Martin Luther King Jr. fought four decades ago to free black Americans from the legacy of slavery. Yesterday, Senator Clinton compared the Republican leadership of the current House of Representatives to the very idea the civil rights leader dedicated his life to fighting.

“When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run – it has been run like a plantation,” she said. “You know what I’m talking about.”

Mrs. Clinton, who was addressing a packed house at the Reverend Al Sharpton’s annual Martin Luther King Day event at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, continued: “It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard. The Senate’s not that bad, but it’s been difficult. It’s been difficult.”

Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary, Philippe Reines, declined to comment on the senator’s allusion to slavery, but he said she was simply discussing “a top-down system that is fundamentally at odds with how the people’s House should operate.”

Mrs. Clinton’s reference to one of the darkest periods of American history drew applause, but some national political observers said yesterday that they doubt the comparison of mainstream politicians to slave owners will help the senator win broad-based support as she tests the political waters for a possible presidential campaign.

“The use of the term plantation is foolish, and my guess is that she will live to regret this,” a University of Virginia political analyst, Larry Sabato, said. “She’s playing the race card.”

Mr. Sabato said making slavery references is usually taboo, a lesson Trent Lott learned three years ago, when he was forced to step down as Senate majority leader after he implied at Senator Thurmond’s 100th birthday party that modern Mississippi endorsed Thurmond’s segregationist 1948 presidential platform.

“There are certain analogies politicians learn not to make – comparisons to Hitler, slavery, the Holocaust, and others, and she violated one of the rules today, and we’ll see if she pays the price,” Mr. Sabato said. “What plays at a Martin Luther King Day event in Harlem is very unlikely to play in the rest of America.”

He said Mrs. Clinton’s “plantation” comment could “counteract” her recent attempts to paint herself as a political centrist.

“She’s been working very hard to convince people that she’s a moderate, not the typical Democratic liberal that runs for president, but this is precisely the type of thing that the typical Democratic liberal would say,” Mr. Sabato said.

A government professor at Dartmouth College, Linda Fowler, said while the senator received applause from yesterday’s largely black audience, she might have offended some black Americans who feel the comment was less than sensitive.

“The question is whether you trivialize the suffering that people experienced on plantations by applying that word to a different setting,” she said. “It’s just really a question of appropriateness – making a connection between the badly treated Democrats in the House of Representatives and people who are enslaved against their will. It just seems like a stretch.”

During her remarks, Mrs. Clinton also apologized to a handful of New Orleans evacuees in attendance “on behalf of a government that left you behind,” and said the Bush administration has “a budget deficit and a moral deficit.”

Mrs. Clinton was just one of the politicians onstage yesterday at the Sharpton event, which is a yearly opportunity for New York’s political class to tout their political goals and answer questions.

Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Senator Schumer gave speeches, as did Democratic gubernatorial candidates Eliot Spitzer and Thomas Suozzi, and union leaders Michael Fishman of 32-BJ and Randi Weingarten of the United Federation of Teachers.

At the outset, Rev. Sharpton said he wanted the speakers to express their points of view, even if they might be unpopular.

“Everyone that speaks – some we’ll agree with and some we will not,” he said. “This is not a time to disrespect someone who has something to say.” He said King encouraged people to be open, not to shut out others’ opinions.

“Dr. King,” he said, “is not about your ego trip.”

Most of the government officials who addressed the crowd delivered staid remarks about the significance of the holiday, rattling off quotable quotes by King. None took the opportunity to take jabs at their political competitors.

Mr. Suozzi, though, received a tough line of questioning from ACORN’s Bertha Lewis about his affordable housing record in Nassau County.

After a few “excuse me’s” to quiet the crowd, Mr. Suozzi said Nassau County has made a lot of progress under his leadership and vowed to build affordable housing with the proceeds of a lucrative real estate deal. His answer received some applause.