Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain of Arizona campaigned in Canaan, Vt., yesterday, where he spoke about reimportation of prescription medication from Canada.
(Jim Cole/Associated Press)
Campaign Notebook
WASHINGTON - Top Democratic rivals for president tore into each other yesterday after a conservative columnist asserted that front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed to have damaging information about Barack Obama.
The Clinton campaign denied the accusation, saying that Obama's reaction to the vaguely worded column by Robert Novak played into Republican hands and showed the Illinois senator's lack of political savvy.
Obama's team later said they took the Clinton campaign at its word but bristled at the idea that they fell for Republican tricks and should not have fought back against "smear politics" in the race for the presidency in the November 2008 election.
Novak, a syndicated columnist, wrote: "Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it."
Novak did not specify the information or give more details about its source.
"She of all people, having complained so often about 'the politics of personal destruction,' should move quickly to either stand by or renounce these tactics," Obama said in his initial statement.
Clinton's camp quickly fired back.
"A Republican-leaning journalist runs a blind item designed to set Democrats against one another. Experienced Democrats see this for what it is. Others get distracted and thrown off their games," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a statement. "We have no idea what Mr. Novak's item is about and reject it totally."
REUTERS
McCain's prescription aid
CANAAN, Vt. - Republican presidential contender John McCain yesterday said he wants to again allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada as a way to bring healthcare costs under control.
The Arizona senator, speaking to reporters about a mile from the Canadian border and just across the river from New Hampshire, said that too much of healthcare costs are based on high drug prices.
"Drug companies and the lobbyists they pay in Washington want to keep your drug prices high. Obviously, I want them to be affordable," McCain said, returning to his criticism of how Washington works.
Until drugs are less expensive, the cost of healthcare is going to skyrocket, helping to bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid, McCain said.
"If we are going to control healthcare cost, we need to control the rising costs of pharmaceuticals," McCain said, adding that drug prices are 16 to 60 percent less expensive in Canada and are to blame for rising insurance premiums.
McCain noted that his rivals do not support drug reimportation programs.
"These are drugs being reimported. They go to Canada and then they can come back in. It's a straw man to say that a country like Canada could not be responsible for safe drugs to be brought into our country. Many of them are manufactured in Canada, as you know," he said.
McCain said he would be open to bringing in drugs from any country with the proper safeguards.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Clinton gets union support
LAS VEGAS - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton yesterday accepted the endorsement of a 230,000-member labor group that will soon be formed through a merger.
SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, will merge the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association and the United Transportation Union in January. The New York senator had previously received the endorsement of the transportation union, which is the larger of the merging unions with 125,000 active and retired members in the railroad, bus, and public transit industries.
Clinton also spoke yesterday at a rally at Rancho High School, in a largely Hispanic district of North Las Vegas, with the support of the Hispanic immigrant elected to the Nevada Legislature, Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen.
The day's events highlighted Clinton's large lead in the early caucus state, which the Democratic Party had moved up in the presidential nominating calendar to raise the profile of union members and Hispanics in choosing the presidential nominee.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
N.H. sure of keeping status
MANCHESTER, N.H. - With Michigan's plan for a Jan. 15 presidential primary in limbo, New Hampshire's secretary of state says he still has plenty of time to set a date that ensures his state maintains its first-in-the-nation primary tradition.
"Let Michigan do whatever it wants to do, and we'll deal with it," said Secretary of State Bill Gardner, speaking at a forum yesterday at The New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College.
Wearing a "Protect Our Primary" sticker on his sweater vest, Gardner seemed unfazed by a Michigan court ruling Friday that turned down a law that would have allowed that state to hold a Jan. 15 primary. The court ruled against a provision giving political parties in Michigan exclusive access to records showing voters' names and whether they took Democratic or Republican ballots.
With time running short for election planners and campaigns, attention is focusing on a date for New Hampshire's primary, which will kick off a quick series of primaries across the country.
Gardner would not say how much lead time he needs to carry out the primary after he sets the date and he would not comment on speculation that it will probably come on Jan. 8.
"We'd be able to do it faster than most people would think," Gardner said.
New Hampshire law requires that its primary be held at least a week ahead of any similar election.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A journey into the past
LANCASTER, N.H. - A trip to a small-town pizza shop yesterday became a journey into McCain's past.
One woman brought out a silver prisoner of war bracelet she wore as a student at the University of Maine at Farmington to raise awareness of McCain's capture. Another man told McCain he served with the Arizona senator's grandfather in World War II.
Kathy Treamer, an independent voter who had never met the Republican presidential hopeful before yesterday, wore the bracelet starting in 1970 or 1971 - she couldn't recall. She wore it until his release.
The bracelet was engraved with Oct. 26, 1967, the date McCain was taken prisoner while serving in Vietnam.
McCain has come across similar bracelets while campaigning.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
|
