1:15 PM: Doyle, Kennedy slam Clinton mailer
Gov. Jim Doyle slammed Dem presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton Sunday afternoon for a mailer that criticizes Barack Obama's health care plan, saying she was going negative in Wisconsin even though she wasn't bothering to spend much time here.
"It's telling that she backed off from the last two days she was scheduled to be in Wisconsin" while the state has been on the political center stage, Doyle said.
Clinton had originally announced plans to campaign in Wisconsin Saturday through the primary on Tuesday but now plans to leave Monday.
Doyle, who is backing Obama, was joined in a conference call with U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to respond to the mailer. Both men called it a negative attack piece, and Kennedy said he was "shocked and surprised" when he read it.
See the mailer here:
http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/080217ClintonMailer.pdf
Kennedy said both Clinton and Obama have what are effectively universal health care plans and this piece equates to "fear mongering."
"We're much better off being positive, being constructive," Kennedy said.
One reporter pointed out Obama's own mailers on health care have been labeled attack ads by critics, but Kennedy said they aren't the same thing without elaborating.
Obama surrogates have continued to criticize Clinton for her decision to leave Wisconsin a day earlier than previously planned, and Doyle kept up that line in the conference call.
Doyle pointed out Bill Clinton performed well here during his 1992 and 1996 races and Wisconsin has the demographics, history and structure to be "a good one for Hillary Clinton."
But he said "Obama has been all over the place" in Wisconsin, drawing huge crowds on short notice. Still, he said he expected Tuesday's results to be "very, very close."
-- By Matt Dolbey
Labels: 2008 spring primary