allow people in and out of Gaza. European Union supervisors were put in place, and Israeli video cameras monitored the traffic. But for security reasons, the crossing was often closed, and it has been shut completely since Hamas took over Gaza.
It will be difficult politically now for Mr. Mubarak to reseal the border completely, shutting off any outlet for Gaza. Egypt, with a strong opposition element from the Muslim Brotherhood, does not want to offend its Palestinian wing, Hamas. But Mr. Mubarak would prefer to work out an arrangement with the legal authority, President Abbas. In addition, Mr. Mubarak has promised Israel that Egypt will coordinate its actions on the Gaza border to preserve security interests of both countries.
In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Mubarak said that “peace efforts cannot endure any other failure, and Egypt will not allow the starving of Palestinians in Gaza or that the situation in the strip turns into a humanitarian crisis.”
He called on Palestinian factions to work together and said, “No one can outbid Egypt in its support for this silent nation and their just cause.”
Egypt, he said, “is doing its utmost in its movements and contacts to end their suffering and to lift the Israeli measures of collective punishment and to bring back the supply of fuel and electricity and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”
Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York and Nadim Audi from Al Arish, Egypt.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Attacks Imperil Militiamen in Iraq Allied With U.S.
By SOLOMON MOORE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD — American-backed Sunni militias who have fought Sunni extremists to a standstill in some of Iraq’s bloodiest battlegrounds are being hit with a wave of assassinations and bomb attacks, threatening a fragile linchpin of the military’s strategy to pacify the nation.
At least 100 predominantly Sunni militiamen, known as Awakening Council members or Concerned Local Citizens, have been killed in the past month, mostly around Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, urban areas with mixed Sunni and Shiite populations, according to Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani. At least six of the victims were senior Awakening leaders, Iraqi officials said.
Violence is also shaking up the Awakening movement, many of whose members are former insurgents, in its birthplace in the Sunni heartland of Anbar Province. On Sunday, a teenage suicide bomber exploded at a gathering of Awakening leaders, killing Hadi Hussein al-Issawi, a midlevel sheik, and three other tribesmen.
Born nearly two years ago in Iraq’s western deserts, the Awakening movement has grown to an 80,000-member nationwide force, four-fifths of whose members are Sunnis. American military officials credit that force, along with the surge in United States troops, the Mahdi Army’s self-imposed cease-fire and an increase in Iraqi security forces, for a precipitous drop in civilian and military fatalities since July.
But the recent onslaught is jeopardizing that relative security and raising the prospect that the groups’ members might disperse, with many rejoining the insurgency, American officials said.
“There’s a recognition that sustained attacks cannot continue,” said a United States official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’ve got to break that.” The official said that American military and intelligence officials were taking the threat to the Awakening movement “very seriously.”
American and Iraqi officials blame Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for most of the killings, which spiked after the Dec. 29 release of an audio recording in which Osama bin Laden called the volunteer tribesmen “traitors” and “infidels.” While the organization is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, American military officials say it has foreign leadership, though its links with Mr. bin Laden himself are unclear.
Officials say that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has a two-pronged strategy: directing strikes against Awakening members to intimidate and punish them for cooperating with the Americans, and infiltrating the groups to glean intelligence and discredit the movement in the eyes of an already wary Shiite-led government. “Al Qaeda is trying to assassinate all the Awakening members that support the government, but I believe that criminal militias are also doing this,” Mr. Bolani said during a recent interview in Taji.
Both Sunni and Shiite officials in Baghdad blame two government-linked Shiite paramilitary forces for some of the attacks: the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization. Sunni officials charge that militia leaders are involved, while Shiite officials believe that the attackers are renegade members of the groups. Both militias have close ties to Iran and have been implicated in death-squad operations against Sunni Arabs, although the Mahdi militia’s leaders have publicly told their members to abide by a cease-fire.
