Hillary is visiting the south to build support. NY is just a launch pad, as we have known. But Arkansas is going to demand a lot less of a moderate image.


from this link: http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2006/07/16/news/01azhillary.txt


ROGERS -- Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was guest of honor in her first Arkansas home on Saturday.

Clinton addressed a 700-member audience at the Arkansas Federation of Democratic Women's state convention at 1 p.m. Then the former U.S. first lady toured the Fayetteville public library, which is dedicated to the memory of one of her dearest friends. Then she stopped for a visit of her and husband Bill Clinton's first home together in Fayetteville, which is now a museum.

Throughout speech and the trip, to all sizes of audiences, the possible 2008 presidential contender expressed "amazement" at the growth and progress Northwest Arkansas has made "since I moved to Fayetteville 32 years and one month ago" when she became a professor at the University of Arkansas Law School and married Bill Clinton in the home at 930 California Blvd. in Fayetteville.

The convention was the first event held at the John Q. Hammonds Convention Center at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Rogers, organizers said. The facility was still unfinished in places and on the grounds. Every Democratic candidate for statewide office was there except for governor's nominee Mike Beebe. Beebe's wife, Ginger, did attend.

"It was shocking, and I was just overwhelmed" at the growth in the region, Clinton said. "I was amazed, not only at the growth I saw but at all the construction going on."

In her speech to the Democratic Women, Clinton's strongest emphasis was on energy. "The best thing we can do for the economy, for our security and for our environment is to have a real energy policy that began to move us away from our dependence on foreign oil," the senator said.


The oil companies do not need a subsidy to explore for more oil at today's prices, Clinton said. She has introduced a bill to take money paid in subsidies to a "strategic energy fund" for research. She compared the need for a national effort on fuels to the Manhattan Project with produced the atomic bomb and the space race with the Soviet Union. The government should also tax excess oil company profits and use it to fund fuel research.

"I hope you see Vice President Al Gore's movie, because it really does show the story everybody needs to see," Clinton said. "We've got to protect the earth. That's a value. People go around talking about values. What about the primary responsibility of being good stewards of God's gift to us of this earth?"

Betty Allred of Mountain View and other members of the Stone County delegation to the convention said they enjoyed all aspects of the senator's speech but they agreed most with a portion in which the senator said the middle class had suffered under President Bush's administration policies.

The Omni Center for Peace hosted a demonstration outside, but organizers said it was not a protest against Clinton but a peaceful demonstration asking for her help to end the war in Iraq.

Clinton went from the speech to a tour of the Diane D. Blair Library in Fayetteville. The city's public library is named after Blair, a professor in the University of Arkansas' political science department and a "dear, dear friend" of the senator, Clinton said. Blair died in 2000 and the library was named in her honor after a contribution in Blair's memory by attorney James B. Blair. The library is an architectural showcase that won the library of the year award in 2005 from Library Journal Magazine.

"I loved the library, and she (Blair) would have loved it too," Clinton said after the tour. "It was very emotional for me, because she would have lived in it. She would have been reading to kids and helping out." Clinton was guided in her tour by retired university professor Ann Henry, a longtime friend, and members of the library board and staff.

The day's tour ended with her return to the house on California Boulevard, across the street from the former location of Fayetteville's Boys & Girls Club. There she met with friends such as Woody Bassett and Rudy Moore. She took more than 20 minutes to watch recordings of campaign ads from Clinton's political career, which she said she enjoyed thoroughly.

Surrounded by an entourage of Secret Service agents, staff, admirers and reporters, Clinton took a few minutes in the house and in a meeting room at the library with friends. This was her first trip to Fayetteville since a book-signing appearance in 2003, according to the senator's staff.

Clinton said after the tour she was trying and would continue to try to be bipartisan in her dealings with fellow members of the Senate and House members, but there were "matters of principle, such as the attempt to privatize Social Security, that I can't give ground on."

In her speech, Clinton told Democrats there were gains to be made among Republicans. The message she has heard from former opponents among voters, she said, is they "didn't sign up for all this. For some, it's the deficit. Five years ago Bill Clinton has a balanced budget. Now the administration's bragging about what is in fact the fourth largest deficit in U.S. history."

"For others, it was wanting to privatize Social Security. For some it's Iraq. No matter what one thinks of the beginnings of it, there's no doubt it's been mishandled. For nearly everybody, it was Hurricane Katrina. How could we do this? Even in foreign countries, people asked, how could that happen in America?"

Clint Reed, director of the Republican Party of Arkansas, said Clinton was using the "Howard Dean method of attacking without putting ideas or proposals forward. The president has signed tax cuts that have made our economy strong where our state has almost a $500 million surplus. The president is prosecuting the war on terror, and it's my recollection that Senator Clinton voted for sending troops to Iraq. She's trying to have it both ways. As for Katrina, that was a natural disaster. Everyone understands and agrees, Democrat or Republican, that there are bureaucratic issues the administration has dealt with and are dealing with."

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