Barack Obama is courting one of likely 2008 primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top New York supporters, it was revealed yesterday.
Former New York State Comptroller Carl McCall said he got a call from an Obama backer this week to set up a meeting with the rising-star Illinois Democrat, who has set the White House race on fire.
“Someone I knew said he was coming to town and would like to meet with people,” McCall told The Post.
Once the state’s highest black elected official, McCall added that he and some others had been set to meet with Sen. Obama last month when he made a speech at a children’s charity in the city but that the sit-down had to be postponed.
“He’s exciting,” said McCall, who added he expects the meeting to happen in the near future but said he was committed to backing Sen. Clinton for president.
She is expected to reveal plans to run in the next few weeks.
“He’s seen as a new face, and I think that has certainly developed a great deal of interest on the part of a number of people. I think he’s trying to capitalize on that popularity . . . I’m looking forward to listening,” McCall said.
Asked why Obama’s team would reach out to Clinton boosters, McCall said, “If you’re running for president, you want to reach out to as many people as possible . . . you can’t ignore New York.”
Obama on Tuesday formed an exploratory committee and said he’d make a formal announcement about his plans early next month – moving all eyes toward Clinton.
McCall told The Associated Press that once Clinton declares, “it will be clear New Yorkers are with her.”
Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson acknowledged on Albany’s WROW-AM radio that Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois who’s deemed as her biggest threat right now, “will obviously be a serious competitor.”
“I think there are other serious people in the race,” he promptly said. “Should she decide to get into the race, it’s going to be a very exciting race.”
But he stayed mum about when Clinton would reveal her own plans, saying, “I guarantee you that when it happens, people will know.”
Obama, 45, is seen as a fresh face on the political scene who has an authenticity that Clinton, despite her deep popularity in the state and her ability to do well with voters in small settings, isn’t seen as having.
Obama has enormous star power driving him in his early entry into the race. He’s been compared to Bobby Kennedy and Bill Clinton in the aura he projects, which has served to underscore the rap on Hillary Clinton that she’s too heavily managed.
But among Clinton’s potential advantages are her experience, having gone through two national races with her husband, and her finely tuned campaign apparatus, filled with longtime advisers and seasoned operatives.
While Obama is moving quickly to build his organization, he starts off at a disadvantage because of the scope of Clinton’s, and the number of donors she’s worked to get to commit to her.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren, Clinton reiterated her opposition to the proposed troop surge in Iraq.
“I think the chances for success are limited, at best,” she said.
Clinton has come out against proposals to defund the troops in Iraq but wants to cap the number.
“We certainly have never, you know, gone in with the commitment of forces that were needed,” she said in the interview.
“We have 25 million people in Iraq. You know, at the height we had 160,000. It is just not comparable. So we have to get a lot smarter about the consequences we impose.”