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WASHINGTON: White House contender Barack Obama and his defeated
Democratic rival Hillary Clinton will hold their first joint
campaign rally in the aptly named New Hampshire town of Unity, aides
said Monday.
The Obama campaign said the former adversaries
would hold the “Unite for Change” rally on Friday in the western
town, where each candidate got exactly 107 votes in the Granite
State’s January primary.
Clinton won the New Hampshire primary, after a
moist-eyed moment in a coffee shop, to come back after Obama’s
victory in the Iowa caucuses and set in train five months of
coast-to-coast battles that ended with Obama only just ahead.
Clinton drummed home the message of unity Monday
as she posted a video on her website, appealing for donors to help
pay down her campaign debts of $22.5 million—half of which she
lent to the campaign herself.
“Together we made history and I will continue
to work toward our common goal of building an America that respects
and embraces the potential of every last one of us,” Clinton said
in the video.
“This goal is shared by our Democratic Party
nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, and I look forward to campaigning with
him across this great country of ours.”
Obama, meanwhile, lauded the working women in
his family—his mother, grandmother and wife—who he said had made
his political success possible.
Addressing an audience of women balancing work
and family life in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Obama said he wanted all
American girls including his two daughters to “truly have the same
opportunities as our sons.”
“Standing here today, I know that we have
drawn closer to making this America a reality because of the
extraordinary woman who I shared a stage with so many times
throughout this campaign—Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“And in the months and years ahead, I look
forward to working with her to make progress on the issues that
matter to American women and to all American families—health care
and education, support for working parents and an insistence on
equality,” he said in his prepared remarks.
Clinton is returning to the public stage this
week after keeping a low profile since conceding the Democratic
nominating contest to Obama on June 7.
On Tuesday, the New York senator is to return to
Congress and on Thursday, she is due to address Latino politicians
at a luncheon in Washington.
-- AFP
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