Clinton, Obama campaign in Indiana as ad wars heat up
The New York senator visits a gas station as one of her commercials criticizes her Democratic rival's opposition to a gas tax holiday. He calls the idea a 'political gimmick.'
WASHINGTON -- With less than a week to go before the next key primaries, the Democratic presidential candidates battled on in Indiana today -- Hillary Rodham Clinton stopped at a South Bend gas station to watch a blue-collar worker pump gas into a Ford pickup, and Barack Obama and his wife Michelle had lunch with families in Indianapolis.
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the ad wars heated up.
In Indiana, the Clinton camp aired a new ad challenging the Illinois senator for opposing Clinton's call for a freeze on foreclosures and a holiday from the federal gas tax, saying the New York senator is "ready to act again." Obama yesterday called the gas tax holiday "a political gimmick." And the Obama campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that the ad's sponsor, a pro-Clinton group called the American Leadership Project, is violating campaign finance laws by accepting unlimited donations.
As the two Democrats traded charges, liberal activist group MoveOn.org launched a new ad designed to ensure that Republican John McCain, who has already clinched the GOP nomination, does not have a free ride.
The spot, to launch Thursday on the fifth anniversary of President Bush's flight-deck speech declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq, includes footage of the Arizona senator saying that the American people "aren't concerned if we stay in Iraq for 100 years." The Republican National Committee issued a complaint against a similar ad by the Democratic National Committee, saying Democrats are misusing the sound bite by McCain, arguing that he was talking about a peaceful troop presence, not combat troops..
The North Carolina Republican Party began airing an ad this week that targets Obama as "too extreme" because of his ties to former pastor Jeremiah Wright, questioning the judgment of two Democratic candidates for governor who endorsed Obama.
McCain condemned the ad last week and said it had "no place in the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan." But state party officials insisted on airing the ad anyway.
Back in Indiana, Clinton pulled up at a gas station, riding in the passenger seat of a truck driven by sheet-metal worker Jason Silfing, 33. Silfing chose regular unleaded. The former first lady, a New York senator who has not driven her own car or pumped gas because of Secret Service restrictions, shook her head at the price tag.
