Aiming for women

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama uses Albuquerque as a backdrop to reach out to "working women."

Obama answers a question at an Albuquerque event for working women

ALBUQUERQUE -- Sen. Barack Obama visited Albuquerque early this afternoon in his effort to draw more women to his campaign.

The event, dubbed by the campaign as a "Discussion with Working Women," was a small invitation-only gathering in a room set aside from the main dining room at a Flying Star on Broadway. Filled with young Anglo and Hispanic women, most of whom were Flying Star employees, the restaurant provided an intimate setting for a Democratic party nominee trying to dispel an image that he can't woo women voters en masse to his campaign.

"I would not be standing before you as a candidate for President of the United States if it were not for working women," Obama told the crowd, saying that he owed his success to his mother, his grandmother -- who he called "an original Rosie the Riveter" -- and his wife.

"Senator John McCain is an honorable man, and I respect his service to our country," Obama said. "But when you look at the issues and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer," Obama told the crowd.

"It starts with... equal pay."

Obama told the women about the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. Ledbetter found out she was being underpaid for performing the same job as men. The Supreme Court ruled Ledbetter had just 180 days from the beginning of the discrimination to file suit -- even though, Obama told the crowd -- she did not know she was being underpaid.

The Washington Post wrote about the controversy in a story:

The decision moved Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to read a dissent from the bench, a usually rare practice that she has now employed twice in the past six weeks to criticize the majority for opinions that she said undermine women's rights.

 

Speaking for the three other dissenting justices, Ginsburg's voice was as precise and emotionless as if she were reading a banking decision, but the words were stinging.

 

"In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination," she said.

Obama told the crowd the decision "didn't make too much sense. The majority of the Senate didn't think it made too much sense, but Sen. John McCain thinks the Supreme Court got it right," Obama said. "He opposed the fair pay restoration act, he suggested that the reason women don't have equal pay isn't discrimination on the job, it's because they need more education and training."

UNM professor Christine Sierra said Monday's event was all about Obama's effort to reach out to women.

"Barack is definitely trying to be fast out of the gate to claim the women supporters who were adamantly for Hillary Clinton," Sierra said. "He is doing what he needs to do."

Obama already appears to be doing well with this group, according to a Rasmussen poll released early Monday. It showed Obama leading McCain among women by 12 percent in New Mexico. According to Rasmussen's national tracking poll, Obama currently leads among women by the same percentage.

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish -- who backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary -- introduced the Illinois senator to his small audience. Denish was one of the first New Mexico superdelegates to endorse Clinton but has supported Obama since he clinched the Democratic nomination earlier this month.

"The media is making a lot of talk about angry white women," Denish told the audience of working women. "But they're right about one thing, we are angry. We haven't made any progress in the last eight years."

"We may be angry, but we're really smart too."

In the question and answer session, Obama addressed a current hot-button issue: the off-shore drilling moratorium. McCain recently encouraged an end to the moratorium on off-shore drilling. Obama accused McCain of "saying he wants to drill his way out of the problem."

Obama says the government should instead work on reducing demand for oil in the United States.

"While Sen McCain wants to continue the Bush tax cuts for those who don't need them and weren't even asking for them, I'm going to pass a middle-class tax cut of $1,000 for each working family. This will deliver tax relief for almost 70 million working women," Obama said.

When answering a question about health care, Obama looked incredulous when the questioner said she had not been to a doctor since she was 18 -- 10 years previous. "Not even for regular checkups?" he asked, and told her, "That's not good," when she responded by saying no.

Photos by Matthew Reichbach

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