Citizen guardsmen and Iraqi intelligence officials say they have also captured Iranians with hit lists and orders to attack Awakening members. American military officials say they suspect that Iran’s paramilitary force, Al Quds, is directing the Shiite militias’ attacks against the Awakening movement. But other than finding Iranian-made weapons, which are sometimes used by Shiite militia fighters, American military officials offered no evidence that Iranians were participating in direct attacks. “Right now, the Concerned Local Citizens groups are being heavily targeted by Al Qaeda,” said Brig. Gen. Mark McDonald, who is working with the volunteers. “They’re also being targeted by some Shiite extremist groups.”
Killings of guardsmen are mounting even as Awakening members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Iraqi government, which has yet to fulfill its promise to integrate 20 percent of the volunteers into the Ministries of Interior and Defense and give nonsecurity jobs to the rest — a process that American officials say could take until the end of the year.
“If I give you a gun and tell you to stand at a checkpoint but I don’t give you support, how long will you stay?” asked Khadum Abu Aya, one of the Awakening leaders in Adhamiya, a neighborhood in northwest Baghdad that was once dominated by Sunni insurgents.
Officials in Baghdad who support the movement worry that if attacks on the tribal forces continue without faster progress by the Iraqi government, Awakening members could begin to fall away, harden into antigovernment militias or even rejoin the Sunni Arab insurgency.
They are worried about losing men like Omar Abbas, 23, one of the thousands of Awakening foot soldiers who expose themselves to danger every day at checkpoints throughout the country. American and Iraqi officials agree that Al Qaeda is the major threat, followed by the Shiite militias.
But many Awakening members like Mr. Abbas turn that hierarchy of risk upside down, singling out the Shiite militias.
“Badr is the worst threat,” he said, referring to the military arm of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite political party. The next greatest threat, he said, is the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Both militias have deep influence in Iraq’s security forces.
Despite their opposition to Al Qaeda, Mr. Abbas says, most Awakening members feel even more alienated from the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “Fifty percent of Al Qaeda in Adhamiya has joined the Awakening,” he pointed out.
For months, threats ricocheted around Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, the leader of the Awakening council in Adhamiya. Spray-painted messages appeared on walls near Adhamiya checkpoints: “Awakening is an obstacle to jihad” or “Death to you.”
Threatening calls to his cellphone became routine. And his son was accosted at a barbershop by a man who put a gun to his head and said, “Tell your father we’re going to kill him.”
Then on Jan. 7, they did. A man walked into a guarded religious compound, greeted Colonel Samarrai with the easy familiarity of a friend and detonated a bomb, killing himself and the Awakening leader.
Adhamiya guardsmen said that in recent weeks at least 25 Awakening members had been killed in the Baghdad districts of Shaab and Yarmouk.
Among the victims was Ismael Abbas, a Shiite tribal leader in Shaab, who was shot to death outside his home this month. Eight of Mr. Abbas’s men were abducted the next day. Awakening members blame Mahdi Army fighters.
But Sheik Hassan al-Mayahi, a Sadrist cleric in Shaab, denied that anyone loyal to Mr. Sadr would flout his cease-fire order. He blamed Sunni militants for the violence, but warned that Sadrists took a dim view of the Awakening groups in Shaab, which remained a Mahdi Army stronghold.
“Why do we need an Awakening Council in Shaab if the neighborhood is safe and people are satisfied?” he said, describing the guardsmen as “masked men carrying weapons.”
“We can’t distinguish them from the insurgents,” he said.
Despite losing ground in Baghdad, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia continues to recruit, propagandize and attack — often secretly, Iraqi and American officials say.
Across the Tigris River at the National Police barracks in the predominantly Shiite district of Kadhimiya, police officers questioned a young insurgent propagandist named Ali Taleb Jassim Mohammed. He stood before his interrogators’ desk wearing stylish denim pants, a leather jacket, handcuffs and a blindfold. The police had seized him two days earlier at a checkpoint in possession of a stack of threatening pamphlets. He showed no signs of mistreatment.
Mr. Mohammed told his questioners that operatives for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia approached him two months ago while he was working for the Awakening movement in the Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya. The operatives threatened to kill him if he did not leave the citizen guard and join their group, he said.
“They told me to do killings and plant I.E.D.’s,” or improvised explosive devices, against Shiite militiamen and Awakening members, he told his interrogators. “I refused and later they gave me these leaflets and told me to hand them out in Yarmouk.”
