Former President Bill Clinton will host a rally* with 10th Congressional District candidate and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi on Tuesday in South San Francisco.
Clinton has endorsed Garamendi in the congressional race, and the lieutenant governor says the president promised to make a personal appearance during the campaign if he could fit it into his schedule.
Unfortunately for Garamendi, Clinton doesn’t have enough time to travel to the 10th District, presumably the preferred location for a the chance to publicly stand next to the popular former president. Clinton is in the Bay Area to attend the PGA President’s Cup at Harding Golf Course in San Francisco and has to catch a flight later Tuesday.
Clinton is in Los Angeles, today, campaigning for gubernatorial hopeful and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Garamendi says he vividly remembers a two-hour conversation in 1991 with then-presidential candidate Clinton about health care reform in 1991, when then-Insurance Commissioner Garamendi was working on a California version of a single-payer health insurance system.
“We go way back on health care,” Garamendi said of Clinton. “And here we are today, talking about the same issue.”
Garamendi won the Sept. 1 special primary election and will face on Nov. 3 GOP nominee David Harmer of Dougherty Valley and three minor party candidates.
* Update: Subject of rally no longer limited to healthcare but will cover a range of issues. 11:43 a.m.
2004 Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.:
And I’ll update with Joe Biden’s vice-presidential nomination acceptance speech — and his special unannounced guest — as soon as clean clips are available…
“Although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so,” Reich writes, later adding Obama “offers the best hope of transcending the boundaries of class, race, and nationality that have divided us” and “offers the best possibility of restoring America’s moral authority in the world.”
Reich’s endorsement comes on the heels of his passionate defense of Obama in the hubbub following the candidate’s “bitter” remark at a fundraiser April 6 in San Francisco.
It’s not as if Obama is sweeping the old Clinton cabinet, however — former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; former Secretary of Defense William Perry; and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo all have endorsed Hillary Clinton.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama for president this morning at a joint appearance in Portland, Ore.
“Today I am endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States because I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” he said. “As a Presidential candidate, I know full well Senator Obama’s unique ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”
Richardson served seven terms in Congress before being appointed by President Clinton to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations and, later, Secretary of Energy; he was elected governor in 2002 and again in 2006. His track record includes negotiating with hostile regimes for the release of American prisoners, and he has been active both in seeking to secure loose nuclear materials and in seeking to end the genocide in Darfur.
Said Obama: “He knows that to secure American interests, we have to talk to our enemies, as well as our friends, which is why he stood up to North Korea and Saddam Hussein to secure the release of American hostages. And that’s the kind of tough, aggressive diplomacy we need to meet the new challenges of the 21st century.”
Richardson’s among the Democratic superdelegates who most likely will end up determining the nomination this year, and could help tip more superdelegates Obama’s way, but I think there could be something more significant going on here.
Ever since Richardson dropped his own White House campaign in January, I’ve been among those saying he’d make a potent running mate for either Obama or Hillary Clinton, but especially for Obama. The nation’s only Latino governor, he would help Obama make deeper inroads into that community, and his foreign-policy chops would help blunt criticisms of Obama’s relative inexperience; Clinton needs less help in both those areas. Richardson would help strengthen either Democratic ticket in John McCain’s southwestern regional home base. And Richardson left the race before he’d said anything too harsh about Obama or Clinton that the GOP could turn back against him later this year.
I’d been waiting to see whether Richardson’s longstanding ties and loyalty to the Clintons would win out — he and Bill Clinton watched the Super Bowl together last month — but now that he has cast his lot, I’d not be surprised if you see him taking a verrrrrrry active role in Obama’s campaign from here on out.
UPDATE @ 2:24 P.M. FRIDAY: Maybe Richardson waited until now because only now are people and pundits beginning to grapple with the true state of the race for the Democratic nomination: He didn’t want to betray the Clintons’ friendship while she still stood a realistic chance.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign says former President Bill Clinton, after visiting Orange County and Sacramento, will stage “Solutions for America” rallies tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 4, in Stockton and San Francisco.
The Stockton event will be at 2 p.m. in the University of the Pacific’s Alex G. Spanos Arena — I wonder if that makes Spanos, a big GOP benefactor, break out in hives? — at 3601 Pacific Ave. Details of the San Francisco visit haven’t been rolled out yet; stay tuned.
