Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday said damaging stories swirling around her rival show that the true vetting of Sen. Barack Obama has just begun, and she predicted that a strong finish today in Ohio and Texas will revive her run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Photos: Clinton, Obama, McCain campaign
Mr. Obama of Illinois — who had to allay reports that he played political games with his trade-deal stance and has distanced himself from the corruption trial of his former fundraiser in Chicago — made the case that Mrs. Clinton should drop out even if she scores narrow wins in the two big states.
He said any outcome shy of landslide victories for Mrs. Clinton would dash her hopes of overtaking his current lead of more than 100 nominating delegates.
“I think the math is such where it’s going to be hard for her to win the nomination, and they’ll have to make a decision about how much longer they want to pursue it,” he told ABC News.
“I would assume that there are going to be people who want to bring this to an end one way or another, because John McCain’s out there,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mrs. Clinton, who lost the last 11 contests and staked the Ohio and Texas contests as a last chance to pull even with Mr. Obama, said she expected “to do well.”
“I believe that is going to be a very significant message to the country, and then we move on to Pennsylvania and the states next,” the New York senator told reporters in Toledo, Ohio.
The race remained tight, with several polls showing Mrs. Clinton with a four- to 12-point advantage in Ohio and slightly edging out Mr. Obama in Texas.
Primaries also happen today in the Clinton stronghold of Rhode Island, and in Vermont, where Mr. Obama is expected to win easily.
Mark Penn, the chief strategist for Mrs. Clinton, said any measure of victory for his candidate would “fully blunt” Mr. Obama’s momentum, especially because he entered these states with front-runner billing, more money and lopsidedly positive press coverage.
“Only now is Senator Obama starting to go through the vetting process that candidates normally go through,” Mr. Penn said in a conference call with reporters. “There are plenty of states left. Far more states than the difference in delegates.”
Mr. Obama leads the former first lady by 107 delegates, 1,383 to 1,276, according to an Associated Press count of pledged delegates awarded in state primaries and party superdelegates who have committed their support. A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to capture the nomination.
After today, a little more than 600 pledged delegates will be at stake in the remaining 12 nominating contests. In a close race, Mrs. Clinton will have to look to the party’s superdelegates to hand her the nomination.
“Whoever wins the most pledged delegates will be the nominee,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. The Clinton campaign keeps “moving the goal posts, but at some point, they run out of field.”
The Clinton campaign drew attention to persistent questions about a top Obama adviser telling Canadian officials not to take seriously his campaign promise to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement — a treaty blamed for contributing to massive job losses in Ohio.
The Obama campaign for days denied the report, which was first broadcast last week on Canadian TV news. But over the weekend, the Associated Press obtained a Canadian Consulate memo that substantiated a meeting with Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee.
“Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign,” the memo said. “He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”
The Obama campaign said Mr. Goolsbee disagreed with the Canadians’ interpretation of his remarks, saying Mr. Goolsbee told the Canadians what Mr. Obama had said on the stump — that he wants to renegotiate parts of the pact rather than scrap it outright.
The campaign also distributed a statement from the Canadian Embassy in the United States that in the memo, “there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson noted that Mr. Plouffe and other top Obama advisers last week denied that Mr. Goolsbee ever met with the Canadians or talked about NAFTA.
Mr. Plouffe said the meeting between Mr. Goolsbee and the Canadian Consulate in Chicago was a “casual conversation, [not] a formal meeting with the campaign.”
He had denied that a meeting took place because he didn’t know about it, Mr. Plouffe said.
Yesterday, the Clinton campaign began running a radio ad based on the Canada charges, saying “A newly released document from the Canadian government shows that Obama’s senior economic adviser met with the Canadian Consul General and made clear that Obama’s attacks on NAFTA were just, quote, political maneuvering, not policy.
“As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada. How will Ohioans decide whether they can believe Senator Obama’s words?” the ad asks.
The Obama team immediately called the spot “false.” A mass e-mail to reporters said the ad “flat-out lies about Barack Obama’s views on NAFTA” and repeated the campaign’s claims that it “has been debunked and discredited by the Canadian government itself.”