The police also displayed a handwritten counterintelligence manual that was found with another man detained at headquarters. It was disguised as a child’s geography notebook, a sticker of Sylvester and Tweety Bird affixed to the cover.
“What are our most important secrets?” read one passage on resisting interrogations. “The members of the organization. The location of their homes. Hide phone numbers, names, addresses and countries they are from.
“How is information compromised? By failing to do your job well. Confiding in stupid people. Bribery. People who talk too much. Confessions under torture. Electronic listening devices. Infiltration by spies.”
An Iraqi intelligence official said, “Our battle in Iraq has become an intelligence battle.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his job, added, “Half of the Awakening movement is infiltrated by Al Qaeda.”
The official said that the most dangerous threat, however, was posed by the Mahdi and Badr militias who, he claimed, were working with Iran to undermine the Awakening movement.
“Two weeks ago, we captured one Iraqi and two Iranians meeting in a house in Baghdad,” he said. “They are hitting the Sunni councils, because the Shiites think that they will form a Sunni militia that will be a force to hit them hard. When we capture these Shiite militiamen, they tell us they have orders from Iran.”
He warned that if Awakening groups were provoked into retaliatory attacks against government-linked Shiite militias, the results could be catastrophic.
In Diyala Province, a violently troubled area of Sunnis and Shiites north of Baghdad, attacks against citizen guardsmen have been aggravated by some of the worst sectarian conflict in the nation. Qasim al-Jafari, a Shiite tribal council leader, said dozens of Awakening members in Diyala had been killed in the last month, mostly by fighters for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Iraqi police officials in Diyala say that since June more than 200 Awakening members have been killed and more than 500 wounded. The Diyala tribes, organized about a year after the Anbar movement, are relative newcomers; Mr. Jafari’s force, for example, is still seeking certification from the central government.
Compared with neighborhood groups in Baghdad, some of Diyala’s largest Awakening groups are linked more by tribe than by geography or sect — Mr. Jafari said his volunteers were evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis. In contrast to community-based volunteer squads, their tribal forces thwart terrorist infiltrators more effectively because relatives vouch for one another.
Despite their advantages, many Diyala tribes are being overwhelmed by the scale of violence in the province, parts of which remain a haven for Sunni insurgents. Accounts of killings of volunteers in Diyala resemble Baghdad’s “intelligence war” less than they do conventional warfare.
Sheik Jafari said that 13 tribesmen were killed during one recent five-hour gun battle. Fighters for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are also blamed for the assassinations of several high-ranking sheiks in the province, including two tribal chiefs: Faiz Lafta al-Obeidi and Abu Sadjat, who was killed when a suicide bomber leapt onto his car.
While the attacks are taking a toll on Awakening members, they are causing even more damage to the delicate relationships between former insurgents and the government.
In Fadhil, the Awakening leader, Khalid al-Qaisi, said he had little hope that Iraqi politicians would support the movement and offered this opinion of Baghdad’s Shiite-led elite: “The garbage in Fadhil is better than the Iraqi government.”
Reporting was contributed by Ahmad Fadam, Karim Hilmi, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Qais Mizher, Wisam A. Habeeb and Abeer Mohammed from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Baquba.
BAGHDAD — American-backed Sunni militias who have fought Sunni extremists to a standstill in some of Iraq’s bloodiest battlegrounds are being hit with a wave of assassinations and bomb attacks, threatening a fragile linchpin of the military’s strategy to pacify the nation.
At least 100 predominantly Sunni militiamen, known as Awakening Council members or Concerned Local Citizens, have been killed in the past month, mostly around Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, urban areas with mixed Sunni and Shiite populations, according to Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani. At least six of the victims were senior Awakening leaders, Iraqi officials said.
Violence is also shaking up the Awakening movement, many of whose members are former insurgents, in its birthplace in the Sunni heartland of Anbar Province. On Sunday, a teenage suicide bomber exploded at a gathering of Awakening leaders, killing Hadi Hussein al-Issawi, a midlevel sheik, and three other tribesmen.
