Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton pursued votes in Los Angeles' historical black heartland with basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson at her side, less than a week after rival Barack Obama banked US$3 million at a fundraiser at talk show host Oprah Winfrey's seaside estate.
For the two leading Democratic presidential contenders, the dueling events highlighted the stiff competition for support and money within one of the party's key voter groups -- blacks.
Johnson, the former Los Angeles Lakers star whose sprawling business interests range from movie theaters to health clubs, also held a fundraiser for Clinton at his Beverly Hills home on Friday night. It was expected to be considerably smaller than the lavish event staged by Winfrey for Obama, an Illinois senator, on Sept. 8.
PHOTO: AP
Johnson's fundraiser was co-hosted by music industry heavyweights Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Clarence Avant, and scheduled guests included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is a co-chair of the Clinton campaign. Guests at the Obama event included Sidney Poitier, Forest Whitaker and Chris Rock.
The divided loyalties among blacks show "the community just isn't going to go lockstep behind any candidate, even a black one," said University of California, Los Angeles, political scientist Franklin Gilliam Jr.
When it comes to competing celebrity endorsements, "I don't know if anybody stands equal with Oprah," Gilliam said. But Clinton is not conceding the black vote to Obama and "she can compete for it in a legitimate way."
Obama, whose late father was Kenyan, gives blacks a chance to put one of their own in the White House for the first time. But Clinton benefits from the strong relationship her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, maintained with blacks for years.
"People in the black community love Bill Clinton; she's seen as comfortable in the community," Gilliam said. And "there's concern about Obama being electable, period, because he's black."
Obama has predicted that black voter turnout would swell by at least 30 percent if he wins the presidential nomination, giving Democrats a victory in southern states that have been voting Republican for decades.
Asked last month why she would be a better candidate for blacks when Obama was in the race, Clinton cited her years of public service and advocacy, and described herself as the more experienced candidate.
"My attitude is, I don't deserve anyone's vote. I have to earn everyone's vote," she said.
China’s first fully artificial intelligence (AI)-generated feature film opened in cinemas yesterday in what promised to be a tough box-office test for the country’s booming tech industry as advance ticket sales lag. More than 10,000 screenings of the sci-fi thriller Sanxingdui: Future Past were scheduled yesterday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan. However, public reception has been less than enthusiastic. Presale revenue as of yesterday morning was 80,000 yuan (US$11,992), while total box-office takings were forecast to remain below 150,000 yuan, only a fraction of the reported production cost, Maoyan said. Ticket prices range from 20 to 90 yuan, bringing the number sold to a
Thousands of British and French troops have taken part in a military training exercise that included one of Britain’s largest airborne operations in two decades, the British government said yesterday. The war game is designed to show how NATO countries could be defended against a modern-day attack and comes during fears about Russian aggression in Europe amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine. About 2,500 troops were involved in the seven-week exercise, in which 600 British and French paratroopers dropped from four RAF A400M Atlas transport aircraft over Germany. The exercise called Rhino Titan, held at the Sennelager military training center in
When fall arrives and leaves start changing color, Mike Valladao, a systems engineer at a cybersecurity company, slips into his alter ego, “Farmer Mike,” also known as the “Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers.” Farmer Mike has been chiseling whimsical faces and comical creatures into big pumpkins for more than four decades. Wearing his trademark orange overalls and farmer hat, he has sculpted hundreds of gourds into ghoulish faces, seaside landscapes, witches, dragons and pop culture figures, such as Yoda and Charlie Brown. Valladao does not have any formal artistic training, but he is always looking for inspiration. He gets ideas from looking at
CRACKED SCREEN: The problem is an embarrassing setback for Apple, which spent more than a decade developing the device and touted its durability The iPhone Duo, one of Apple’s biggest new products in years, is drawing a growing number of complaints from customers who say the foldable display cracked after just hours or days of use. In these cases, customers reported hearing a crunching sound when unfolding the phone, followed by a large crack forming along the center crease. Some users also experienced a white patch or other display malfunction on the right side of the screen. Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media platforms. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a
RSS