Clinton Official: Obama Drug Use Concern
DECEMBER 12, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.
Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post, posted on washingtonpost.com. Clinton's campaign did not have an immediate comment.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong Presidential candidate Barack Obama admits he's smoked pot and snorted cocaine in his youth.
Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama's background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said the Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama's admittedly spotty youth.
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" said Shaheen, whose wife Jeanne is the state's former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.
"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.
Obama's campaign didn't have an immediate comment.
Obama wrote about his drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." His rivals have largely remained silent on the subject.
"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, he wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana One of Hillary Clinton's advisers says Democrats should give more thought to Obama's admissions of past drug use. Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, also admitted trying marijuana but claimed he 'didn't inhale.'
Speaking to Manchester high school students earlier this month, Obama said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.
"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time.'"
New polling shows Clinton and Obama basically tied in New Hampshire. A CNN-WMUR-TV poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows Clinton at 31 percent support, Obama at 30. The same poll had Obama trailing by 20 points in September.
Clinton's campaign has distributed its first flier that criticizes Obama's health care plan for leaving 15 million people without insurance. TV ads following the same theme also have been prepared.
"This is not the time to go back to the same old politics of, 'now I'm going to smack you over the head with a baseball bat and call into question your character,'" Obama co-chairman Ned Helms told reporters in a conference call earlier on Wednesday, decrying what he said was Clinton's negative campaign.
"I think it will backfire on them. I think they had instinctively good judgment to say Hillary Clinton would not take personal attacks. But once polls showed them losing out on the positive argument to Barack Obama, they have chosen to go negative."
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