Clinton to fire up White House campaign before key votes
WASHINGTON (AFP) — White House hopeful Hillary Clinton was to fire up her campaign Monday, just over a week before key primaries billed as a make-or-break date in her bid to be the country's first woman president.
Just a few days ago, pundits said Clinton was preparing a graceful exit from the Democrats' White House race in face of her seemingly unstoppable rival Barack Obama, who has won the 11 last nominating contests in a row.
Now heading into must-win battles on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, Clinton has come out fighting.
Several press reports on Sunday said Clinton's advisors, demoralized in the face of the Obama steamroller, were preparing for the campaign's last rites in Ohio and Texas.
But Clinton's communications chief Howard Wolfson denied the end was nigh for the New York senator.
"I believe that we are going to do well in Ohio and Texas. I'm not even thinking about other alternatives," he said.
Clinton herself was pulling the gloves off, accusing her rival from Illinois of purloining Republican smear tactics in his attacks on her healthcare and trade policies.
"Shame on you, Barack Obama," Clinton said at a rally in Ohio, which along with Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont holds its Democratic primary on March 4.
"Meet me in Ohio. Let's have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign," she challenged Obama, who is bidding to be the country's first black president.
Slightly complicating the mix, consumer champion Ralph Nader announced Sunday he was taking a new tilt at the White House, eight years after splitting the anti-Republican vote in a razor-thin election won by George W. Bush.
But the lifelong campaigner for environmental protection and consumer rights denied he was running as a "spoiler" who could hand the 2008 race to Republican John McCain.
Whether it is the war in Iraq, healthcare or the power of Wall Street, Americans are suffering "major injustices" that the Democrats and Republicans refuse to address, he told AFP in a telephone interview.
"I'm sick of this political bigotry here. They've sold off the US government to big business. And they accuse others of being spoilers. That is grotesque," said Nader, who turns 74 on Wednesday.
Both Obama, 46, and Clinton, 60, who were to face off in possibly their final televised debate in Ohio Tuesday, downplayed Nader's latest intervention.
Standing as a Green party candidate in 2000, Nader took more than 97,000 votes in Florida, outraging Democrats who said he had siphoned off enough support from former vice president Al Gore to hand victory to President Bush.
But he won just 0.3 percent of the national vote as an independent in 2004, when he appeared on the presidential ballot in only 34 states following a slew of Democratic lawsuits.
Minnesota's Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is being touted as a possible vice presidential candidate for McCain, said Nader's entry might "unsettle the Democratic race, to some small degree."
"I don't think it's going to be a big factor, but it will be a small factor," he said.
Pawlenty echoed other politicians in arguing that New York's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg would pose a bigger third-party threat. Bloomberg's denials of a planned White House run have failed to tamp down a media buzz.
McCain meanwhile has enjoyed a bounce in support from hardline conservatives after The New York Times insinuated an improper relationship between the maverick Republican front-runner and a female lobbyist.
McCain received another boost Sunday with news that Puerto Rico Republicans had awarded their 20 delegates to the Arizona senator, in a crushing defeat for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
But on the down side came news that the Democrats have laid a federal complaint against McCain accusing the ethics crusader of violating his own campaign finance law.
McCain is trying to withdraw from an agreement with the Federal Election Commission to cap his campaign spending in return for public money. He submitted to the pact last year when his campaign was deep in trouble.
"The crucial issue here is John McCain's integrity," Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said.
McCain's campaign insisted it was acting within FEC rules, and accused Dean of hypocrisy after his own flirtation with public financing during his doomed 2004 presidential campaign.
