Tom Shaheen, one of Hillary Clinton’s senior advisers, was forced to resign on Thursday, 24 hours after raising the drug-taking past of her main rival, Barack Obama.
Shaheen, a veteran Democratic organiser, said: ”I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the co-chair of the Hillary for President campaign.” His resignation came after Clinton personally apologised to Obama.
Although the Clinton campaign distanced itself from Shaheen’s remarks, it has been engaged in a negative campaign against Obama for the last week. The Clinton team accused Obama of hypocrisy in saying that he had no presidential ambitions until recently and pointed to an essay he had written in kindergarten titled ”I want to become president”.
On Wednesday, Shaheen predicted that if Obama was to win the Democratic nomination, the Republicans would try to exploit his drug-taking as a teenager. His intervention was open to alternative interpretations: an innocent warning or an underhand way of getting Obama’s past into the Democratic campaign.
While for most of the year Clinton has led polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, where voting for Democratic and Republican nominations are held next month, Obama has closed the gap over the last month. Obama wrote about his drug-taking in his autobiography and portrays himself as an example of a disillusioned youth who managed to turn his life around.
The fact that it was already in the public arena was previously seen as a strength because it would not emerge during a presidential campaign.
The Obama team on Wednesday accused Clinton’s campaign of desperate tactics because of his poll surge.
But Shaheen said: ”I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorised by Senator Clinton or the Clinton campaign.”
Shaheen, a lawyer, said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama’s youth and his acknowledged drug use.
”It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?”’ he said in remarks on the Washington Post‘s website. – Guardian Unlimited Â