| June 19, 2015 | nytimes.com/firstdraft » |
Charleston Shooting Leads to a Campaign Pause
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Thursday visited a memorial site at the church where nine people were killed in Charleston on Wednesday. John Taggart/European Pressphoto Agency
JUNE 19, 2015
By Maggie Haberman
Good Friday morning from Washington, where news of a mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., has rippled across the campaign trail and prompted candidates to weigh in, the trade fight has helped shift focus from a Democrat-led filibuster in the Senate, and Senator Rand Paul is looking to a social media app to woo young voters.
The killing of nine people at a predominantly African-American church in South Carolina, where the gunman was said to have sat and prayed with his victims before unleashing violence, will leave a lasting impression on the state and has already affected the dynamics of the 2016 presidential race.
The magnitude and maliciousness of the crime will linger in national discussions. It is unclear whether Democrats, who tried in vain to pass a federal gun-control bill in early 2013 along with some center-right Republicans in Congress, will broach that politically difficult issue in their campaigns.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican presidential hopeful, denounced the violence. Jeb Bush canceled his planned appearances in the state.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, had left Charleston, where the shootings took place, just before the violence occurred. In an appearance in Nevada on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton called for facing “hard truths” about race, policing and gun violence. She did not make an explicit call for gun-control measures, which bedeviled President Obama after the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. But the question of race in America is going to be critical as the nation looks toward the post-Obama era.
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