Election ‘Not About Me,’ Clinton Says

President Clinton offered a rallying cry to his supporters Thursday, telling them that the coming elections should not be about his transgressions but about issues that Republicans want to dodge while they are preoccupied with his possible impeachment.

“It’s not about me; it’s about the people of this country,” Clinton said at a fund-raising lunch for Democratic House candidates at the home here of Stan Chesley, a wealthy lawyer and longtime supporter.

Clinton’s aggressive remarks seemed aimed at defying those in his own party who have said he is an encumbrance in the coming elections because of the controversy over his relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

The president argued that he is on the right side of the issues that Americans care about, like broader health care coverage, better public education, Social Security reform and a more stable global economy.

“I am going to do everything I can to fight for these things and to fight to help people who believe in them get elected,” Clinton said.

With searing campaign rhetoric, Clinton criticized those who are intent on keeping the spotlight on his personal failings and independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s case for impeachment.

“Hillary and I are doing fine,” Clinton said. “What I’m concerned about is the rest of the people that live in this country and one more time having Washington obsessed with itself instead of America.”

The reassuring battle-ready words did not disguise some chilling reminders of the public debate over the fate of his presidency.

Greeting Clinton in the suburban Cincinnati neighborhood were clusters of sign-toting supporters and opponents.

Cincinnati’s two newspapers published editorials, one calling for his resignation, the other calling on Congress to release a videotape of Clinton’s grand jury testimony on his relationship with Lewinsky.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, repeating an earlier call for his resignation, called the president’s fund-raising visit “odious.”

Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who is in a tight race for a seat in the House of Representatives, had vacillated publicly over whether she would be available to see Clinton but ended up riding in his limousine.

“The president is still the president. He’s still the leader of the party,” Qualls said. “I will extend to him the courtesy due his office.”

Her opponent, GOP Rep. Steve Chabot, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is deliberating what to do with the Starr report.

On the way back to the airport, the president’s motorcade passed a billboard for a radio station that depicted Clinton with his arm around Lewinsky below the Rolling Stones lyric, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”

Clinton and his entourage then flew to Boston for a major fund-raising event, which brought the Democratic Party’s take for the day to $1.2 million. It was one of only a couple of campaign fund-raising forays outside Washington that the president has made without also giving speeches on policy.

Clinton has told his staff and Democratic Party officials that a large part of his effort to preserve his presidency will be helping Democratic candidates win the November elections.

But the president was snubbed Thursday by Democratic candidates who have said the crisis is hurting them.

Key Democrats stayed away from both the Cincinnati and Boston events. House candidate Kenneth Lucas, 65, snubbed the president when he landed at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, which is in Boone County, Ky.

Lucas, who serves as the county’s judge-executive and is in a tight race for a House seat, said he is “very disappointed” in Clinton and called for him to resign if he is guilty of perjury or obstruction of justice.

Tom Finnerman, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, said in a published report that he would avoid Clinton during the Democrats’ “unity” dinner Thursday evening.

“Bill Clinton almost makes Nixon look like a moral giant the way it is going,” Finnerman told the Boston Herald. “It’s not just a stain on Bill Clinton’s presidency. It’s a stain on the office of the presidency.”

But earlier this week, Clinton headlined the party’s biggest fund-raising event of the political cycle, raising $4 million at an event in New York that was estimated a week earlier to bring in $3 million.