Born nearly two years ago in Iraq’s western deserts, the Awakening movement has grown to an 80,000-member nationwide force, four-fifths of whose members are Sunnis. American military officials credit that force, along with the surge in United States troops, the Mahdi Army’s self-imposed cease-fire and an increase in Iraqi security forces, for a precipitous drop in civilian and military fatalities since July.
But the recent onslaught is jeopardizing that relative security and raising the prospect that the groups’ members might disperse, with many rejoining the insurgency, American officials said.
“There’s a recognition that sustained attacks cannot continue,” said a United States official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’ve got to break that.” The official said that American military and intelligence officials were taking the threat to the Awakening movement “very seriously.”
American and Iraqi officials blame Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for most of the killings, which spiked after the Dec. 29 release of an audio recording in which Osama bin Laden called the volunteer tribesmen “traitors” and “infidels.” While the organization is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, American military officials say it has foreign leadership, though its links with Mr. bin Laden himself are unclear.
Officials say that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has a two-pronged strategy: directing strikes against Awakening members to intimidate and punish them for cooperating with the Americans, and infiltrating the groups to glean intelligence and discredit the movement in the eyes of an already wary Shiite-led government. “Al Qaeda is trying to assassinate all the Awakening members that support the government, but I believe that criminal militias are also doing this,” Mr. Bolani said during a recent interview in Taji.
Both Sunni and Shiite officials in Baghdad blame two government-linked Shiite paramilitary forces for some of the attacks: the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization. Sunni officials charge that militia leaders are involved, while Shiite officials believe that the attackers are renegade members of the groups. Both militias have close ties to Iran and have been implicated in death-squad operations against Sunni Arabs, although the Mahdi militia’s leaders have publicly told their members to abide by a cease-fire.
Citizen guardsmen and Iraqi intelligence officials say they have also captured Iranians with hit lists and orders to attack Awakening members. American military officials say they suspect that Iran’s paramilitary force, Al Quds, is directing the Shiite militias’ attacks against the Awakening movement. But other than finding Iranian-made weapons, which are sometimes used by Shiite militia fighters, American military officials offered no evidence that Iranians were participating in direct attacks. “Right now, the Concerned Local Citizens groups are being heavily targeted by Al Qaeda,” said Brig. Gen. Mark McDonald, who is working with the volunteers. “They’re also being targeted by some Shiite extremist groups.”
Killings of guardsmen are mounting even as Awakening members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Iraqi government, which has yet to fulfill its promise to integrate 20 percent of the volunteers into the Ministries of Interior and Defense and give nonsecurity jobs to the rest — a process that American officials say could take until the end of the year.
“If I give you a gun and tell you to stand at a checkpoint but I don’t give you support, how long will you stay?” asked Khadum Abu Aya, one of the Awakening leaders in Adhamiya, a neighborhood in northwest Baghdad that was once dominated by Sunni insurgents.
Officials in Baghdad who support the movement worry that if attacks on the tribal forces continue without faster progress by the Iraqi government, Awakening members could begin to fall away, harden into antigovernment militias or even rejoin the Sunni Arab insurgency.
They are worried about losing men like Omar Abbas, 23, one of the thousands of Awakening foot soldiers who expose themselves to danger every day at checkpoints throughout the country. American and Iraqi officials agree that Al Qaeda is the major threat, followed by the Shiite militias.
But many Awakening members like Mr. Abbas turn that hierarchy of risk upside down, singling out the Shiite militias.
“Badr is the worst threat,” he said, referring to the military arm of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite political party. The next greatest threat, he said, is the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Both militias have deep influence in Iraq’s security forces.
Despite their opposition to Al Qaeda, Mr. Abbas says, most Awakening members feel even more alienated from the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “Fifty percent of Al Qaeda in Adhamiya has joined the Awakening,” he pointed out.
For months, threats ricocheted around Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, the leader of the Awakening council in Adhamiya. Spray-painted messages appeared on walls near Adhamiya checkpoints: “Awakening is an obstacle to jihad” or “Death to you.”
