RALEIGH, N.C. — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama spent yesterday engaging in terse exchanges about gas prices before changing tone and giving uplifting speeches last night at a dinner for Democrats in one of the two states voting in presidential primaries next week.
Mrs. Clinton, who all day had hammered Mr. Obama for not supporting her plan to suspend the gas tax for the summer, offered him nothing but praise as she called for total party unity come November.
“If Senator Obama is the nominee, you’d better believe I’ll work my heart out for him,” she said, to raucous cheers from the thousands in attendance at the North Carolina Democratic Party dinner.
The former first lady added that if she wins the nomination, “I know Senator Obama would do the very same for me,” inspiring cheers, though fewer of them.
But the pro-Obama crowd there wasn’t as excited when she praised North Carolina Gov. Michael F. Easley for his recent endorsement, and loud boos ensued. Mrs. Clinton would have none of it, saying over the heckling that one of the best things about being a Democrat is “you can support whoever you want to support.”
Obama supporters booed and chanted their candidate’s name when Mr. Easley took the stage and said either Democrat would be the next president of the United States.
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Mr. Obama stuck to his stump speech that, aside from a brief mention of his opposition to the war and the gas issue, focused attacks on presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.
“We are going to be united in the fall,” he promised. “I would support her in a heart beat and I know that if I am the nominee she would support me.”
Both candidates gave effusive praise for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and his wife, Elizabeth, pledging they would uphold the former candidate’s focus on poverty if elected.
Earlier yesterday, Mr. Obama blasted Mrs. Clinton’s proposal for a summer suspension of the gas tax, calling it a “gimmick” on the campaign trail in Indiana and accusing her of mimicking President Bush’s cavalier style.
He charged she is using Bush-like language because Mrs. Clinton said Thursday members of Congress must announce if “they are with us or against us” in taking on oil companies.
“At best, this is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months; that is, unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap, which is just what happened in Illinois, when we tried this a few years ago,” Mr. Obama said, anticipating charges of hypocrisy since he voted for the plan as a state senator years ago.
He also quipped she and Mr. McCain have the same opinion on the issue, calling them “two Washington candidates” who are “reading from the same political playbook.”
Mrs. Clinton, on the stump in Hendersonville, N.C., fired back: “Senator Obama doesn’t want us to take down the gas tax this summer and Senator McCain wants us to, but he doesn’t want to pay for it.”
Mrs. Clinton said she would impose a tax on record oil company profits.
“We ought to say: Wait a minute, we’d rather have the oil companies pay the gas tax than the drivers of North Carolina, especially the truck drivers, or the farmers, or other people who have to commute long distances,” she said.
The Clinton campaign reminded voters Mr. Obama voted for the gas tax holiday in Illinois when gas was less than $2 per gallon, while Republicans issued similar criticism.
The candidates also are sparring over gas on the airwaves in advance of Tuesday’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.
A new Obama ad hit back at a Clinton ad on the gas issue, with a narrator stating that, “USA Today calls her three-month gas tax holiday ’political pandering.’ It’s an election year-gimmick, saving Hoosiers just pennies a day.”
Team Clinton went on TV late yesterday with a new response, saying Mr. Obama would “make you keep paying that tax, instead of Big Oil.”
The Illinois senator also subtly mocked a recent staged campaign event where the former first lady rode with an Indiana commuter to work and lamented his steep gas bill.
“I’ve actually filled up my own gas tank,” he told reporters, a swipe at Mrs. Clinton, who has not driven a car in decades. She said at the gas station Wednesday that because of her security detail she also hasn’t been at a gas station in a long time.
He said it was ironic that his family is being painted as elitist, saying it’s an inaccurate “caricature.”
“The fact is … our lives, if you look back over the last two decades, more closely approximate the lives of the average voter than any of the other candidates,” he said, noting he and his wife Michelle “struggled with student loans” and to find day care.
Mr. Obama noted a report that said the Clinton campaign could not provide for a newspaper interview an economist who favored the idea of a gas-tax holiday, instead sending a pollster — behavior that Mr. Obama said proved the idea is just a bid for votes. He also claimed states would lose jobs while oil companies could end up profiting more from the Clinton plan.
He cited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s criticism of the idea, and several Democratic members of Congress rejected the holiday proposal.
Obama supporter Rep. Earl Blumenauer called it “a very dangerous idea with devastating impacts” for his home state of Oregon. Neutral Rep. Mark Udall, running for Senate in Colorado, issued a statement responding to the Clinton challenge and blasting her and Mr. McCain.
“This will not create the economic relief they say it will, because prices will continue to rise until we address the real source of this problem,” he said.
Mr. Obama told reporters yesterday that voters don’t want “a whole bunch of drama” and he is aiming to return to middle-class issues after a rough patch of deflecting fallout regarding his former pastor.
“Obviously we’ve had to fight through, over the last week, an awful lot of noise,” he said. “What we’ve been trying to do is to make sure that we refocus on what matters to people.”
“[What] American voters … are looking for is can you solve my problems, or can you help me so that I can solve my own problems,” he said. “As a consequence of events, we weren’t able to spend a lot of time over the last week talking about that.”
Mr. Obama’s standing has dropped in the polls since his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., stoked the fires of Obama criticism by taking a speaking tour to defend his anti-American sermons.
Voters have told pollsters the dust-up has changed their mind about Mr. Obama, who leads the fight for the nomination in states won and in delegates.
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