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Clinton campaign: Obama is violating Florida ban |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 01/21/08 05:39 PM [ET] |
The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of knowingly breaking a pledge not to campaign in Florida by paying for cable TV ads that reach households there.
The ad buy is nationwide, but the Clinton campaign said it still breaks the pledge, which was instituted after Florida moved its primary ahead of a Feb. 5 cutoff, in violation of Democratic National Committee (DNC) rules.
The pledge language prohibits “campaigning” in Florida, and the DNC rules and bylaws equate a media buy that reaches a “significant percentage of voters” in a state with campaigning there.
Florida has also been stripped of its delegates because of its move to Jan. 29.
“There is no question that these ads are a clear and blatant violation of the early-state pledge that Sen. Obama and the other leading Democratic candidates signed last year,” the Clinton camp said. “There is no ambiguity.”
In a brief statement, Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign consulted with South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler, one of the initiators of the pledge, who “told us unequivocally she did not consider this to be in violation of [a] pledge made to the early states.”
“Both national cable networks told us it would be impossible for us to run advertising nationally that excluded only Florida,” Burton said.
Clinton recently said that the state remained important in the nominating process, even without delegates or campaigning, and the push to define Obama’s buy as a breach could apparently open the gates to Clinton campaigning in the state.
Clinton supporters on a conference call repeatedly noted that Clinton had not campaigned in the state “to this point,” but neither Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee nor Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) would rule it out in the future.
“We are reviewing all the options that are available to us, and a decision will be made in the very near future,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Turning Florida into a relevant state would likely give Clinton a third-straight significant victory, after New Hampshire and Nevada. Clinton holds a large lead in the Sunshine State, which includes many former New Yorkers.
She also won in Michigan, the other state affected by the pledge, but Obama and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) were not on the ballot there.
Republicans have maintained that the pledge will prove damaging to Democrats in the general election, where they will have to explain why they didn’t campaign in the crucial swing state during the nominating contest.
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