Desperate Clinton Camp Used "Street Money" to Help Get Blacks & Latinos to Vote for her in Texas, Ohio

From the Frontrunner The New York Times (5/13, McIntire, Luo) reports, "In the threadbare border towns of South Texas, one of the country's poorest regions, enterprising locals like Candelaria Espinoza have long been paid to round up votes for candidates on Election Day. ... So when" Sen.  Hillary Clinton's "campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against" Sen. Barack Obama, "Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and get voters to the polls for the Democratic primary on March 4, which Mrs. Clinton narrowly won." The Espinoza family was "among at least 460 Texans...who received payments from the Clinton campaign for this kind of work, according to a review of" FEC "records. The records show that Mrs. Clinton did something similar in Ohio, giving $38,300 to a state legislator, Eugene R. Miller, who says he used it to pay more than 200 people to get out the vote in predominantly black neighborhoods in Cleveland. The payments, known in the political vernacular as 'street money,' are a legal but controversial tool that Mrs. Clinton employed at a time when she was desperately seeking a victory after losing 10 consecutive contests to Mr. Obama."

Republican effort to use Obama/Rev. Wright tactic Fails as Democrat Wins House Seat in Mississippi
Democrats scored a remarkable upset victory on Tuesday in a special Congressional election in this conservative Southern district, sending a clear signal of national problems ahead for Republicans in the fall. The Democrat, Travis Childers, a local courthouse official, pulled together a coalition of blacks, who turned out heavily, and old-line “yellow dog” Democrats, to beat his Republican opponent, Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 54 percent for Mr. Childers to 46 percent for Mr. Davis. The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004. [MORE]

Republicans' efforts to tar Childers as a typical liberal out-of-step with the district appear to have fallen flat. Davis ran ads attempting to tie Davis to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the controversial words of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As was the case in the Louisiana special election, this tactic did not seem to work for the Republican candidate, bolstering the argument by Obama supporters that his presence at the top of the ticket will not be a hindrance downballot in conservative districts.[MORE]