WASHINGTON - Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, meeting for the first time after a blistering series of attacks and counterattacks centered on race, downplayed their feud in the latest Democratic debate, insisting that overzealous supporters had fueled a battle they refuse to fight with each other.
"Senator Obama and I agree completely that neither race nor gender should be part of this campaign," Clinton said during the debate in Las Vegas, where she is engaged in a close race against Obama and John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina. "We are all family here in the Democratic Party." Obama also reinforced the truce their campaigns had reached.
"I know that John and Hillary have always been committed to racial equality," he said, adding that suggestions Clinton had injected race into the campaign were inappropriate. "Our supporters, our staff, get overzealous. They say things I would not say."
The debate - a relatively chummy session in which the top three remaining Democratic candidates were seated around a table - was their last meeting before Saturday's caucuses in Nevada, a nominating contest that was moved up in the presidential primary calendar to draw more attention to regional and Latino issues.
The battle between Obama and Clinton - each of whom has won a key early nomination contest and taken a turn leading in voters' polls - became nasty in the past week, after Clinton said in a TV interview that while the Rev. Martin Luther King had inspired the civil rights movement, "it took a president," Lyndon B. Johnson, to enact the legislation making concrete differences in peoples' lives.
Some supporters and staff members of Obama, who has received attention as the first black top-tier contender for the presidential nomination, derided the comments as racially inflammatory. Prominent backers of Clinton, the first woman to make a strong run for the presidency, blamed Obama's campaign, saying it was trying to make race an issue.
Both candidates put those disputes aside last night, and Edwards, who recalled growing up in the segregated South, noted that "all of us have an enormous responsibility not to go back, but to go forward" as a unified country.
The presidential candidates in both political parties spent little time and money in Nevada until after the New Hampshire primary, when the open-ended nature of both nomination fights brought the Silver State into greater focus. And the three debating Democrats last night - minus Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, who was disinvited - repeatedly slipped references to Nevada localities and issues into their answers.
In one of the few testy moments, Clinton assailed Edwards for having twice voted in favor of approving a controversial nuclear waste disposal site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a project residents overwhelmingly oppose.
"I have consistently and persistently been opposed to Yucca Mountain, and I will make sure it does not come into effect when I'm president," Clinton said, selecting a local issue to distinguish herself among Nevada voters. "John, you voted for it twice."
Clinton also took a shot at Obama, who opposes the use of the mountain as a nuclear waste dump but who, Clinton alleged, has accepted campaign contributions from company officials who support the project.
"I think it's a testimony to my commitment and opposition to Yucca Mountain that despite the fact that my state has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the country, I've never supported Yucca Mountain," Obama, the Illinois senator, responded.
Edwards acknowledged his earlier support but said that since those votes, "sound science" and new evidence has convinced him the project is a poor idea.
Clinton confronted Obama on an issue that has divided them: the Iraq war. She asked whether he would join her in legislation that would force the president to come before Congress to ask specifically for its approval before sending more troops to Iraq or establishing permanent bases there.
"I think we can work on that, Hillary," Obama said.
Only once did Obama remind the audience that he opposed the war "from the beginning," a reference to Clinton's vote for the 2003 resolution that authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq.
All three candidates discussed their plans to address the subprime mortgage crisis, which has hit Las Vegas particularly hard. Each played to their perceived strengths: Clinton underscored her experience, Obama presented himself as a leader who can unite the country, and Edwards promised to fight corporate interests he said had taken over Washington.
"There's no doubt you've got to be a good manager," Obama said, addressing Clinton's comments that the presidency requires the capabilities of a chief executive officer.
Polls in Nevada suggest that the top three Democrats are in a virtual dead heat. But since Nevada has historically had a very low turnout at its caucuses, many analysts believe the results Saturday might not reflect the polling numbers.
