Politics

Obama's CNN ad draws fire

Floridians will see it, so it breaks the "no campaigning" pledge, Clinton's backers say.

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published January 22, 2008

The Democratic boycott of Florida's presidential primary was fraying Monday as the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign cast Barack Obama as an untrustworthy promise breaker for airing a TV ad in Florida, along with the 49 other states.

"Words matter, promises matter and pledges matter," former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Clinton backer, said in a conference call Monday accusing Obama of breaking his signed oath not to campaign in Florida. "It calls into question the promises and pledges he's made on the campaign trail."

The pro-Obama ad started airing nationwide -- including in Florida -- on MSNBC and CNN, and the Clinton campaign charged that it violates the oath against "purchasing print, Internet, or electronic advertising that reaches a significant percentage of the voters in the aforementioned state."

Nonsense, said the Obama campaign. The cable networks could not eliminate Florida from the national buy, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, so the campaign sought and received permission from South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler.

Saying all bets are off with the new nationwide spot, the Clinton campaign left open the possibility of starting a traditional campaign in Florida where polls show her leading Obama.

"If the Clinton campaign wants to campaign in Florida and ignore the pledge they signed, they'll be running the wrong way around the track because there are no delegates at stake," said Plouffe, who argues the Democratic vote next Tuesday in Florida will be meaningless without delegates awarded and any Florida campaigning.

The latest skirmish between the Obama and Clinton campaigns underscores the increasing testiness of the Democratic contest and cockeyed position in which it has placed the Democrats in America's biggest battleground state. Already the candidates have spent months refusing to talk to Florida voters, except those attending fundraising receptions.

The controversy stems from the Legislature's decision last year to schedule an early primary in an effort to give Florida more influence on the presidential nominating process.

The national party allows only a handful of states to hold elections before Feb. 5, and the Democratic National Committee voted to strip all of Florida's delegates to the national convention. What's more, Democratic leaders in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina persuaded all the leading Democrats to take an oath to do no campaigning in Florida except raising money.

Thus, Monday's spat. Now, one week before Florida's primary, the Sunshine state has become a political football, with Obama casting Florida as essentially irrelevant in the Democratic primary and Clinton trying to elevate its importance.

Winning the nomination requires winning enough delegates, but discounting votes in a battleground state where "count every vote" has real meaning, is politically sticky. When the Obama campaign last week put out a memo saying Florida voters have no bearing on the nomination, Clinton allies accused Obama of disenfranchising voters.

"It's the height of hypocrisy," former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman, a Clinton supporter, said of the new ad touting Obama's life story. "One day Florida's not important and he's never going to violate the pledge, and now all of a sudden he's got an ad running in Florida."

Another top Clinton supporter in Florida, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, told reporters on a conference call that prominent Obama supporters have been trying to suppress the vote in Florida, though she would not name names.

Obama's Florida chairman, Rep. Robert Wexler of Boca Raton, has been in the awkward position of dismissing the importance of Florida's Democratic primary vote and standing by Obama's boycott of the state. He said Monday he detests the DNC's stripping away Florida's Democratic delegates, but ultimately delegates matter.

"All the candidates made a pledge, and I hope all the candidates will keep that pledge," he said of the boycott of Florida's primary.

Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or 727 893-8241.

[Last modified January 21, 2008, 22:50:02]