Section Toolbar: Homepage News Sports B-Section Editorial/Op-ed Features

Issue date: 6/20/08

Media Credit: Samuel Rubenfeld

NEW YORK--At a town hall meeting on Wall Street on Thursday, June 12, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) attacked his rival, presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for not attending the meeting.

"This would have been a little more interesting tonight if Senator Obama had accepted my request," McCain said in his opening remarks, referring to his offer for the candidates to hold joint town hall meetings once a week through the rest of the campaign, the first being the one held Thursday.

Obama has signaled a willingness to do it, but he has balked on the format and the frequency, instead calling for longer meetings that occur less often.

McCain met about 200 people inside Wall Street's Federal Hall, famous for being the location where George Washington delivered his first inaugural address in 1789.

The attendees were reportedly supposed to be Democrats, Independents and Republicans, but the noticeably friendly crowd was handpicked by the campaign, FOX News anchor Shephard Smith reported as the meeting ended.

"The McCain campaign distributed tickets to supporters, [New York City] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg, who of course is a registered Republican, and other independent groups." (Bloomberg was elected to the office as a Republican, but he has since left the party and is now an independent.)

Other guests included Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-D-Conn.), a key McCain supporter.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean immediately issued a statement following the meeting. "Copying the Bush campaign model of stacking events with his prescreened supporters is not the transparency Americans are looking for," Dean said in the statement posted on Politico.com's media blog.

The nearly hour-long meeting was exclusively broadcast on FOX News, which said it also offered the same airtime to Obama, but he has not accepted as of press time.

McCain used the free airtime to attack Obama on a range of issues, from the war in Iraq to taxes. He delivered a 15-minute opening statement, followed by about 45 minutes of answering questions from attendees.

"He [Obama] is now in his 885th day without visiting Iraq, and he has never asked to sit down with General [David] Petraeus to find out what is really going on in that conflict," McCain said.

Those supporters attending were happy with what McCain said at the meeting. A former Clinton supporter, Jessi Cleaver, 35, from the East Village, said she switched to support McCain because she had "no reason to support Obama." As a black and female registered Democrat who said she has voted in every presidential election since she was 18 years old, she said she didn't feel like democracy was served in the Democratic primary process, which ended up giving Obama the nomination.

"I was pleased," said Frank Moreno, who is in his 20s, from Staten Island and got his ticket from the Independence Party.

Roland Stewart, 70, who worked for the McCain campaign in 2000, said the meeting was "productive."

"We need a leader who can bring the U.S. back to prestige," Stewart said.

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