Clinton Faces New Pressures

Senator Clinton's front-running campaign for president is facing pressure from the Chinese-American community and from Senator Edwards, who is saying that "honesty" is the first quality needed in a presidential candidate.

The challenges come after a week of political news dominated by sharp criticism of Mrs. Clinton by a Hollywood billionaire and former ally, David Geffen, and as a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Mrs. Clinton's lead over Senator Obama has been sliced in half. Altogether, the developments, while distinct, suggest that Mrs. Clinton, though well positioned, is not going to coast easily to the Democratic nomination, in part because her status as the front-runner makes her an inviting target for criticism.

The Clinton operation Friday shut out three reporters from Chinese-language newspapers when they arrived late to a campaign fund-raiser in San Francisco. The lockout has spawned an unusual flurry of news stories and editorials in Chinese-language newspapers and has prompted the Clinton campaign to apologize to the outlets.

The campaign contends that the incident was nothing more than a "terrible misunderstanding," spurred by the fact that the reporters were not on the campaign's e-mail advisory list and by the fact that the Secret Service imposed a strict deadline on when attendees had to stop entering the room.

But the incident does not appear to be fully resolved yet. According to a translation of the incident by New America Media, a coalition of minority news outlets, one of the reporters for an American Chinese newspaper said that after explaining she was late because she had not received the advisory in advance, she was told the event was for local reporters, not foreign press. At least two Chinese-language reporters who arrived on time were allowed to attend, while reporters from the New York Times and Newsweek were also turned away, New America Media said.

The incident comes as Senator Edwards, another Democratic presidential candidate, took an apparent shot at Mrs. Clinton when asked about his decision to apologize for his 2002 Iraq war vote.

"If you ask me what the most important personal characteristics of the next president of the United States are I would say honesty, openness, and decency," Mr. Edwards said yesterday at Baruch College in Manhattan. "There's not a single voter in America who doesn't understand their president is human, and their president sometimes makes mistakes."

Mr. Edwards did not criticize Mrs. Clinton by name, but his comments keep alive the pressure from Democrats who want her to apologize for her vote. She has refused to do so, saying that President Bush is to blame because he presented faulty intelligence.

The reference to "honesty" could also subtly reinforce comments made by a former major donor to the Clinton campaigns who is now backing Senator Obama, Mr. Geffen, who told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times of the Clintons, "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling." Those comments attracted extensive press attention after the Clinton campaign demanded that Mr. Obama denounce Mr. Geffen and remove him from any role in his campaign.

While the Chinese-language paper incident has not garnered much attention in the mainstream paper, it moved the Clinton camp into damage control mode with the Chinese press in San Francisco.

The news editor of the Sing Tao Daily, Joyce Chen, said her reporter did arrive at the event 10 minutes late because of traffic. Ms. Chen, whose newspaper has already published three stories and one editorial on the incident, said the fund-raiser ended up starting 23 minutes late.

"We are the bridge to the community, to the voters," Ms. Chen said. "That's why we're are kind of frustrated. We are the ears and eyes for our community. If we cannot have equal access to the campaign I don't think our community will be really informed."

The executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, Vincent Pan, said the incident has unearthed deep-rooted concerns that "we are perpetual foreigners no matter longer how long we've lived here." He said an apology is the "very least" the campaign can do.

He said both Mrs. Clinton and President Clinton get "mixed reviews" within the Chinese-American community. Many support the Clintons politics, but have been left with a bitter taste from a 1996 fund-raising scandal that involved raising money from Asian Americans and from the treatment of Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee.

"Certainly Senator Clinton has been around for a long time," Mr. Pan said. "She is running on a platform of experience, so one has to wonder after all this time how can some of these mistakes be occurring, especially after 1996 and Wen Ho Lee."

The event was open to local news outlets, but was limited to "pool" reporters for national newspapers.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Mo Elliethee, said at "no point did we ever intend to imply that these publications were foreign press. We apologize if they took it that way."

"We certainly have no intention of ever excluding any local or domestic press, whether it's an ethnic publication or a mainstream publication," Mr. Elliethee said. "We are taking steps to remedy the situation so it doesn't happen again. We are trying to build as broad a press list as possible."

Mr. Pan — who worked for the Clinton Foundation in Beijing for about nine months a few years ago — said "this is happening early enough in the campaign season where they can make this right."

According to the 2005 Census, there are 12.4 million Asian Americans living in America, including 2.4 million Chinese Americans.
Mrs. Chen said her paper is still seeking a written apology from the Clinton campaign.

Also yesterday, President Clinton sent an e-mail to his wife's supporters, touting the $890,000 the campaign had raised since launching a $1 million fundraising drive last week.