Threatening calls to his cellphone became routine. And his son was accosted at a barbershop by a man who put a gun to his head and said, “Tell your father we’re going to kill him.”
Then on Jan. 7, they did. A man walked into a guarded religious compound, greeted Colonel Samarrai with the easy familiarity of a friend and detonated a bomb, killing himself and the Awakening leader.
Adhamiya guardsmen said that in recent weeks at least 25 Awakening members had been killed in the Baghdad districts of Shaab and Yarmouk.
Among the victims was Ismael Abbas, a Shiite tribal leader in Shaab, who was shot to death outside his home this month. Eight of Mr. Abbas’s men were abducted the next day. Awakening members blame Mahdi Army fighters.
But Sheik Hassan al-Mayahi, a Sadrist cleric in Shaab, denied that anyone loyal to Mr. Sadr would flout his cease-fire order. He blamed Sunni militants for the violence, but warned that Sadrists took a dim view of the Awakening groups in Shaab, which remained a Mahdi Army stronghold.
“Why do we need an Awakening Council in Shaab if the neighborhood is safe and people are satisfied?” he said, describing the guardsmen as “masked men carrying weapons.”
“We can’t distinguish them from the insurgents,” he said.
Despite losing ground in Baghdad, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia continues to recruit, propagandize and attack — often secretly, Iraqi and American officials say.
Across the Tigris River at the National Police barracks in the predominantly Shiite district of Kadhimiya, police officers questioned a young insurgent propagandist named Ali Taleb Jassim Mohammed. He stood before his interrogators’ desk wearing stylish denim pants, a leather jacket, handcuffs and a blindfold. The police had seized him two days earlier at a checkpoint in possession of a stack of threatening pamphlets. He showed no signs of mistreatment.
Mr. Mohammed told his questioners that operatives for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia approached him two months ago while he was working for the Awakening movement in the Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya. The operatives threatened to kill him if he did not leave the citizen guard and join their group, he said.
“They told me to do killings and plant I.E.D.’s,” or improvised explosive devices, against Shiite militiamen and Awakening members, he told his interrogators. “I refused and later they gave me these leaflets and told me to hand them out in Yarmouk.”
The police also displayed a handwritten counterintelligence manual that was found with another man detained at headquarters. It was disguised as a child’s geography notebook, a sticker of Sylvester and Tweety Bird affixed to the cover.
“What are our most important secrets?” read one passage on resisting interrogations. “The members of the organization. The location of their homes. Hide phone numbers, names, addresses and countries they are from.
“How is information compromised? By failing to do your job well. Confiding in stupid people. Bribery. People who talk too much. Confessions under torture. Electronic listening devices. Infiltration by spies.”
An Iraqi intelligence official said, “Our battle in Iraq has become an intelligence battle.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his job, added, “Half of the Awakening movement is infiltrated by Al Qaeda.”
The official said that the most dangerous threat, however, was posed by the Mahdi and Badr militias who, he claimed, were working with Iran to undermine the Awakening movement.
“Two weeks ago, we captured one Iraqi and two Iranians meeting in a house in Baghdad,” he said. “They are hitting the Sunni councils, because the Shiites think that they will form a Sunni militia that will be a force to hit them hard. When we capture these Shiite militiamen, they tell us they have orders from Iran.”
He warned that if Awakening groups were provoked into retaliatory attacks against government-linked Shiite militias, the results could be catastrophic.
In Diyala Province, a violently troubled area of Sunnis and Shiites north of Baghdad, attacks against citizen guardsmen have been aggravated by some of the worst sectarian conflict in the nation. Qasim al-Jafari, a Shiite tribal council leader, said dozens of Awakening members in Diyala had been killed in the last month, mostly by fighters for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Iraqi police officials in Diyala say that since June more than 200 Awakening members have been killed and more than 500 wounded. The Diyala tribes, organized about a year after the Anbar movement, are relative newcomers; Mr. Jafari’s force, for example, is still seeking certification from the central government.
Compared with neighborhood groups in Baghdad, some of Diyala’s largest Awakening groups are linked more by tribe than by geography or sect — Mr. Jafari said his volunteers were evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis. In contrast to community-based volunteer squads, their tribal forces thwart terrorist infiltrators more effectively because relatives vouch for one another.
