From Newsday (New York) 

BY MARTIN C. EVANS.
NEW ORLEANS - Hillary Rodham Clinton drew cheers when she criticized the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina during a commencement address yesterday at historically black Dillard University, but slipped away without responding to reporters questioning her ties to a Louisiana sheriff.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee, who served on the host committee of a Clinton fundraiser Friday in New Orleans, had been accused of racial bias for barring New Orleans residents from crossing a bridge into Jefferson while fleeing from Hurricane Katrina.

In another incident, in the 1980s, Lee said his deputies would stop "young blacks in rinky-dink cars" following a spate of robberies in white neighborhoods outside New Orleans.

Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley said that Lee has been "a longtime friend" of Clinton and her husband. She declined to comment further.

Questions about Clinton's ties to Lee came during a New Orleans campaign swing designed to strengthen her already warm relationship with the city's black community.

On Friday, Clinton campaign aides distributed literature titled "A Friend to African Americans" detailing her civil rights activism while she was a Yale law student and her more recent advocacy of affirmative action, expanded Head Start programs, stronger unions, election reforms and other positions popular among black Americans.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who also attended the Dillard commencement, said Lee's support for Clinton could irk some voters. "He's got some controversy in his background," Nagin said. "She might pick up some, but she might lose some."

Lee was receiving cancer treatment yesterday at a California hospital.

Clinton's potentially embarrassing ties with Lee show how old associations can bring new problems for someone as connected as the former first lady.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported on her six-year tenure on the board of directors of Wal-Mart, which has been criticized by Democrats for anti-union policies. Although Clinton left the board in 1992, her continuing ties with executives of the Arkansas-based company are likely to disappoint her supporters in the labor movement.

Yesterday's commencement was the first at Dillard since classes resumed in September after being closed for a year because of damage by Hurricane Katrina.

Clinton turned her commencement address into a campaign stump speech, hammering the Bush administration for its handling of a recovery effort that has much of the city still in ruins 20 months after the storm.