Hillary hits two St. Patrick's Day parades
Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:30 AM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
SCRANTON, PA -- Hillary Clinton spent Saturday celebrating the luck of the Irish at two massive St. Patrick's Day parades on opposites ends of the Keystone State.
As the senator walked, waved and held babies, including her niece Fiona in Scranton, her campaign held two conference calls to highlight her commitment to Northern Ireland and to hit Obama on issues from Tony Rezko to tax documents.
At the tail end of the roughly mile-long sea of green that was the Pittsburgh parade route, an emcee called Clinton a friend of the Pittsburgh Irish, and the senator briefly took the mic, telling the crowd, "May the luck of the Irish be with you," before heading on to Scranton, in the eastern part of the state.
A short time later, her camp held a call in which it slammed Obama for what it called a lack of transparency and called on him to disclose more details about his dealings with Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko, who is on trial for corruption.
In an interview published Friday in the Chicago Tribune, Obama said Rezko had raised a quarter of a million dollars for his first three political campaigns, more than had been previously thought. Chief Strategist Mark Penn called the lack of full disclosure on there Rezko matter part of a "troubling pattern," while spokesman Phil Singer said Obama should answer questions like why his story about his connections to Rezko keeps changing.
The Clinton camp also repeated the argument that big states and swing states she had won would be key to winning the general election, and said her strength among working-class voters, so-called Reagan Democrats, and Latinos would put her in a better position than Obama, downplaying the significance of his wins in caucus states that they believe will not make a difference in the general.
