WASHINGTON — The top presidential candidates and their big-name supporters campaigned from coast to coast Sunday, but one contender seemed atop everyone’s mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney contrasted themselves, and each other, with Clinton as though she were the nominee. Her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, played along to a degree, saying Clinton is so polarizing that he is their party’s better bet.
Rather than diverting the less-than- flattering attention, Clinton embraced it.
“I’ve been taking the incoming fire from Republicans for about 16 years now, and I’m still here, because I have been vetted, I have been tested,” Clinton said in a television interview before campaigning in Missouri and Minneapolis.
“There’s unlikely to be any new surprises,” Clinton added, implying the same cannot be said of Obama, who has been in Congress three years.
Her confidence notwithstanding, polls showed Obama narrowing the lead that Clinton has enjoyed among Democrats nationwide, even as McCain appeared to be pulling away from Romney.
With 24 states holding presidential contests Tuesday, Sunday was an intense day of campaigning and advertising, making it all the more remarkable that one figure managed to dominate so much of the talk and speculation.
“If we want a party that is indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton on an issue like illegal immigration,” Romney said, “we’re going to have John McCain as a nominee. That’s the wrong way to go.”
McCain, campaigning in Fairfield, Conn., said he has never sought special projects for his state and added: “In her short time in the United States Senate, the senator from New York, Sen. Clinton, got $500 million worth of pork-barrel projects. My friends, that kind of thing is going to stop.”
The Clinton fascination is trickier for Obama. He wants to capitalize on Republicans’ opposition to her without agreeing that she is the inevitable nominee.
Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation” before campaigning in Delaware, the Illinois senator said the problem is “not all of Sen. Clinton’s making, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Republicans consider her a polarizing figure.”
Obama drew an impressive crowd of 20,000 in downtown Wilmington, but his campaign attracted attention in other places too. At a Los Angeles event, his stand-ins were his wife, Michelle; TV star Oprah Winfrey; and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President Kennedy.
They were joined by Maria Shriver, wife of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. She followed in the steps of Caroline and their uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, in endorsing Obama.
“I thought, if Barack Obama was a state, he’d be California,” she said to a crowd of 9,000 inside UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. “Diverse, open, smart, independent, bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader.”
As usual, another prominent Clinton — the candidate’s husband and former president — was in the thick of things.
Bill Clinton visited four churches in mostly black sections of Los Angeles. The trip was widely seen as a bid to smooth over perceptions that he had injected race into last month’s Democratic primary in South Carolina, which Obama won handily.
The former president never mentioned Obama by name when he spoke for about 20 minutes at the City of Refuge church in Gardena, but he struck a conciliatory tone in describing this year’s Democratic contest as “an embarrassment of riches.”
“I’m not against anybody,” Clinton said.
A third GOP candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee struggled for attention and rejected suggestions that he should leave the race.
“I’ll stay in until someone has 1,191 delegates,” he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Kennesaw, Ga., referring to the number of convention delegates needed to secure the party nod. “A year ago, nobody said I’d still be here. Look who’s still on his feet.”
