The Obama campaign is disputing some claims made by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) during his morning press briefing on behalf of the McCain campaign, including his statement that McCain "stood tall" on his comprehensive immigration stance during the Republican primaries.

"The fact is, McCain walked away from comprehensive immigration reform during the GOP primary campaign and adopted an 'enforcement first' approach favored by the conservative wing of the Republican Party," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan wrote in an e-mail. Sevugan noted McCain's statement (that we mentioned in our earlier post) at a January GOP debate in which he said he would not vote for his own immigration bill and argued against the claim that Obama "worked against" efforts for a bill.

One other notation in Sevugan's e-mail includes a December 2005 press release from Martinez's Senate office announcing that Obama and Martinez were working together to ensure "that any immigration reform legislation must include tough border and workplace enforcement measures as well as a realistic guest worker program that acknowledges the role of the 11 million immigrants currently living and working illegally in the U.S."

Politico's Ben Smith also reported some inconsistencies with Martinez's statements today, and published a letter Martinez sent Obama in late-June 2007, thanking him for his support on the immigration reform bill. The letter can be seen here.

While attention for much of the past week has focused on Obama's apparent glide to the center of the political spectrum, having Martinez, a leader on immigration reform in the Senate, speak with reporters today could have been a response by the McCain campaign to recent stories, such as Byron York's piece yesterday in National Review, that cite McCain's own backtracking on issues.