The Clinton camp also brought up reports that Mr. Obama has longtime ties to Chicago businessman and former Obama fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who went on trial yesterday on accusations that he used his political clout with state officials to commit money laundering, attempted extortion and fraud. The case is the biggest political corruption trial in Illinois since former Gov. George Ryan was convicted of racketeering in 2006 and sent to prison.
The trail has garnered national attention because Mr. Rezko, a 52-year-old Chicago real estate developer, helped bankroll Mr. Obama’s political start. Mr. Obama has sent some $150,000 in Rezko-related contributions to charity.
Mr. Obama is also under fire for entering a land deal with Mr. Rezko in 2005, when it was widely known that the real estate developer was under federal scrutiny, something Mr. Obama later called a “boneheaded” move.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
LONE-STAR SHOWDOWN
A few facts about Texas and its primary:
• Texas’ economy, with a gross domestic product of $881 billion in 2004, larger than Indonesia’s, is the 16th biggest national economy in world. Only California and New York have bigger U.S. state economies.
• The leading industries in Texas are trade, real estate and oil and gas. With 23.5 million people, Texas is the second most populous U.S. state after California.
• Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hopes in Texas rest heavily on her ability to win overwhelming support from the state’s Hispanic voters. An estimated 8.3 million Hispanics live in Texas, second only to the estimated 12 million in California.
• Conservatives have dominated both major political parties in Texas in recent years.
The state political climate has been marked by a preference for low taxes and a relatively low level of state services, a generally nonunion work environment, culturally conservative social policies and limited environmental regulations.
• Texas’ export shipments in 2006 totaled $150.9 billion, the largest among the 50 states.
From 2002 to 2006, Texas’ export shipments to Mexico increased by $13.2 billion. Other countries where Texas recorded large gains in the value of exports over this period were Canada (up $5.7 billion), China (up $4.6 billion), South Korea (up $3.3 billion) and the Netherlands (up $2.7 billion).
Net jobs lost because of changes related to the North American Free Trade Agreement from 1993 to 2004:
Texas: 72,257
U.S.: 1,015,290
Sources: Reuters news agency; Texas Democrats; Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Census Bureau; “Texas Politics,” the University of Texas at Austin; StateMaster.com
BUCKEYE STATE BATTLE
A few facts about Ohio:
•White working-class voters make up a large share of Ohio’s electorate, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has done well with these voters in many other state contests, although Sen. Barack Obama has begun to take some of that support.
Public opinion polls show Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Obama by an average of 10 percentage points in Ohio.
•Pocketbook issues top voters’ concerns in Ohio. The state has lost 23 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 2000 and the subprime mortgage crisis has hit hard, with the foreclosure rate climbing 88 percent last year.
Cleveland is the nation’s poorest large city, where nearly half the children live in poverty.
•Between 1995 and 2006, 71,242 Ohio workers lost their jobs because of trade, including workers who were affected specifically by the North American Free Trade Agreement. The number was roughly 7 percent of total manufacturing employment in 1995.
Net jobs lost because of changes in trade related to NAFTA from 1993 to 2004:
Ohio: 49,886
U.S.: 1,015,290
•Ohio has been a swing state in presidential races, narrowly handing President Bush a re-election victory in 2004. Democrats in 2006 picked up several statewide offices, including the governor’s mansion and a U.S. Senate seat, after scandals hurt incumbent Republicans.
Sources: Reuters news agency, Ohio secretary of state; Alliance for American Manufacturing; Real Clear Politics; RealtyTrac; Almanac of American Politics
OBAMA AIDE’S TRADE TALKS
The Associated Press obtained a memo written by Joseph DeMora, who works for the Canadian Consulate and attended a meeting with Sen. Barack Obama’s senior economic-policy adviser Austan Goolsbee and Canadian officials on Feb. 8. The following are excerpts:
• He [Mr. Goolsbee] was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy. On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favor of strengthening/clarifying language on labor mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more “core” principles of the agreement. Should Obama win the White House, Goolsbee figures to remain a close adviser.
• Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. … He also suggested that of the Democratic candidates, Obama has been the least protectionist … .
• As Obama continues to court the economic populist vote, particularly in upcoming contests like Ohio, we are likely to see a continuation of some of the messaging that hasn’t played in Canada’s favor, but this should continue to be viewed in the context in which it is delivered.
Source: Associated Press
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