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Hillary Clinton watched a youth group perform a folk dance yesterday at Boqueron Beach in Boqueron, Puerto Rico. The island will hold its Democratic primary Sunday (Elise amendola/Associated Press) |
After brouhaha, Clinton tries to look ahead
Touts faith in Puerto Rico
HORMIGUEROS, Puerto Rico - Hillary Clinton's campaign prepared for its next big test as it tried yesterday to move away from her controversial remarks about the assassination of Robert Kennedy 40 years ago.
The New York senator campaigned in Puerto Rico ahead of the island's Democratic presidential primary Sunday. Before that she will face a major showdown when party officials meet to decide what to do with delegates from Florida and Michigan.
A decision Saturday in her favor by the Democratic rules committee could be crucial to Clinton's uphill fight with Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination and face Republican John McCain in the November election.
Michigan and Florida, which were stripped of their convention delegates for violating party primary rules, are believed to be formulating plans to allow at least some of the delegates to be counted.
Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe was asked yesterday if Clinton would accept a decision that she did not particularly like.
"I am not saying that today," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "I'm saying let them make their decision, and then we will determine."
Campaigning for a second day in Puerto Rico, where she is favored in Sunday's voting, Clinton accepted an invitation from a local television station to debate Obama on issues facing the island. "Anytime, anywhere," she said at a stop in Penuelas.
Puerto Rico can help pick the Democratic nominee, but the territory, which has 55 pledged delegates, does not have the right to vote for president in November.
"If I had listened to those who had been talking the last several months, we would not be having this campaign in Puerto Rico today," she told several hundred people at the Pabellon de la Victoria evangelical church in Hormigueros.
Clinton spoke about the importance of faith in the face of adversity. "There isn't anything we cannot do together if we seek God's blessing and if we stay committed and are not deterred by the setbacks that often fall in every life," she said.
Clinton, who has strong ties to the Puerto Rican community in New York, is leading in the polls in the territory's contest.
Overall, Clinton is trailing Obama by nearly 200 delegates, with 2,026 needed to win the party's nomination. Obama was about 50 delegates short of the number needed to clinch.
Even as she tried to get the political discussion back to topics like the economy, Clinton's reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy after he won the June 1968 California presidential primary were still the focus of political talk.
Writing in the New York Daily News yesterday, Clinton again explained she had mentioned the assassination in the historical context of a campaign that continued well into June. The former first lady said her remarks were taken out of context.
"I was deeply dismayed and disturbed that my comment would be construed in a way that flies in the face of everything I stand for - and everything I am fighting for in this election," she wrote.
Others saw the mere mention of assassination as a reminder of the role such killings have played in US politics and that Obama, who could be the first black US president, has had Secret Service protection for more than year.
The Obama camp said it wanted to move on. "As far as we're concerned, this issue is done," David Axelrod, chief strategist for the Illinois senator, said on ABC's "This Week."
Campaigning in Puerto Rico on Saturday, Obama said he believed Clinton's remark was a simple misstep, and he accepted her statement that she did not mean any offense by it.
But even as both sides tried to tamp down the flap, some Clinton supporters pointed out that the Obama campaign had responded quickly Friday after the New York senator had made the remarks to the editorial board of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D.
McAuliffe accused the Obama group of "inflaming" the issue by issuing that response and then the "hyped-up press" took her comments out of context.
Clinton's supporters said Robert Kennedy's son understood what she meant and her words were not about Obama.
"They had nothing to do with Senator Obama," Clinton campaign adviser Howard Wolfson said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "And so there would be no reason for her to apologize to Senator Obama."
The controversy over her comments and the upcoming meeting of the rules committee overshadowed the last three nominating contests in Puerto Rico on Sunday, and in Montana and South Dakota on June 3.
McCain was taking the weekend off by hosting a small group at his 
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