Despite their advantages, many Diyala tribes are being overwhelmed by the scale of violence in the province, parts of which remain a haven for Sunni insurgents. Accounts of killings of volunteers in Diyala resemble Baghdad’s “intelligence war” less than they do conventional warfare.
Sheik Jafari said that 13 tribesmen were killed during one recent five-hour gun battle. Fighters for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are also blamed for the assassinations of several high-ranking sheiks in the province, including two tribal chiefs: Faiz Lafta al-Obeidi and Abu Sadjat, who was killed when a suicide bomber leapt onto his car.
While the attacks are taking a toll on Awakening members, they are causing even more damage to the delicate relationships between former insurgents and the government.
In Fadhil, the Awakening leader, Khalid al-Qaisi, said he had little hope that Iraqi politicians would support the movement and offered this opinion of Baghdad’s Shiite-led elite: “The garbage in Fadhil is better than the Iraqi government.”
Reporting was contributed by Ahmad Fadam, Karim Hilmi, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Qais Mizher, Wisam A. Habeeb and Abeer Mohammed from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Baquba.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Obama and Clinton Tangle at Debate
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
In the most intense and personal exchange of the presidential campaign, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama assailed each other’s integrity and voting records during a televised debate on Monday in South Carolina, the site of a critical primary in five days.
If the debate was full of memorable moments — Mrs. Clinton accusing Mr. Obama of associating with a “slum landlord,” Mr. Obama saying he felt as if he were running against both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the two candidates talking over each other — the totality of the attacks also laid bare the ill will and competitive ferocity that has been simmering between them for weeks.
“You know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern,” Mrs. Clinton said, drawing a chorus of jeers from a crowd at the Palace Theater in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Mr. Obama shot back that Mrs. Clinton was conducting a brand of negative politics that, he suggested throughout the night, she and her husband had perfected: “comb my 4,000 votes in Illinois, choose one, try to present it in the worst possible light.” He added that he had sought to maintain “a certain credibility” in the race.
Both candidates believe the Democratic nomination could be sealed in the next six weeks, and they used this debate, the second-to-last one of the primary season, to unload their best opposition research and sound bites against each other. In some cases, it was the first time the candidates had personally confronted each other on potentially embarrassing points.
As she has never done before, Mrs. Clinton linked Mr. Obama to a longtime fund-raiser, whom she characterized as a slumlord in “inner-city Chicago.”
Mrs. Clinton was referring to Mr. Obama’s ties to Antoin Rezko, a Chicago businessman who was indicted last fall on federal charges of business fraud and influence peddling connected to the administration of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois. Mr. Obama did work for a law firm in Chicago and performed legal work involving Mr. Rezko’s housing developments. On Saturday, Mr. Obama returned more than $40,000 in political contributions that were linked to Mr. Rezko.
And Mr. Obama, who appeared on the verge of losing his temper at times, noted that she was on the board of Wal-Mart while he was working on “the streets” as a Chicago community organizer. Mrs. Clinton was a director of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992.
The third Democratic contender, John Edwards, had to fight to speak. He tried to portray himself as the only candidate who was focusing on the real issues, criticizing the others for squabbling among themselves when health care and other issues go unresolved. At the same time, he tried make an appeal for his own electability in November against a Republican candidate like John McCain, saying he could “go every place” in the country to campaign.
Mr. Edwards, the winner of the South Carolina primary in 2004, also slashed into his leading rival in the state, Mr. Obama, by portraying him as weak-willed for voting “present” — rather than yea or nay — on scores of bills as an Illinois state senator.
For the most part, the sparring focused on the major issues in the primary contest, from the candidates’ plans on the economy and universal health care to their past and current positions on the Iraq war and free trade. Yet at the same time, the subtext of the attacks dwelled on honesty and accountability, with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama repeatedly implying that voters could not trust the opponent’s words.
