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An 'outraged' Obama denounces ex-pastor
Senator makes Winston-Salem campaign stop
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Sen. Barack Obama campaigned in Winston-Salem Tuesday, April 29.
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Published: April 30, 2008
Updated: 04/30/2008 11:29 am
To a crowd of 2,500 people at a town-hall meeting at the Joel Coliseum Annex yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama portrayed himself as the only candidate capable of healing the divisions in the United States and doing something to alleviate the struggles of working-class American families.
But to a small gathering of reporters after that meeting, he not only denounced the incendiary remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor of 20 years, but also the man himself.
He said that his relationship with Wright was greatly damaged.
"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw" Monday, Obama told reporters at a news conference after the town-hall meeting.
Obama's remarks came a day after Wright, the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, spoke at the National Press Club in Washington.
In his remarks, Wright reiterated his belief that the federal government created AIDS as a way to infect and kill black people, and he defended his relationship with Louis Farrakhan, the polarizing leader of the Nation of Islam.
"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington media on Monday. "It has nothing to do with Sen. Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."
Obama is trying to tamp down the growing fury over Wright and his remarks, which threaten to envelop his campaign. He made his first visit to Winston-Salem yesterday as he campaigns heavily in North Carolina and Indiana in the run-up to primaries Tuesday in both states. His wife, Michelle Obama, was at Winston-Salem State University earlier this month.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has campaigned here twice.
After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted snippets of sermons he made years ago, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself, coming off as combative and colorful and reigniting a controversy that Obama had hoped was dying down.
Obama told reporters yesterday that Wright's comments do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church and more important, they do not reflect the kind of positive campaign he has been running. He called the comments destructive.
"The person I saw (Monday) was not the person I met 20 years ago," he said of the man who married him and his wife and who baptized his two children.
For the past several months, Obama's presidential campaign has been dogged by the controversy surrounding Wright. Snippets of sermons that Wright made several years ago as pastor of Trinity popped up on television and on YouTube earlier this year.
The most famous clip is of Wright saying "God damn America" for its mistreatment of minorities and its foreign policy. Obama denounced the comments, most famously in a nuanced speech on race that he gave in Philadelphia last month. But until yesterday, he had also defended Wright and Trinity, saying that media accounts did not reflect the man he knew.
During the town-hall meeting, he did his best to avoid any mention of Wright. He touched briefly on the controversy in response to comments made by a woman who urged the audience to watch journalist Bill Moyer's recent interview with Wright, which aired Friday on PBS.
Instead, he spent most of his time bashing both Clinton and Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, for what he called quick-fixes to the problems that American families face.
He also got an endorsement from Mayor Allen Joines.
"Winston-Salem has had to undergo a lot of change, and we still have a lot of change to come to move ourselves to a more successful, more solid economy," Joines said. "I believe Barack Obama is the person who can lead the change for Winston-Salem and this country."
Obama criticized McCain and Clinton for supporting a gas-tax holiday this summer to lighten the economic pressure on people dealing with high gas prices.
"This isn't an idea to get you through the summer," he said. "It's an idea to get them elected president."
The McCain campaign quickly responded with a statement.
"Barack Obama doesn't understand the effect of high gas prices on the American economy," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. "Sen. Obama voted for a gas-tax reduction before he opposed it. He has no plan for relief from record-high gas prices for Americans this summer, and he's the empty-tank candidate in this race."
But Obama argued that the better solution would be to invest in clean renewable energy and to stop giving tax breaks to oil companies that continue to rake in profits while gas prices go up.
Obama told the crowd that as the son of a single-mother who at times had to subsist on food stamps and as a longtime community organizer in Chicago, he understands their struggles.
His message resonated with some. Even before he took the stage, audience members chanted, "You rock, Obama!" and "Yes we can!," clapping and sometimes whistling.
Tre Young, 12, asked Obama about how he would truly make sure that no child is left behind. Tre, a sixth-grader at Hanes Middle School, has been following the campaign, said his mother, Natalie Young. Tre and his mother volunteered for the campaign to attend the town-hall meeting. They went out Saturday to canvass one of their old neighborhoods.
"We've been following the campaign, both some of the good and the bad things -- Jeremiah Wright, the whole nine yards," Natalie Young said. "It's been a learning experience for him because I told him that my grandmother and my grandparents struggled to vote, and it's important for him to see the whole process and that we get out and vote as African-American people."
Jeffrey Alan Wilson of Kernersville, who has worked for US Airways for 24 years, wanted to hear Obama speak about rising fuel costs and health care. Wilson said that fuel costs affect not only his commute to work every day but his industry as well. And he said he is interested in health care because he has a spinal-cord injury.
He said he liked what he heard, and he hopes that people go vote.
"A lot of people think the primary is not that important," he said. "This year, the primary is very important."
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
■ Lisa Boone-Wood can be reached at 727-7232 or at lboone-wood@wsjournal.com.
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