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The two Democrats differed on other energy-related issues. In August, Clinton supported a bill to expand oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, while Obama voted against it. During the 2005 energy debate, Obama backed an increase in vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, which Clinton opposed. Clinton voted against the energy bill itself because it was stuffed with oil industry incentives. But Obama supported the legislation because it included language that would double ethanol demand by 2012.

Another fault line is spending. Obama sided with fiscal conservatives on several high-profile measures to strip funding for pet projects, including a widely criticized Pentagon travel system and the relocation of a railroad line along the Mississippi Gulf Coast that was part of a Hurricane Katrina redevelopment project. Clinton voted in favor of the projects.

One budget-related vote with broader political implications would have stripped funding for TV Marti, which beams television programming to Cuba, though the Cuban government jams the signal. Critics in Congress complain that the United States has spent almost $200 million on the failed effort and have targeted the program year after year.

Obama twice voted to cut off TV Marti funding, while Clinton supported maintaining it. Those votes will have resonance in Florida, which is a key primary state and may reschedule its 2008 primary date from March to February.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the senator’s opposition to TV Marti was primarily about cost. But within Florida’s large Cuban exile population, one of the most powerful voting blocs in the state, Clinton’s and Obama’s stances ally them with distinct groups: the older hard-liners and a younger, more progressive group of second-generation Cuban Americans and more recent immigrants whose numbers are growing. Clinton “is going with the status quo,” said Sergio Bendixen, a Miami-based pollster who specializes in Hispanic voters. Obama, he said, “is with the position of change.”

The senators differed on a July 13 vote that would prohibit the confiscation of legally held guns during natural disasters — a response to seizures by law enforcement officials in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina. Obama voted to ban confiscations; Clinton was one of 16 senators opposing the restrictions.

In late 2005, Obama allied with Republicans to support creating an exception to Senate rules to allow Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to continue practicing medicine on a not-for-profit basis. Clinton opposed the change, an aide explained, because she believes that senators should not have a second source of income. Gibbs said that Obama, as an author of two best-selling books, was sympathetic to Coburn’s request.

In several instances, Clinton and Obama voted against measures that they supported in principle, because the bills were not strong enough. Clinton opposed a restructuring plan for the Federal Emergency Management Agency that Obama and 86 other senators backed, because it did not restore the Cabinet-level status that FEMA had attained under President Bill Clinton, her husband. One of Obama’s chief interests in the Senate has been ethics reform, but he was one of eight senators to oppose a bill aimed at tightening lobbyist rules because it was not strong enough. Clinton supported the initiative.

“You’re voting for so many things that can be misconstrued,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist and former campaign adviser to presidential candidates Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), a House member for nearly 30 years, and Kerry, a four-term senator. “It’s great if you’re the opposition.”

By Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 1, 2007;

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