Nominees battle over female vote

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain escalated their fight for women’s votes Wednesday, and the specter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton loomed over the battlefield again, to the dismay of Democrats.

Obama’s (D-Ill.) campaign is mounting a major offensive this week to shore up the candidate’s image among women and to repair damage done first by Clinton’s (N.Y.) defeat in the grueling primary and then exacerbated by McCain’s (R-Ariz.) choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

{mosads}But McCain’s campaign kept a trick up its sleeve: Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a longtime Democrat, Clinton supporter, prolific fundraiser and, most recently, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) platform committee, who publicly endorsed McCain on Wednesday at a Republican event at the Capitol Hill Club.

Lady de Rothschild, who reportedly honeymooned at the White House as a guest of the Clintons, said she is still a Democrat but trusts McCain more than Obama to lead the country, adding that she has “no question” about her decision.

She called Obama “an elitist” in an interview last summer. In endorsing McCain, she added Wednesday that Obama, “with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean,” has taken the Democratic Party too far to the left, and that McCain would restore a centrist identity to the federal government.

Lady de Rothschild, who has been a significant Clinton fundraiser — earning the rank of “Hillraiser” — used words such as “terrifying” to describe an Obama presidency, and said McCain is not an ideologue and she does not fear the Republicans’ stated goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.

“I am pro-choice,” she said, “and I am sick and tired of the Democratic Party using choice as a noose around women’s neck[s].”

Lady de Rothschild said she had not informed Clinton of her decision to support and campaign for McCain publicly, and she thinks Clinton “genuinely” supports Obama.

Despite the high-level defection, female Democratic lawmakers were skeptical that a contingent of disaffected Clinton supporters might vote for McCain. At a morning press conference at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, they argued repeatedly that once women examine the records of both candidates, they will vote for Obama.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said she thinks female voters who now say they were Clinton supporters but have switched to McCain are probably “fronts” trying to drive a wedge where none exists.

“I suspect they’re Republican operatives,” DeGette said.

{mospagebreak}House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at the briefing that the “gender gap is still there,” and Obama continues to enjoy a comfortable margin of support over McCain among women.

Polls released after the Republican convention showed that white women were important in providing the McCain-Palin ticket with the big improvement in public opinion polls that it has enjoyed in the two weeks since the end of the GOP’s convention.

The timing of the Democrats’ event on Wednesday invited more questions about Palin just as the popular Alaskan governor had finally been knocked off the front pages by dire news from Wall Street that is likely to favor Obama and Democrats.

{mosads}Women who will vote for Obama over McCain will do so for economic reasons, the Democratic women said, because Obama is better for women on the issues of healthcare, Social Security and equal pay.

The Obama campaign followed the de Rothschild endorsement with an endorsement of its own, from Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who sued for equal pay in a case that reached the Supreme Court and whose name is now synonymous with legislation that would guarantee equal pay for women.

Ledbetter, at a roundtable event in Virginia with Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the spouses of the Democrats’ nominees, said Obama is the only “candidate who has stood up for women like [her].”

Obama “has consistently fought to help women who are working hard every day for our families and aren’t being paid fairly,” Ledbetter said. “That’s why I’m proud to endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. The priorities of the Obama-Biden ticket are clear. Sen. Obama and Sen. [Joe] Biden [Del.] will stand up for families like mine.”

The Obama camp also released a memo outlining the importance of the women’s vote and hitting McCain for being weak on women’s issues.

“While John McCain has been distracting from the issues at hand with the sleaziest campaign Americans have ever seen, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are traveling the country discussing the issues that women and families care about, such as ensuring women are paid the same as men for equal work, the right for women to make their own family planning choices, reforming our healthcare system and rebuilding an economy that strengthens the middle class,” the memo said.

The memo also offered some details of a new ad, unveiled at the women Democrats’ press conference, called “Burden,” that will fit into Obama’s message of the week as he seeks to bring female voters — historically a critical demographic for Democrats — into the fold.

The ad, which is slated to air in battleground states, hits McCain for voting against the Ledbetter equal pay legislation, quoting the Arizona Republican as calling the bill “too great a burden on business.”

The ad, which drew muffled boos and hisses at the Democrats’ morning briefing, will run during “programming with large female audiences, including morning shows, soap operas, daytime TV, cable channels like Lifetime, Oxygen, E!, HGTV and Bravo and during the fall premieres of several prime-time shows,” according to the Obama campaign.