DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATES EMERGE
Two Democratic businessmen in Kentucky sought their party's nomination for the Senate on Tuesday, pursuing a likely matchup against Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a powerful four-term incumbent with a big campaign bankroll.
Across the country in Oregon, Democrats selected a challenger to try to unseat the two-term Sen. Gordon Smith, the sole GOP senator on the West Coast. They were choosing between the state House speaker and an activist who spoofs the fact that he has a metal hook for a hand.
In Kentucky, entrepreneurs Bruce Lunsford and Greg Fischer each put part of their personal fortunes into their campaigns after some prominent Democratic officeholders backed off from challenging Kentucky's political kingpin. McConnell, the Senate's top Republican, drew just one opponent in the GOP primary, little-known truck driver Daniel Essek.
MCCAIN BLASTS OBAMA
Republican John McCain, speaking to a raucous crowd in Miami on Cuba's independence day, hammered Democrat Barack Obama for saying he would meet with President Raul Castro and called Obama a "tool of organized labor" for opposing a Latin American trade deal.
For a second day, McCain criticized Obama for saying, in a debate last year, that as president he would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela without preconditions.
Obama protested that McCain was distorting his position and said he would try to lay ground rules for such a meeting. "John McCain likes to characterize this as me immediately having Raul Castro over for tea," he said on CNN. "What I've said is that we would set a series of meetings with low-level diplomats, set up some preparation, but that over time, I would be willing to meet and talk very directly about what we expect from the Cuban regime," he said.
COURTING FLORIDA
Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will both be in Florida today after avoiding the state since last fall. Obama is seeking to mend fences in a key general-election state snubbed by the Democratic National Committee. Clinton is continuing her push to have the state's primary count and its delegates seated at the party's national convention in Denver in August.
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