Pastor problem not going away, operatives predict

WASHINGTON -- Even if Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides do not mention Barack Obama's fiery-tongued spiritual mentor, don't expect the Illinois senator's well-publicized speech Tuesday to make the controversy disappear, political strategists said this week.

Reporters, talk-show hosts and others will keep asking about Obama's close and long-standing relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose most bombastic comments came to dominate the Democratic presidential contest recently, the strategists predicted in interviews. In video clips playing on Internet sites, Wright can be heard arguing that HIV-AIDS was a U.S. government plot to wipe out ''people of color,'' and that God should ''damn'' the United States for its racist policies.

Should Obama become the Democratic nominee, conservative activists are virtually certain to remind voters of Obama's ties to Wright, several strategists said.

''He can give a speech a week, and it's not going to make the issue go away,'' said Chris LaCivita, a Republican adviser who helped create the ''Swift Boat'' ads that severely damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Obama strongly condemned Wright's most controversial statements. But he did not repudiate Wright or his overall ministry, saying the man who officiated at his wedding is like a family member.

The decision will haunt Obama, LaCivita said, because his political success is built on his image as a uniter. When that image is juxtaposed to Wright's outbursts comparing the United States to the Ku Klux Klan, among other things, voters will wonder if they misread Obama, he said.

Several analysts said they doubted that Republican presidential candidate John McCain would overtly mention Obama's ties to Wright.

But third-party groups, similar to the ones that criticized Kerry, might use the issue.

Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said many swing voters in the fall will not buy Obama's claim that he can no more disown Wright than his own white grandmother. ''You get to pick your minister,'' he said. ''You don't pick your grandma.''

Obama said in an interview Thursday that the point he was making about his grandmother is not that she holds racial animosity, but ''she is a typical white person.''

''If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society,'' he said.