CLINTON AIDE REJECTS GIULIANI COMPARISON

A top aide to Senator Clinton is emphatically rejecting any parallel between Mrs. Clinton’s strategy of looking beyond the Potomac Primaries to focus on contests in Ohio and Texas early next month and that of a failed Republican candidate, Mayor Giuliani, who pinned his hopes on the Florida primary earlier this month, essentially accepting earlier losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan.

“The key difference is I’m not aware that Rudy Giuliani won California and New York and Oklahoma and Tennessee and Arkansas and Arizona and New Mexico prior to the Florida primary,” the Clinton adviser, Howard Wolfson, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. “Senator Clinton has a long track record within the last several months of winning contested states, states that she was not supposed to win. … We are in a tie for delegates essentially and there is no reason to believe that we will not continue to be successful in the all-important states of Texas and Ohio based on the track record so far.”

CASTRO CHALLENGES McCAIN OVER VIETNAM CLAIMS

Fidel Castro is disputing Senator McCain’s claim that Cuban agents helped torture American prisoners of war in Vietnam, calling the assertion “a strange legend.”

“Let me remind you, Mr. McCain: the commandments of the religion you practice prohibit lying,” Mr. Castro wrote in an essay published by the Communist Party newspaper, Granma, the Associated Press reported. “The years in prison and the wounds received because of the attacks on Hanoi do not excuse you from the moral obligation of the truth.”

Mr. McCain, who spent five years in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war, has asserted that Cubans trained some of his captors and were involved in torture, though he has said the Cubans did not torture him. The Republican front-runner declined to answer the Cuban leader yesterday. “Look, for me to respond to Fidel Castro, who has oppressed and repressed his people and is one of the most brutal dictators on earth, for me to dignify any charges or comments he might make is beneath me,” Mr. McCain said, according to the AP.

CHELSEA CLINTON DINES SUPERDELEGATE

The University of Milwaukee’s student union was the scene of some unusually high-level lobbying yesterday as Chelsea Clinton had breakfast with a college junior, Jason Rae, who is a member of the Democratic National Committee and will be a superdelegate at the Democratic convention. Mr. Rae told ABC News he and Chelsea talked for about half an hour about mobilizing young voters and about Mrs. Clinton’s general election strengths. The student said he will not endorse a candidate before the Wisconsin primary next week.

ENDORSEMENT WATCH

Senator McCain picked up the endorsements of a prominent conservative and President Bush’s brother, while another conservative leader went with his long-shot opponent, Michael Huckabee. A former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, threw his support to the Arizona senator, calling him “a patriot and devoted conservative leader” while saying he is “beholden to no interest other than that of the public good.” Mr. Bush, the president’s younger brother, had been perhaps the most eagerly sought endorsement in the Republican Party, but he decided to wait until a likely nominee emerged. Also endorsing Mr. McCain yesterday was a prominent social conservative and former president of the Family Research Council, Gary Bauer, who made a failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2000. Mr. Huckabee received the endorsement of a conservative activist and co-founder of the Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich, who had been supporting Mitt Romney before the former Massachusetts governor dropped out last week. The endorsement is a further indication that although Mr. McCain is likely to secure the nomination, he has not yet consolidated support among conservatives in the party.