Bill Clinton is contrite in visits to black churches

In a dramatic day of politicking, former President Clinton made a series of contrite appearances before African American churches in Los Angeles while California First Lady Maria Shriver endorsed Sen. Barack Obama’s historic quest for the White House.

With Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigning in Minnesota and Missouri, her husband visited three churches in Gardena, Norwalk and Los Angeles this morning but canceled a fourth appearance to fly to New Mexico to watch the Super Bowl with Gov. Bill Richardson, his former Energy secretary and his wife’s former rival for the Democratic nomination. Richardson has not endorsed a candidate.

Talking to the congregations, Clinton did not mention the controversy over his public comments before and after the Jan. 26 primary in South Carolina, in which he dismissed Obama’s depiction of his record opposing the Iraq war as a “fairy tale,” and in the aftermath of Obama’s victory pointed out that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had also won the state but failed to move ahead in his quests for the Democratic nomination.

Sounding chastened, Clinton talked about the election as the proverbial embarrassment of riches, saying he had waited his whole life to vote for an African American for president and just as long to vote for a woman.

“I say that to remind us that we have to find a way to choose without division. To disagree without discord. To celebrate the shattering of all these phony categories that have kept Americans apart too long,” Clinton told about 500 people at Brookins Community AME Church in Los Angeles. “We respect the choices that you make in this election. And if you can’t be for her, we honor that.”

Clinton’s comments were overshadowed by an Obama rally at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion co-hosted by Oprah Winfrey, during which Shriver strode out unannounced and threw her support behind the freshman senator from Illinois. Shriver’s husband, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, announced his support of Sen. John McCain last week, and the extended Kennedy family has split its support between Obama and Clinton.

“If Barack Obama was a state he’d be California,” Shriver said, drawing roars from the crowd. “I mean, think about it: diverse, open, smart, independent, oppose tradition, innovative, inspiring, dreamer, leader.”

Obama carried his campaign to Wilmington, Del., continuing his strategy of trying to simultaneously gather up delegates in some of the overlooked states voting Tuesday, and taking advantage of the free media spillover into New Jersey. He also took shots at Clinton and McCain, trying to link them in Democratic voters’ minds.

“If John McCain is the nominee, then the Democratic Party has to ask itself, do you want a candidate who has similar policies to John McCain on the war in Iraq or somebody who can offer a stark contrast?” Obama said. “I can offer a clear and clean break from the failed polices of George W. Bush. I won’t have to explain my votes in the past.”

In the Republican race, some backers of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney worried publicly that they were beginning to fear that Mike Huckabee’s name on the ballot in more than 20 crucial nominating contests Tuesday could hand the nomination to McCain.

“I’ve been worried ever since Huckabee surged in Iowa,” former Sen. Jim Talent, Romney’s domestic policy advisor, said in Missouri. “I don’t know how it’s all going to play out, I really don’t. It’s just so difficult to tell because it’s all so fluid. The question is: Does that split continue and Sen. McCain manages to get in between the two of them and do it long enough and get the nomination? It’s possible that could happen.”

Romney expressed optimism that he would do well despite polls showing McCain increasing his lead.

“This is a tight race and one we intend to win,” Romney said in a St. Louis suburb. “I don’t know which states I’ll get. I don’t know how many delegates I’ll get, but I’m going to get a lot, and I want to get more than the other guys.”

He also continued to draw distinctions between himself and McCain, telling reporters that McCain’s views are closer to that of the Democratic front-runners than they are to his own.

“He’s virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on a number of major issues our country faces,” Romney said, citing campaign finance reform, global warming, tax cuts, Arctic drilling and immigration reform. “There’s an old saying: If there’s a race between a Republican acting like a Democrat and a Democrat, the Democrat always wins.”

McCain, meanwhile, displayed his own confidence, telling reporters in Boston that he was making plans to attend the two-day Munich Conference on Security Policy that starts Friday, and that he hoped to add a visit to Iraq to the trip.

McCain, who said Saturday that he assumed he would be the Republican nominee, said he would make a final decision on whether to go after assessing the campaign’s progress winning delegates Tuesday. But he was clearly looking ahead with confidence.

“You get to know the leaders of these countries, you build relationships with them,” McCain said.

He said his campaign’s next hurdle, if he sealed the nomination, was to raise cash.

“We’re talking about the size of the crowds that Sen. Obama has, my God, look at the money,” McCain told reporters aboard the campaign bus Sunday.

scott.martelle@latimes.com

mark.barabak@latimes.com

Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga in Wilmington, Del., Seema Mehta in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and Maeve Reston in Boston contributed to this report.