The US presidential campaign got nastier yesterday as a leading US newspaper revealed that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin used her position as Alaska state governor to give top jobs in her administration to personal friends.
The New York Times reported that Palin had given the US$95,000-a-year directorship of the State Division of Agriculture to a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, who cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the agency.
And Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages, the paper noted in an investigative report.
“Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials,” the Times said.
The revelations came as Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama urged his supporters on Saturday to help victims of monstrous Hurricane Ike while also promising economic relief to hard-pressed Americans suffering “quiet storms” in their own lives.
His Republican White House rival, Senator John McCain, expressed his own sympathy for those upended by Ike, which slammed into Texas packing a massive ocean surge, knocking out power to millions and flooding coastal areas.
But the race grew still more bad-tempered with McCain’s spokesman accusing Obama of bad-taste politicking on the day of a natural disaster and the Obama team alleging McCain was running the “least honorable” US campaign yet.
Obama rolled out a new advertisement, a Web site and a series of events by officials in 16 states to highlight the presence of former corporate lobbyists at the highest echelons of McCain’s campaign team.
Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said the new offensive was a bid to “challenge the masquerade” of McCain, who has voted in lock-step with US President George W. Bush, claiming to be the real agent of change in this election.
Addressing 7,000 people at a sunny outdoors rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Obama appealed to his army of more than 2 million donors to open their wallets and volunteer for relief work as Ike tore into Texas.
“During moments of tragedy the American people come together. We may argue, we may differ but we are all American and one of the principles of this great country is that during times of need, we are all in it together,” he said.
The Illinois senator had already appealed to his donors to contribute funds to help victims of Hurricane Gustav, which forced McCain to curtail the first day of the Republican convention on Sept. 1.
In a statement, McCain said he and his wife Cindy offered their “prayers and assistance.” Like Obama, McCain said he had been in touch with federal and state leaders to gauge the official response to Ike.
“Their combined determination to address immediate evacuations and relief support was encouraging, but I am increasingly concerned that there may have been a substantial loss of life,” he said.
Obama said that even while he kept Ike victims in his prayers, “one of the things I’ve learned over the last 19 months is that a lot of people are going through their own trials and their own tribulations.”
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