http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-campaign22-2008may22,0,2255990.storyFrom the Los Angeles Times
Different goals take Clinton and Obama to Florida
She focuses on seating the state's delegates at the Democratic convention while he looks to the fall election and the GOP's McCain.By Carol J. Williams and Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
May 22, 2008
SUNRISE, FLA. — The battle of attrition for the Democratic presidential nomination diverted to the Sunshine State on Wednesday, with Hillary Rodham Clinton fighting to seat delegates barred from the convention and Barack Obama looking ahead to the November election. With the candidates focused on different goals in a state that voted in its unsanctioned Democratic primary four months ago, the day of campaigning underscored the historic nature of the drawn-out primary season that ends June 3. And it coincided with word that presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain will meet this weekend with Florida's popular governor, Charlie Crist, a potential running mate who could make the state more difficult for the Democrats to win.
Clinton, who has pinned her fading ambitions largely on seating delegations from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic National Convention, invoked the 2000 presidential election that ended with a Supreme Court order to stop a recount of Florida's votes. "We still have nightmares about 2000 and what happened in that election," the New York senator told several hundred supporters spilling out of a suburban clubhouse here, north of Miami. "It was wrong." Clinton hopes the party's rules committee, which meets May 31, will reverse the punishment the Democratic National Committee imposed when Florida and Michigan Democrats held their primaries ahead of the nationally sanctioned Feb. 5 start date.
In Kissimmee, near Orlando, Obama also pushed for seating the delegates, though he suggested it come after he secured the nomination and in the spirit of party unity. "My hope is, in a couple of weeks' time, we've won more elections, we've won some more delegates, we've gotten the Florida delegates seated . . . and then we're going to have a convention in August, and I'm going to accept that nomination," Obama said at a town hall meeting.
But Obama focused on McCain rather than Clinton and intraparty squabbles. Earlier in the day, before a crowd of about 15,000 in Tampa, Obama criticized McCain over the role of lobbyists in the Republican's campaign after several staff members were cut because of their lobbying ties. The Illinois senator noted that his Senate colleague from Arizona had sponsored a 1996 bill that would have banned candidates from hiring lobbyists. "The John McCain then would be pretty disappointed with John McCain now, because he hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington," Obama said......