City issues don’t seem to come up too frequently in the presidential campaigns. Sure, policies pertaining to health care, housing, and the economy all affect urban environments. But, they also affect suburban and rural places as well. Somehow, my name got put on a media list to receive press releases from Hillary Clinton‘s campaign. It’s a lot of Bing! Bing! Bing! all day long, which I typically ignore. But one press release from earlier today caught my eye:

At an engagement in Philadelphia this morning, Clinton discussed her plan to “cut the murder rate in big cities in half and put 100,000 new police officers on America’s streets…Hillary would also invest $1 billion competitive grant program to reduce the number of repeat offenders and the size of the population in prisons and juvenile lock-ups nationwide. In addition, Hillary will partner with states and communities to support early intervention programs that would prevent at-risk youth from engaging in criminal activity.”

Now, I can’t recall anything coming from Barack Obama‘s campaign that even compares to this city-focused initiative. I’m not on his press list. And the presidential political coverage has pretty much come down to the latest chatter about super-delegates, money, firings and resignations, and political gaffes. (Let’s, for example, scan the presidential campaign coverage on the current front page of politico.com: “Taxpayers Fund Bill Clinton Spending,” “Bill Clinton Defends Wife’s Remarks,” “Playbook: Media Mistreated Wife” (Again about Bill Clinton), “McCain Unexpectedly Moves on Housing,” “Obama Would Have Fired Penn,” “Dems Plan $40M Hit On McCain.”)

But, as far as I know, she’s ahead of the game on this. The Clinton campaign sent out an extensive press release packed with information about her proposal and national crime stats.