Clinton, Obama back off racial dispute in Nev. debate

LAS VEGAS - Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama sought to quiet the recent war of words between their campaigns over race as they, along with former Sen. John Edwards - the three principal remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination - sparred yesterday in a televised debate.

Obama and Clinton praised each other's commitment to civil rights and promised to rein in their supporters during the two-hour debate in Las Vegas broadcast on MSNBC.

"We both have exuberant and sometimes uncontrollable supporters," Clinton said. "We need to get this campaign where it should be. We're all family in the Democratic Party."

Obama, the Illinois senator who would be the first African American president if elected, said the nation cannot solve its problems unless "we can come together as a people" and avoid "falling into the same traps of division we have in the past."

The debate was the final face-to-face confrontation for the Democrats before Saturday's caucuses, which loom as a crucial test after Obama won in Iowa earlier this month and Clinton won in New Hampshire last week.

A poll published Monday by a Reno newspaper showed the Nevada race to be a dead heat among Clinton, Obama and Edwards.

Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, has a hefty grassroots organization in the state. A ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court upheld a decision by NBC to keep Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich out of the debate. Kucinich has trailed far behind the three leading candidates.

The contretemps over race began last week when Clinton said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 owed as much to President Lyndon Johnson's work as to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s activism.

Obama surrogates attacked her for, in their view, slighting King. The former first lady quickly said she did not mean to disparage the civil rights icon, saying he had paved the way for the historic presidential rivalry of a woman and an African American.

Then, a prominent Clinton supporter, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson, on Sunday made an apparent reference to Obama's youthful cocaine and marijuana use, which the senator disclosed in his autobiography.

The debate yesterday coincided with what would have been King's 79th birthday.

Another controversy hangs over the Nevada caucuses.

Allies of Clinton, led by the state teachers union, filed suit to block use of nine Las Vegas Strip casinos as caucus sites so that shift workers who are on duty Saturday can participate. They argue that the plan creates a "privileged class" of voters, and a federal judge is holding a hearing on the suit tomorrow.

Clinton's camp did not complain months ago when the casino sites were designated, but since then the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, which represents casino workers, has endorsed Obama.

Clinton has avoided taking a position on the suit. On Monday, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, said he agreed with the suit.

"This is the Clinton campaign," said D. Taylor, head of the local. "They tried to disenfranchise students in Iowa. Now they're trying to disenfranchise people here in Nevada, who are union members and people of color and women."

After Saturday, the contest for the Democratic nomination moves to a series of states where black voters could play a pivotal role, including South Carolina next week.

Democrats moved Nevada up early in the nomination process because it has a significant Latino and Asian American population, in contrast to the first two largely white and rural states.

It is the first time any Western state has had so much potential influence so early, reflecting the emergence of the Rocky Mountain states as a presidential battleground.

Four years ago, just 8,500 people participated in the Nevada Democratic caucuses in mid-February. They voted at 17 sites scattered over the state's 110,000 square miles. This time, the party has set up more than 1,000 voting sites and hopes to draw 10 times as many voters.

Edwards was the only one of the contenders to campaign yesterday in Las Vegas before the debate, shaking hands with diners at the Egg & I, a west side restaurant.

"It seems like we have a good contest here" in Nevada, Edwards told reporters, adding that he, Obama and Clinton are likely to remain close in the delegate count because of the proportional way delegates are awarded. "I think this process is very likely to go along for a while," he said.

Edwards has run a populist campaign, arguing that the political system is in the grip of corporate special interests.

"That's what's wrong with the country," said Rick Stanfill, 63, a retired businessman who came to the restaurant to greet Edwards. "If he can hang in there and do well in this one Saturday, I think he can do well in the South."