UPDATE @ 12:05 P.M. MONDAY: Former President Bill Clinton will attend a “Voices Across America” town hall hosted by Mayor Gavin Newsom at San Francisco’s Ferry Building, on the Embarcadero at Market Street; doors open at 4:30 p.m. At 6 p.m., Hillary Clinton will start a live national town hall, being broadcast from New York City on the Hallmark Channel; there also will be a real-time stream of the event on the campaign’s Web site.
And now, one day after Barack Obama’s campaign rolled out its California “truth squad,” Hillary Clinton’s campaign has unveiled its “rapid responders” in the Feb. 5 primary states, “a national group of truth tellers who will respond to inaccurate or misleading attacks directed at Senator and President Clinton,” the news release says.
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of truthiness! Perhaps we can have a Celebrity Deathmatch-type showdown — maybe Gavin can represent Clinton against Kamala Harris for Obama, or maybe a battle of the Lynns: Woolsey v. Schenk.
Hot on the heels of Barack Obama’s rout of Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, the Obama campaign announced today it’s forming a “truth squad” of California supporters who’ll refute what they say are mistruths spread by Clinton’s campaign.
“Yesterday we watched as the voters of South Carolina sent a clear message to America and voted for change,” House Education & Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Martinez, said today. “They rejected the divisive politics of the past and chose progress for the future. According to exit polls, 70% of South Carolina voters said the attacks leveled by the Clinton campaign were unfair. And despite weeks of misleading negative attacks, Barack Obama won because voters in South Carolina, like voters across America, wanted to bring this country together, and change the way business is done in Washington so we can finally stand up to the special interests and solve the problems that matter to ordinary Americans.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who spent time phone-banking for Obama on Saturday at the Oakland campaign headquarters, said, “We’re here today because we know Californians are tired of the same divisive politics that failed in South Carolina. We are organized to make sure that the truth is shared with Californians and to respond to same type of negative attacks that the Clinton campaign tried, and the voters rejected, in South Carolina.”
Besides Miller and Lee, other California Truth Squad members include Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Lakewood; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose; Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank; Assembly Majority Floor Leader Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles; state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-East Los Angeles; San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris; and LA Federation of Labor Executive Secretary/Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign rolled out a new green-themed California television ad today; here it is:
The campaign just held a teleconference with reporters to discuss the new ad. Former Rep. Lynn Schenk, D-San Diego, said Clinton resonates with Californians because “she has a long proven track record on delivering positive change toward helping the environment.”
Clinton California campaign director Ace Smith said “we’re building on incredible momentum we’re seeing in California” such as the United Farm Workers‘ endorsement yesterday in Salinas and big turnouts for the candidate’s and former President Bill Clinton’s visits to California last week. The new ad is running in every broadcast and cable market in the state, Smith said — “a very substantial buy,” though he said he never discusses specific dollar figures.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama rolled out three new ads today in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Mexico and Utah, all of which (like California) are among the 22 states holding their primaries Feb. 5:
I shoulda posted this earlier, but better late than never when it comes to great video: KGO-TV reporter Mark Matthews went toe-to-toe with Bill Clinton in Oakland the other day, asking about the Nevada Democratic Party’s plan to hold caucus meetings at nine Las Vegas Strip hotels. Hillary Clinton supporters including the state teachers union and some party activists sued, claiming this gives the Culinary Workers Union, which has endorsed Barack Obama for the president and represents the hotel workers, undue influence on the vote; a federal judge yesterday refused to intervene.
We saw Tom Lantos endorse Jackie Speier to succeed him, and we saw Leland Yee promptly declare he’s not running — but wait, here comes Yul Kwon, a San Mateo management consultant who won the $1 million prize on “Survivor: Cook Islands” in 2006, reportedly considering a run. He’s a former aide to U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. — which quite frankly might be more hinderance than help in Lantos’ district.
We saw Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorse Proposition 93, which would lower the total number of years a state legislator could serve from 14 to 12, but would let him or her divide those years between the houses as they choose — and would grandfather current officeholders so people like Don Perata and Fabian Nunez could serve another term. The governor’s own party this week called Proposition “a self-serving measure, authored by a small group of state legislators seeking to extend their terms in office beyond the limits set by voters in Proposition 140.”
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