At a New York event ostensibly focused on greater minority access to capital, Senator Clinton put her focus on the national economy and national electoral reform.

Mrs. Clinton gave the keynote address, on “the significance of economic equity and parity” at an awards luncheon yesterday at the Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project’s eighth annual conference. The senator was introduced by Jesse Jackson, who praised Mrs. Clinton for her “listening ear, sharp mind, and committed heart.” Mr. Jackson also praised “Sister Hillary” as an important ally in his fight for those “traumatized by what happened to us as a people and a nation in Ohio.” In Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Jackson said, he found someone who is “a light in dark places,” who has “stood on the right side of history,” and who is a dedicated foe of the alleged disenfranchisement in 2004’s presidential election.

Reforming the voting process, especially in the wake of those elections, was an important topic for Mrs. Clinton’s address. The senator, who received multiple standing ovations from those assembled, began by praising Mr. Jackson and the work of the Wall Street Project. She also praised the New Markets Initiative – which she said she and President Clinton developed to encourage private-sector investment in underserved communities – as a means of increasing economic opportunity for members of minority groups. Mrs. Clinton stressed the importance of using tax credits and other financial incentives to encourage businesses to invest in those “renewal communities,” poor areas in both rural and urban America, as well as struggling suburbs. Examples she cited in New York were Buffalo, Rochester, and Schenectady.

The senator criticized the practice of “outsourcing” and sought to encourage businesses to invest “right here in this country, in underserved communities, instead of abroad.”

Mrs. Clinton also said minorities were “ready to take their rightful place in the American capitalistic economy.” Having flipped through the pamphlet distributed by the Wall Street Project for the conference, she said “a number of its recommendations I will take to heart.” Some of those recommendations called for greater regulation of consumer activities, including the use of lawsuits for that purpose.

Mrs. Clinton then spoke of the close ties between the “political process” and the American economy.

“Our private sector is an engine of economic growth … the envy of the world … and a magnet of opportunity,” Mrs. Clinton said. Part of the reason for its economic health, she said, was a “political system that put into place the right kinds of rules.”

The enactment of those rules, Mrs. Clinton said, sent a message to investors that America’s economy was a safe place for investment. That, she added, “happened because of political decisions.” Mrs. Clinton also said politics plays an integral role in having an “economy that’s working for everybody.”

To promote America’s economic wellbeing, Mrs. Clinton said, people should ask themselves: “Who do we elect? Who’s going to listen? Who’s going to care?” Mrs. Clinton also urged electoral reform, because “we still have a lot of problems ensuring everyone who wants to vote can.”

She said America is “trying to export freedom and democracy around the world,” in Afghanistan and Ukraine, “and we hope and pray there can be elections in Iraq.” As a result, Mrs. Clinton said, Americans “are the people in the world who should never have to question their elections – we should be the gold standard.”

Mrs. Clinton stressed that minority economic advancement was not only a matter of access to capital. “Economic opportunity is embedded in the political system,” she said, “and our work is not done.”

While she saluted the Wall Street Project and its efforts to “democratize capital,” Mrs. Clinton urged her listeners to remember “the important role elected representatives play” in achieving economic fairness, which can come about “only if we have people in office, and citizens, who understand how important the political system is to the ongoing health of our economic system.”

Mrs. Clinton’s connection of the American economy to “elected representatives” came on the heels of news that a recent Clinton fund-raising letter made the economy a centerpiece of her re-election campaign.

Conservative commentator Byron York reported on the letter yesterday in National Review Online and wrote that it “reads like a trial run for a White House bid.” The letter “focuses almost exclusively on the economy and health care,” Mr. York wrote, as Mrs. Clinton bemoaned “how much has been lost since the days when President Clinton led our nation.” He said the letter and Mrs. Clinton’s remarks yesterday give the same impression: “She’s campaigning in national terms, even though she’s ostensibly running for reelection from New York.”

Mrs. Clinton was unavailable for comment at the conference, and the senator’s office did not respond to requests in time for this article.