December 14, 2007: New Hampshire chairman Bill Shaheen resigns from the Clinton campaign. In an interview the previous day, Shaheen made the following comments regarding Barack Obama's admitted drug use as a youth:
It'll be: 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone'?
There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome.
Clinton immediately distanced herself from the remarks and apologized to Obama. Shaheen released the following statement:
I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the co-chair of the Hillary for President campaign.
March 7, 2008: Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power resigns her position in the campaign, having the previous day made damaging comments to Edinburgh newspaper, The Scotsman:
We f***** up in Ohio.
In Ohio, they are obsessed, and Hillary is going to town on it because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
She is a monster too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything.
You just look at her and think, ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you that Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.
Power apologized to both Clinton and Obama on the day of her resignation:
With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser to the Obama campaign. I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.
March 12, 2008: Former New York congresswoman and 1984 vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro resigns from the Clinton campaign's finance committee. Ferraro's March 7 comments to The Daily Breeze of Torrance, California had drawn criticism:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Clinton distanced herself from Ferraro's comments to the Associated Press on March 11:
It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides - because we've both had that experience - say things that kind of veer off into the personal.
Ferraro responded by resigning her position on the campaign in a letter to Clinton:
I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.
The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen.
Since leaving the campaign however, Ferraro has not backed down:
Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up.
Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?
March 14, 2008: Peter Slevin of the Washington Post confirms that controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright will no longer serve on the Obama campaign's African American Religious Leadership Committee. Wright had attracted attention for sermons delivered at Obama's Trinity United Church that included phrases like "God damn America."
Obama expressed his feelings that night in a letter to The Huffington Post:
All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
Seeking still to avoid "disowning" Wright, Obama asserted on March 18 in Philadelphia:
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother...
However, Wright's April 28 appearance before the National Press Club forced Obama to take a more definitive stance:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate ... They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs.
May 10, 2008: Douglas Goodyear, chairman of the 2008 Republican convention, resigns from McCain 2008 "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign." Goodyear left after the campaign instructed all staff to "disclose all lobbying ties and to make certain they are no longer registered as lobbyists for foreign agents."
The Independent's Leonard Doyle reports on Goodyear's lobbying ties to the Burmese military junta:
The DCI Group, a lobbying firm, represented Burma until last year. Mr Goodyear, its chief executive, "was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today," the magazine said.
May 11, 2008: The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reports that regional campaign manager Doug Davenport has resigned and will join Goodyear on the list of purged lobbyists in the McCain campaign.
Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.
"Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it," Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, wrote in a e-mail.
May 18, 2008: The McCain campaign confirms the resignation of national finance co-charman Thomas G. Loeffler. Loeffler, a former Texas congressman, was also forced to exit by new restrictions placed by the campaign on lobbyists.
According to the Associated Press:
Loeffler lobbies for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., which with Northrop Grumman Corp. won a lucrative contract to provide air refueling tankers for the Air Force. McCain helped scuttle an earlier contract that would have gone to a competitor, Boeing Co.
Additionally, Newsweek reports:
[Loeffler's] lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests, including a French aerospace firm seeking Pentagon contracts.
Lobbying disclosure records also showed that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to "discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations," even though Loeffler told a reporter last month that he had not discussed his clients with McCain.
May 22, 2008: Libby Quaid of the Associated Press reports that John McCain has indeed rejected the endorsements of both John Hagee and Rod Parsley.
Hagee had most recently come under fire for comments made in a 1990's sermon captured on audio tape:
Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. ... How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.'
McCain responded by repudiating the remarks and rejecting the months-old endorsement:
Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.
Adding later:
I just think that the statement is crazy and unacceptable.
Hagee almost simultaneously retracted the endorsement:
I am tired of these baseless attacks and fear that they have become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues.
I have therefore decided to withdraw my endorsement of Senator McCain for president effective today, and to remove myself from any active role in the 2008 campaign.
On the largely anti-Islamic comments of Ohio preacher Parsley, McCain had this to say:
I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn't endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement.
May 31, 2008: Barack Obama submits his letter of resignation to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Under scrutiny for the controversial statements made within the sermons of Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger, Obama reassured the congregation and the public that this was not a denunciation of the church as a whole:
I am not denouncing the church. It's not a church worthy of denouncing. |
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