Mr. Obama was as heated and intense as he has been at any debate over the last year. At times, he appeared angry and close to expressing it at Mrs. Clinton — and also at her husband, Bill Clinton, whom Mr. Obama criticized frequently during the debate for what he said were distortions of his views and record by the former president.
“I’m here,” Mrs. Clinton said, “not my husband.”
Mr. Obama snapped, “I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes.” At several other points, he used the phrase “Senator Clinton and President Clinton” to re-enforce his view that he is facing off against a decades-old Clinton machine.
Mr. Clinton was neither onstage nor in the audience, but he played a central role in the debate. Asked whether he had crossed the line as a former president, Mrs. Clinton smiled and raised the names of both of her rivals’ wives.
“This campaign is not about our spouses, it’s about us. Michelle and Elizabeth are strong and staunch advocates for their husbands,” Mrs. Clinton said. “At the end of the day, voters are going to have to choose among us.”
Still, the questions persisted about Mr. Clinton, who is scheduled to spend the week campaigning in South Carolina as Mrs. Clinton travels elsewhere. Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, was asked about how the author Toni Morrison had bestowed that title on Mr. Clinton more than a decade ago.
“I think Bill Clinton did have an enormous affinity with the African-American community,” Mr. Obama said, praising Mr. Clinton for his longtime commitment to racial equality as a man who grew up in the South.
Lightening the moment, he added: “I would have to investigate more Bill’s dancing abilities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judged whether in fact he was a brother.”
Mrs. Clinton replied, “I am sure that can be arranged.”
The South Carolina primary is the fourth showdown of the fight for the Democratic nomination: Mr. Obama won the first, the Iowa caucuses, where Mrs. Clinton came in third, but she rebounded and won the next two contests, in New Hampshire and last Saturday in Nevada. Mr. Obama appears to hold a strong lead in public polls in South Carolina; Mrs. Clinton is spending time and resources there this week, but she is also campaigning in other states in the next two days, in part to lower expectations for her performance there.
In those three contests, Mr. Edwards did not end up in a leading spot, and in the debate he sought to break through and connect with his fellow Southerners. (He was born in South Carolina and lives in North Carolina.)
“There are three people in this debate, not two,” Mr. Edwards reminded Wolf Blitzer, the moderator of the debate, which was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and shown on CNN. “I also want to know on behalf of voters in South Carolina, how many children are going to get health care because of this? We have got to understand that this is not about us personally.”
Mr. Edwards made a labored effort to highlight what he called his electability in the general election, referring to himself as “the white male” candidate, a phrase that became a point of playful banter between him and Mr. Obama, who often referred to the fact that a woman and a black man are running.
Patrick Healy reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Myrtle Beach, S.C. Julie Bosman contributed reporting from Myrtle Beach, and Kitty Bennett from Washington.
In the most intense and personal exchange of the presidential campaign, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama assailed each other’s integrity and voting records during a televised debate on Monday in South Carolina, the site of a critical primary in five days.
If the debate was full of memorable moments — Mrs. Clinton accusing Mr. Obama of associating with a “slum landlord,” Mr. Obama saying he felt as if he were running against both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the two candidates talking over each other — the totality of the attacks also laid bare the ill will and competitive ferocity that has been simmering between them for weeks.
“You know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern,” Mrs. Clinton said, drawing a chorus of jeers from a crowd at the Palace Theater in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Mr. Obama shot back that Mrs. Clinton was conducting a brand of negative politics that, he suggested throughout the night, she and her husband had perfected: “comb my 4,000 votes in Illinois, choose one, try to present it in the worst possible light.” He added that he had sought to maintain “a certain credibility” in the race.
Both candidates believe the Democratic nomination could be sealed in the next six weeks, and they used this debate, the second-to-last one of the primary season, to unload their best opposition research and sound bites against each other. In some cases, it was the first time the candidates had personally confronted each other on potentially embarrassing points.
As she has never done before, Mrs. Clinton linked Mr. Obama to a longtime fund-raiser, whom she characterized as a slumlord in “inner-city Chicago.”
