Brownback apologizes for staffer's anti-LDS e-mail

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential hopeful Sam Brownback on Monday telephoned rival Mitt Romney to apologize for a campaign staffer's e-mail criticizing the LDS Church.

The Kansas senator "was very disappointed, clearly sort of personally hurt that this had happened in his team, and he said he is going to be very aggressive to make sure it doesn't happen again," spokesman Brian Hart said. "There's no place for this in his campaign."

The e-mail asked for help in fact-checking negative statements about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for which Romney is a member, such as "the LDS Jesus is not the same Jesus of the Christian faith." Hart said the aide who sent it, Emma Nemecek, was reprimanded.

Brownback is a former Methodist who converted to Roman Catholicism.

Earlier in the day, Brownback kicked off his summer road trip — a 1,200-mile, four-day, 27-stop tour through Iowa.

The Kansas senator said he hopes the road trip through Iowa, which launches the presidential nominating season with caucuses, will attract attention to his message of uniting social and fiscal conservatives.

In Buffalo, N.Y., Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton planted trees and shook a few others Monday to help finance her presidential bid.

In western New York, the senator attended a $500-a-plate fund-raising breakfast at Kleinhan's Music Hall. She visited a school with Mayor Byron Brown, where she distributed seed packets from a white ash tree from Eleanor Roosevelt's Hyde Park estate and grabbed a shovel to help plant two seedlings.

The planting ceremony gave Clinton a chance to help Buffalo replace trees lost in a surprise October snowstorm while promoting her broader energy and environmental policy.

Clinton said she sees her presidential run as a positive for New York.

"There's a linkage between everything I do in and for New York and what I'm trying to do on the campaign trail and what I want to do as president," Clinton said at City Honors High School, where the children awaited her arrival for more than an hour.

"You can talk about global warming right here in Buffalo while we're planting trees that are going to benefit the people of Buffalo, and I want to make those connections," she said.

The breakfast and a Rochester fund-raiser were expected to raise $300,000, according to the campaign.