Clinton spreads message

In the morning, a national convention with an audience of thousands. Topic: issues affecting the black community.

From there to a hooting, hollering union hall. Question: Will you strike with us?

Then on to a sweltering backyard in a Hispanic neighborhood. Theme: I'm the people's candidate.

That was Hillary Clinton's day in Las Vegas on Thursday, a day of campaigning that had her rapidly switching gears.

It's hard to imagine a candidate could hit such a variety of stops in, say, Iowa or New Hampshire, the more traditional early presidential nominating states. But Nevada, newly part of the early-state mix, is a place of many contexts.

"We want to reach as many people as possible" in Nevada, Clinton told the last gathering, a group of about 90 supporters out back of a modest home near Charleston and Lamb boulevards.

"This is a people-to-people campaign. It's not about big rallies and all that; it's about backyards. It's about kitchen tables."

Thursday was not, however, about addressing any of the tougher questions Clinton has faced in recent weeks; totally unmentioned were her parallel spats with chief rival Barack Obama, one over the use of nuclear weapons, one over campaign money from federal lobbyists.

Rather, the New York senator was able to gush in that backyard about how, as president, her priority would be America's children, and to soak up the resulting adoration.

She took the opportunity to assure Nevada's most powerful union that "if it comes to a strike, I will be there with you on the picket line."

She told the National Association of Black Journalists that she had a plan to give new hope to poor blacks by creating new jobs and improving education.

That first stop provided the day's only fireworks.

A questioner from the audience who didn't identify himself said, "At a time where the two biggest examples of socialized medicine, Britain and Canada, are moving away from that system, and the people who are in those countries on a lower economic rung, this has hurt them the most, why are you still insisting upon that system here, particularly when it will hurt African-American communities more than anybody else?"

The question was part of what was supposed to be a "rapid-fire" round of 30-second questions and answers, but Clinton, with her tendency to expound in detail, answered only one of five within anything close to that time limit.

"That was a string of misrepresentations, both about me and about the systems in other countries, so I'm going to have to take a little more time with that," Clinton said heatedly. "I have never advocated socialized medicine. That has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years."

Clinton talked about Medicare and the problem of America's millions of uninsured. She urged the questioner to talk to her staff, whereupon she went in for the kill.

"We'll give you some information, if you're interested in being educated instead of being rhetorical," she said. A huge cheer went up from the crowd in the packed ballroom at the Bally's convention center.

Speaking to the group, Clinton unveiled an agenda to deal with "what I consider to be a crisis: the 1.4 million young men of color, between the ages of 16 and 24, who are out of school, out of work, and too often out of hope."

She also answered the question, "Are you black enough? What makes you the better candidate over a black man in representing these issues?"

After lauding the diversity of the Democratic field, Clinton said she hoped to work for every vote.

At the next stop, Clinton's third visit with the Culinary union, she told union workers that unions are good and that more people should be in them. She praised the workers' continuing fight to get the contract they want from their biggest employer, MGM Mirage, and made her picket-line pledge, as Obama, D-Ill., and John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, also have done.

"There is not a more American city in the world," Clinton said. "This (Las Vegas) is all about coming here and taking a chance and doing the best you can. And that's what you've done."

Today, Obama and Edwards will be back for their fourth and third Culinary meetings, respectively. Excalibur buffet worker Kathy Omlie said she was looking forward to the chance to compare.

"I thought she (Clinton) was very, very impressive. It's nice to hear she's going to back us up," the 48-year-old said. Does she know whom she would vote for? "No, I don't. I'm going to come tomorrow and see which one I like best."

Finally, in the late afternoon, Clinton arrived at her most intimate Nevada campaign appearance to date, a gathering of supporters at the home of Jose and Maria Espinoza, Mexican immigrants who have lived and raised a family in Las Vegas since 1972.

"This is what I love about campaigning, coming into someone's home to talk about what we need to do to turn our country around," she said.

More than a year ago, when an earnest young man came to Jose Espinoza's door to ask for his vote, the 68-year-old Espinoza wasn't interested. The last time he voted for a young Latino, he said, the politician ended up going to prison for corruption. When he voted in 2000, he said, he felt his vote hadn't mattered.

It took Ruben Kihuen half an hour just to talk his way inside the door and another half-hour inside to get Espinoza to consider changing his mind.

Now Kihuen is a 27-year-old freshman assemblyman and rising Democratic star. And Espinoza's grudging acceptance of the young man's sales pitch has paid off in a way he never could have imagined: one of the best-known political figures in America on the steps of his back patio.

"I think he will vote from now on," said Kihuen, who had arranged the Clinton visit to the Espinozas but is still playing hard to get with his endorsement.

Kihuen has said he wants candidates to visit his Assembly district. Clinton on Thursday became the first to do so, and Obama will be the second today, when he is scheduled to appear at Rancho High School, Kihuen's alma mater.

Big fans that blew mist from the corners of the yard along with shade trees helped relieve the heat as Clinton, having revved up the group to help her organize in Nevada, put down the microphone and started shaking hands, posing for photos and signing books.

Like a hurricane seen from above, Clinton was the stationary center of a rotating throng as she turned methodically from one person to the next.

A path was cleared so that Lucille Duvall, an 80-year-old North Las Vegas retiree in a wheelchair, could meet Clinton. Duvall decided to vote for Clinton long ago, and she was impressed by the attention. "I've never seen her up this close, and I'll probably never see her this close again," Duvall said.

By about 4 p.m., it was time for Clinton to leave for Los Angeles, where she and other candidates would participate Thursday evening in a forum on gay rights.

And so Clinton left Nevada headed for another very different audience, another shifting of the gears.