ALBANY, N.Y. – Four days after criticizing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, New York’s highest ranking black lawmaker flew to Alabama with Bill Clinton at the former president’s request.
“He invited me to fly down with him to Selma, Ala., for his induction into the Voting Rights Hall of Fame,” state Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith said Monday.
Smith said in a radio interview he did not know if his criticism of Sen. Clinton’s campaign or his continued neutrality in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination was a factor in the invitation.
“You’ll have to call Bill Clinton,” Smith told Albany’s WROW-AM radio.
Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, told The Associated Press Smith was invited because “he’s an important leader in Senator Clinton’s home state and both Senator Clinton and President Clinton wanted him to be in Selma with them.”
Smith spokesman James Plastiras told the AP the Senate leader received the invitation on Saturday evening.
Smith said that during his time with the former president on Sunday aboard a private jet from White Plains, N.Y., to Selma and back, the subject of a pos
sible endorsement of Sen. Clinton “never came up.”
Smith said he and Clinton talked about state issues and that the former president offered to help Democrats in their battle to win control of the state Senate where they currently hold 29 of the chamber’s 62 seats.
They did talk about the presidential campaign and that Clinton had told him: “It’s a little early and everybody just needs to calm down a little bit.”
Smith said that while Sen. Clinton was “a very attractive candidate,” he was not yet ready to make an endorsement in the presidential race.
Smith said in a radio interview he did not know if his criticism of Sen. Clinton’s campaign in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination was a factor in the invitation.
Smith said former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields was also on the flight. Sen. Clinton was not on the plane, but met the group in Selma where her rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, was also in town to commemorate the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march.
Last week, Smith criticized the Clinton campaign’s attack on Obama for not disavowing critical comments made about the Clintons by Hollywood producer David Geffen, a former fundraiser for the Clintons who now supports Obama.