Clinton, Obama slug it out early
Candidates clash over a fund-raiser's criticism
WASHINGTON -- In a sudden, and early, flash of negative campaigning in the Democratic presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday demanded that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois denounce one of his top fund-raisers, entertainment mogul David Geffen , after Geffen called Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, practiced liars.
Both the harsh criticism from Geffen -- a onetime Bill Clinton supporter who broke with the Clintons -- and the sharp response from Hillary Clinton jarred the nascent primary-election campaign and turned it into an unusually early slugfest.
Obama, still basking in the glow after a highly publicized fund-raising event led by Geffen that attracted many A-list Hollywood stars, refused to condemn Geffen, and the two campaigns spent the day exchanging snippy remarks.
Political observers said the fireworks revealed Clinton's desire to puncture Obama's pristine image while showing her own determination to strike back quickly against any accusations. The senators top most polls of Democratic voters, with Clinton ahead but Obama drawing surprisingly strong support for a political newcomer.
"If you're the Clintons, people know there's controversy. Obama so far has not been in that place. To get him to have to throw a few punches makes him look like a politician," said Lee Miringoff , director of the nonpartisan Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "Now they've got him more where they want him. They don't want him above the fray; they want him duking it out."
The fight began after Geffen was quoted in a
"Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling," Geffen said of the Clintons.
Some in Hollywood have lingering negative feelings about the Clintons. The former president, hours before leaving office in 2000, pardoned financier Marc Rich , who faced charges on tax evasion, but would not pardon Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist serving two life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents. Liberal activists say he was wrongly convicted.
Since then, Senator Clinton has further irked Hollywood liberals by her 2002 Senate vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq and her subsequent refusal to renounce that vote.
After the column appeared, Senator Clinton's campaign immediately released a statement demanding that Obama, who pledged last month to avoid negative campaigning and called on his Democratic colleagues to follow suit, return Geffen's money.
"While Democrats should engage in vigorous debate on the issues, there is no place in our party or our politics for the kind of personal insults made by Senator Obama's finance chair," Clinton communication director Howard Wolfson said, erroneously describing Geffen as an Obama campaign official.
Obama's camp immediately shot back. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln Bedroom," Robert Gibbs, spokesman for Obama, said , referring to reports that President Clinton's top donors were rewarded with overnight stays at the White House.
Gibbs also criticized Clinton for having "lavished praise" on a supporter, Robert Ford , a state senator from South Carolina who later said that Obama could imperil the rest of the Democratic ticket if nominated because "he's black."
Wolfson responded speedily, saying that Clinton had renounced Ford's remarks and that Ford, who is African-American, has apologized.
"By refusing to disavow the personal attacks from his biggest fund-raiser against Senator Clinton and President Clinton, Senator Obama has called into serious question whether he really believes his own rhetoric," Wolfson said.
The bickering reflected the growing tensions between the campaigns of the two Senate Democratic colleagues and underscores the worries the Clinton campaign has about Obama, a first-term senator with no national campaign experience.
Both candidates have drawn overflow crowds at rallies and town meetings, and both have impressed smaller groups of voters at local house parties. Clinton enjoys the advantage of a vast network of supporters and donors dating to her husband's 1992 presidential run, but Obama has challenged the New York lawmaker, courting those who backed the Clintons in the 1990s, including younger voters and wealthy leaders of the entertainment industry.
"We're pretty familiar with what the Clintons bring to the table," said Garth Corriveau , 30, of the New Hampshire Young Democrats, after meeting Obama in Nashua earlier this month. "I think young people are far more interested in a new way of governing than a Bush-Clinton seesaw."
Geffen's support of Obama was a sign that the charismatic Illinois lawmaker might hurt Clinton's campaign by siphoning off votes and campaign cash from Hollywood. But political analysts said the Clinton camp's reaction was not really about money -- which flows freely to Democrats in Los Angeles -- but about forcing Obama into a fight. "They may be trying to bring Obama into the mix, to see how his campaign responds," Miringoff said.
At a candidates' forum in Carson City, Nev., yesterday, Clinton indirectly addressed the controversy, saying she wanted to run "a very positive campaign."
Questions about Geffen and Obama should be left "up to the other campaigns," she said.
Clinton is scheduled to be the guest of honor at an upcoming Hollywood fund-raiser, and a number of prominent actors and entertainment executives have publicly supported her.
Further, Hollywood has so much money to throw around that Geffen's high-priced party for Obama would not necessarily deprive Clinton, said Bill Carrick , a California-based Democratic consultant.
"Los Angeles has gone off the deep end, in terms of donations to Democratic candidates, and it's going to continue like that," Carrick said, and wealthy Los Angelenos often decide to spread their money around. "They make multiple donations to several different candidates. Culturally, it's different from New York or Washington that way."
Arianna Huffington , an online political columnist and former Independent candidate for California governor, said the Clinton campaign was "over reacting" and wrongly assuming that the former president's 1990s political friends would automatically be supporters of Senator Clinton now.
"She's incredibly competent," Huffington said of Clinton. But Obama "connects with voters in a much deeper way than anyone has since Robert Kennedy."
Senator Clinton also has alienated liberals in Hollywood because of her 2002 vote to authorize force in Iraq and her repeated refusal since then to renounce that vote, Huffington said.
"Her position on the war is at the center of everything. It's definitely affecting people's opinions of her" in Hollywood. 