Obama and Clinton plan first rally together

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

June 21, 2008

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will hold their first joint public rally next Friday - a day after the former rivals are due to appear at a Washington fundraiser.

Obama's campaign announced the rally in a brief e-mail to supporters, but an aide with knowledge of the situation would only say the event would take place in a "battleground state" that has yet to be determined

Obama, speaking in Florida Friday, praised Clinton effusively - while offering an unusually frank assessment of how Republicans might use the issue of race in the general election.

"They're going to try to make you afraid," he told an audience of 600 people in Jacksonville. "They're going to try to make you afraid of me."

Mimicking a hypothetical GOP critic, Obama said: "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

Clinton is scheduled to introduce Obama at a June 26 meeting of her top fundraisers at the Mayflower Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. The former first lady hopes to convince skeptical supporters to throw their weight - and checkbooks - behind the Democrats' presumptive front-runner.

She also is expected to make her first post-primary appearance in the Senate sometime next week, aides said, contrary to recent reports Clinton would take off the entire month of June.

Clinton and Obama, who last met privately two days before she suspended her campaign June 7, have taken pains over the past two weeks to minimize their differences and put 17 months of bitter campaigning behind them.

The Illinois senator was in a decidedly bury-the-hatchet mood Friday. "Hillary Clinton and I agree on 99 percent on the issues - we had to work to find something to disagree on," said Obama, who was introduced by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a one-time Clinton backer.