No subject

CAMPAIGN '08
Clinton assails Rev. Wright's remarks
As she keeps a focus on her Democratic rival's former pastor,=20
three more superdelegates line up for Obama.
By Scott Martelle
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 1, 2008

As Barack Obama sought to dampen the renewed controversy over his
former pastor by announcing three superdelegate endorsements
Wednesday, Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton kept the issue
alive, calling remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. "offensive
and outrageous."

Appearing on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Clinton said she
wouldn't have remained in a church with such divisive sermons. She
added that it would be up to voters to decide whether the controversy
would affect the presidential campaign.

Wright, in a nationally televised speech Monday at the National Press
Club in Washington, repeated some of the incendiary comments from
videotaped sermons that ignited the controversy in March. They
included assertions that the U.S. government may have played a role
in the spread of AIDS among African Americans and that the nation's
foreign policy actions led to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bill O'Reilly, host of the Fox News program on which Clinton
appeared, asked the New York senator how she felt when she heard=20
"a fellow American citizen say that kind of stuff about America."

"Well, I take offense," Clinton said. "I think it's offensive and
outrageous."

But Clinton also said that she thought Obama "made his views clear,
finally, that he disagreed, and I think that's what he had to do."

Clinton's comments came a day after Obama held a news conference to
dissociate himself from Wright. The Illinois senator called his
former pastor's National Press Club appearance a "spectacle," a "show
of disrespect to me" and "an insult to what we've been trying to do"
in his quest for the White House.

'Unacceptable' words

In Indianapolis on Wednesday, six days before the Indiana and North
Carolina primaries, Wright came up in a voter's question at an Obama
forum focusing on tax policies.

"What [Wright] said over the last few days and in some of the sermons
that have been excerpted were unacceptable and weren't things that we
believed in or cared about or cared to believe in," Obama replied.
"What we want to do now, though, is to make sure that this doesn't
continue to be a perpetual distraction."

As the uproar over Wright continued, three major national polls
delivered mixed results for the two Democratic candidates.

Obama was the leader among Democrats nationally in the New York
Times/CBS News poll, with a 46%-to-38% edge, and in an NBC News/Wall
Street Journal survey, 46% to 43%. A Fox poll, however, showed
Democrats preferring Clinton, 44% to 41%.

The polls also suggested that Democrats sense that Clinton is posing
a growing challenge to Obama in the contest for the Democratic
nomination. For instance, the New York Times/CBS News poll found that
51% of Democrats believe Obama will be their nominee, down from 69% a
month earlier. That survey also found that in a head-to-head race
between Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John
McCain, both candidates are backed by 45% of registered voters,
whereas Clinton has a 48%-to-43% edge over McCain.

Obama had the better day in the heated competition to win support
from the Democratic leaders and elected officials who are
superdelegates to the party's national convention in August.

His campaign announced three more superdelegate endorsements, while
the Clinton camp announced two.

The role of superdelegates is expected to be pivotal because neither
Obama nor Clinton appears able to seal the nomination solely by
winning delegates in the states still holding contests. More than
one-third of the nearly 800 superdelegates have yet to announce their
choices, with many saying they are waiting until the last of the
contests June 3. Although Clinton is ahead in superdelegates, Obama
holds a lead of about 150 among overall delegates.

California supporter

Among Obama's new superdelegates is Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara.
She cited Obama's domestic agenda and early opposition to the Iraq
war as reasons for her decision, but suggested she was even more
influenced by the tenor of the debate among the Democratic rivals for
the presidency.

"Simply put, he has made a call to the better angels of our nature,"
Capps said in a prepared statement. "He is challenging us to lift
ourselves out of the ugliness that increasingly consumes Washington,
where the heat of your argument counts for more than the light it
should bring."

Capps and her late husband, Walter, whom she succeeded in Congress,
have had a long political affiliation with the Clintons. But Capps
also has a family connection to the Obama campaign. Her daughter,
former Clinton White House staffer Laura Burton Capps, is married to
Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

Obama also picked up superdelegate endorsements Wednesday from Rep.
Bruce Braley of Iowa, who had backed John Edwards when the former
North Carolina senator was in the Democratic race, and from Rep.
Baron Hill of Indiana.

Obama won nods earlier this week from Rep. Ben Chandler of Kentucky,
Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Democratic National Committee
member Richard Machacek of Iowa.

Clinton picked up superdelegate endorsements Wednesday from the
Puerto Rico Democratic Committee vice chair, Luisette Caba=F1as, and
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William M. George. Earlier in the
week, she gained the backing of North Carolina Gov. Michael F.
Easley, which also could help Clinton in Tuesday's primary in that
state.

The Capps endorsement signaled yet another political figure with long
ties to the Clintons moving to the Obama camp, following New Mexico
Gov. Bill Richardson and fellow former Clinton Cabinet secretaries
William M. Daley, Norman Y. Mineta, Federico Pena and Robert Reich.

scott.martelle at latimes.com