Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280169
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, held a private breakfast with black members of the New York media and toured an exhibit about discrimination against blacks and Jews. The Arkansas governor apologized at both events for golfing last week at a club that has no black members.
"Small things and large send big signals to people," Clinton said at The Jewish Museum. "I didn't think about it as I should have. I as a candidate and as a public official should not have been there."
Brown, the only remaining Democratic challenger, has hammered Clinton on the issue in an effort to gain black votes. By huge margins, blacks have supported Clinton in the primaries.
Campaigning Friday in Wisconsin, which like New York votes on April 7, Brown dismissed his rival's front-runner status: "Clinton is not going to get the nomination. You can put that in your tape recorder and ask me in a couple of months."
Clinton appealed for an end to racial divisions. He called his civil rights record "unparalleled by any public official in America" and criticized the Reagan and Bush administrations for racial politics.
"We have been carved up now for more than a decade at election time by race, by gender, by region," Clinton said. ". . . The division of America into `us and them' is, in the end, the death knell of everything America means."
His polls show the New York race virtually tied after Brown's upset win Tuesday in Connecticut.
Brown challenged anew Clinton's electability, claiming his rival has a "scandal a week. . . . The problem is, there's such a trail there that the media has to keep bringing stuff out, and I think our own party does a disservice by telling everyone to somehow cover up."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB