• Boston Globe, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 2 PM

In his quest for the Democratic presidential nod, Sen. Barack Obama is taking his ad campaign national -- and that isn't sitting too well with at least one rival. A new 60-second spot running on CNN and MSNBC focuses on his work with Republicans in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate, along with a clip from his 2004 address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he spurned the notion of "red" and "blue" states.

"This is a man who knows how to get things done," says rookie Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who was elected in the Dem wave of 2006 and recently threw her support to Obama. "He understands that we've got to move forward with a different kind of politics." With Sen. Hillary Clinton still winning among rank-and-file Democrats, Obama is making appeals to other non-traditional Democratic voters. But the Clinton campaign says the new ad is a "clear and blatant violation" of a pledge Democratic candidates made last year not to campaign in Florida, after the state moved its primary to a date earlier than was sanctioned.

Plenty of Floridians watch CNN and MSNBC, her campaign notes, and "the Obama campaign knows this, but has chosen to violate the pledge regardless. But an Obama spokesman responds that two nets say it would be impossible to exclude Florida TV sets from a national ad. And "for that reason, we consulted with the South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler, who told us unequivocally she did not consider this to be in violation of pledge made to the early states."

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