Barack Obama's campaign is going after rival Hillary Clinton for continuing to seek advice from her former chief strategist who met with representative of the Colombian government on behalf of a trade deal she opposes.
"I think she has a credibility problem," Teamsters president James Hoffa said Tuesday on a conference call convened by the Obama team. Hoffa said reports that Mark Penn, who has lost his title as Clinton's cheif strategist but continues to advise her campaign, met with Colombian representatives about an upcoming free-trade deal between that country and the US undercut Clinton's efforts to paint herself as an opponent to such deals.
Penn's meeting has put Clinton in a sticky spot as Congress prepares to consider a free-trade pact with Columbia being pushed by President Bush. Clinton has said she will vote against the deal, which Hoffa compared to the North American Free Trade Agreement signed into law by former President Bill Clinton.
Hoffa said NAFTA's aftermath is "still devastating America," and he said it is hypocritical for Clinton to continue seeking advice from Penn.
Penn met with the Colombian officials in his role as CEO of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, his international lobbying firm, and not the Clinton campaign. Nonetheless, he was removed as the campaign's chief strategist after news of his meeting leaked out. The Washington Post reports that Penn is still a Clinton adviser, participating in messaging meetings and helping her prepare for next week's debate.
"The smartest thing she can do is jettison him," Hoffa said.
Obama, who has been endorsed by the Teamsters and several other unions that are part of the Change to Win coalition, faced his own problems on trade issues before last month's Ohio primary. Austan Goolsbee, an Obama economic adviser, reportedly downplayed the Illinois senator's criticisms of NAFTA in a meeting with Canadian officials.
Clinton's advisers took every opportunity to exploit the flap in the days leading up to the vote in Ohio, which has been hit hard by a loss of manufacturing jobs in NAFTA's wake. Some observers said questions over Obama's NAFTA position contributed to his loss in the state.
In an attempt to downplay the Penn fallout, Clinton tried to tie the issue back to Obama and accused him of not doing more to distance himself from his unpaid outside adviser. Hoffa said there was "no comparison" between the two scenarios because Penn's firm was paid to lobby on Colombia's behalf while Goolsbee's discussions with a Canadian official were much more informal and not as contradictory with Obama's positions as was originally reported.
"It's a big difference if it's somebody on the payroll," he said, "who doesn't have enough sense to say" that meeting could be a conflict of interest.
This audio is from The Ed Schultz Show, broadcast April 8, 2008.
Barack Obama's campaign is going after rival Hillary Clinton for continuing to seek advice from her former chief strategist who met with representative of the Colombian government on behalf of a trade deal she opposes.