Mrs. Clinton was referring to Mr. Obama’s ties to Antoin Rezko, a Chicago businessman who was indicted last fall on federal charges of business fraud and influence peddling connected to the administration of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois. Mr. Obama did work for a law firm in Chicago and performed legal work involving Mr. Rezko’s housing developments. On Saturday, Mr. Obama returned more than $40,000 in political contributions that were linked to Mr. Rezko.
And Mr. Obama, who appeared on the verge of losing his temper at times, noted that she was on the board of Wal-Mart while he was working on “the streets” as a Chicago community organizer. Mrs. Clinton was a director of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992.
The third Democratic contender, John Edwards, had to fight to speak. He tried to portray himself as the only candidate who was focusing on the real issues, criticizing the others for squabbling among themselves when health care and other issues go unresolved. At the same time, he tried make an appeal for his own electability in November against a Republican candidate like John McCain, saying he could “go every place” in the country to campaign.
Mr. Edwards, the winner of the South Carolina primary in 2004, also slashed into his leading rival in the state, Mr. Obama, by portraying him as weak-willed for voting “present” — rather than yea or nay — on scores of bills as an Illinois state senator.
For the most part, the sparring focused on the major issues in the primary contest, from the candidates’ plans on the economy and universal health care to their past and current positions on the Iraq war and free trade. Yet at the same time, the subtext of the attacks dwelled on honesty and accountability, with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama repeatedly implying that voters could not trust the opponent’s words.
Mr. Obama was as heated and intense as he has been at any debate over the last year. At times, he appeared angry and close to expressing it at Mrs. Clinton — and also at her husband, Bill Clinton, whom Mr. Obama criticized frequently during the debate for what he said were distortions of his views and record by the former president.
“I’m here,” Mrs. Clinton said, “not my husband.”
Mr. Obama snapped, “I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes.” At several other points, he used the phrase “Senator Clinton and President Clinton” to re-enforce his view that he is facing off against a decades-old Clinton machine.
Mr. Clinton was neither onstage nor in the audience, but he played a central role in the debate. Asked whether he had crossed the line as a former president, Mrs. Clinton smiled and raised the names of both of her rivals’ wives.
“This campaign is not about our spouses, it’s about us. Michelle and Elizabeth are strong and staunch advocates for their husbands,” Mrs. Clinton said. “At the end of the day, voters are going to have to choose among us.”
Still, the questions persisted about Mr. Clinton, who is scheduled to spend the week campaigning in South Carolina as Mrs. Clinton travels elsewhere. Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, was asked about how the author Toni Morrison had bestowed that title on Mr. Clinton more than a decade ago.
“I think Bill Clinton did have an enormous affinity with the African-American community,” Mr. Obama said, praising Mr. Clinton for his longtime commitment to racial equality as a man who grew up in the South.
Lightening the moment, he added: “I would have to investigate more Bill’s dancing abilities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judged whether in fact he was a brother.”
Mrs. Clinton replied, “I am sure that can be arranged.”
The South Carolina primary is the fourth showdown of the fight for the Democratic nomination: Mr. Obama won the first, the Iowa caucuses, where Mrs. Clinton came in third, but she rebounded and won the next two contests, in New Hampshire and last Saturday in Nevada. Mr. Obama appears to hold a strong lead in public polls in South Carolina; Mrs. Clinton is spending time and resources there this week, but she is also campaigning in other states in the next two days, in part to lower expectations for her performance there.
In those three contests, Mr. Edwards did not end up in a leading spot, and in the debate he sought to break through and connect with his fellow Southerners. (He was born in South Carolina and lives in North Carolina.)
“There are three people in this debate, not two,” Mr. Edwards reminded Wolf Blitzer, the moderator of the debate, which was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and shown on CNN. “I also want to know on behalf of voters in South Carolina, how many children are going to get health care because of this? We have got to understand that this is not about us personally.”
Mr. Edwards made a labored effort to highlight what he called his electability in the general election, referring to himself as “the white male” candidate, a phrase that became a point of playful banter between him and Mr. Obama, who often referred to the fact that a woman and a black man are running.
Patrick Healy reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Myrtle Beach, S.C. Julie Bosman contributed reporting from Myrtle Beach, and Kitty Bennett from Washington.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
