Judge’s Strip ruling is reverse for Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton won’t welcome a federal judge’s ruling Thursday that threw out a lawsuit that sought to force the Nevada Democratic Party to close nine at-large caucus sites on the Las Vegas Strip where many Obama supporters are expected to gather.

Clinton’s campaign-trail temper flared again Wednesday, this time at a San Francisco television reporter who questioned the Clinton campaign’s officially neutral stance on the at-large sites.

{mosads}The 42nd president appeared to support the lawsuit. “This is a one-man, one-vote country, and I’m amazed nobody like you ever – you should be offended by this,” Clinton told a local ABC reporter.

When pressed about whether the campaign’s inaction was due to the Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Clinton became combative. (The culinary workers figure to caucus heavily on the Strip, and convenient caucus sites could ostensibly help the union turn more of them out for Obama.)

“Get on your television station and say, ‘I don’t care about the home mortgage crisis. All I care about is making sure that some voters have it easier than others, and when they do vote, when it’s already easier for them, their vote should count five times as much as others,’ ” he said. “That’s your position.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Nevada State Education Association, of which several involved officials have close ties to Clinton’s campaign.

The former president said the campaign had no involvement. The campaign said it would play by the rules that are laid out, but it expressed reservations about the setup on the Strip.

“Make no mistake — the current system that inhibits some shift workers from being able to participate, while allowing others to do so, would seem to benefit other campaigns,” the campaign said in a statement. “More importantly it is unfair.”

Obama’s campaign, which opposed the lawsuit, praised the decision. “While the Clinton camp clearly believed the voices of workers should be silenced in service of their perceived political interest, they enjoyed a 25-point lead two months ago and have much of the party establishment in their camp,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

 – Aaron Blake

Obama in ’95: Reagan committed ‘dirty deeds’

Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) apparent praise Wednesday for the late President Ronald Reagan was no echo of the comments he made about the Republican hero in 1995.

In his first book “Dreams From My Father,” Obama said he got into community organizing in Chicago in 1983 to “pronounce on the need for change.  Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.”

In an interview Wednesday with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal, Obama took a shot at former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) by invoking Reagan’s name in a seemingly complimentary way.

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Obama said. “We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

The Obama campaign said the senator on Wednesday was referring to the kind of movement campaign that vaulted Reagan, an Illinois native, to the White House.

“Sen. Obama was talking about the way President Reagan, for better or for worse, tapped into the mood of the electorate and changed the political landscape,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an email.

“That doesn’t change the fact that Senator Obama strongly disagreed with a lot of what Reagan did.”
But in 2003, as an Illinois state senator, Obama joined almost all of his colleagues in co-sponsoring legislation that would have marked Feb. 6 “Ronald Reagan Day” in Illinois.

Last year, neither Obama nor his rival Clinton  objected to a unanimous consent resolution naming Feb. 6, 2007 “Ronald Reagan Day.”

— Sam Youngman and Aaron Blake

Come on, Florida

Through the first three main Republican nominating contests, voters have cast roughly 1.22 million votes and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has managed to collect fewer than 50,000 of them, or roughly four percent.

Giuliani, who is putting all of his eggs in Florida’s basket, is lagging far behind the other frontrunners for the GOP nomination. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has received nine times as many votes so far.

Giuliani is sixth among Republican presidential hopefuls in total votes, nestled between Reps. Ron Paul (Texas) and Duncan Hunter (Calif.).

In fact, Paul had more votes in Michigan alone than Giuliani had in all of the three states combined.

The former mayor’s campaign has made Florida’s Jan. 29 primary and the delegate-rich states of Super Tuesday the centerpiece of his campaign.

He campaigned very little in the early rounds.

— Klaus Marre