Month: July 2006

New Doubts About Florida Win in 2000: Jeb’s Own Poll Showed Gore Ahead

Trish

A new book will likely show Florida was no redder in 2000 than Ohio was in 2004.

The new poll showed that Gore had pulled ahead by at least one percentage point. Even among white males the Texas governor was struggling.

Some dramatic new details about Jeb Bush and the final weeks of the 2000 presidential election in Florida are coming out in the new book One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century, by Tom Hamburger and (former St. Petersburg Times reporter) Peter Wallsten.

It seems Gov. Bush was a lot more worried about Al Gore’s Florida prospects than the Bush-Cheney campaign team in Austin, Texas, and became mighty frustrated that Karl Rove wasn’t listening to him seriously enough and taking his advice on Florida strategy.

“Something’s got to give,” Jeb Bush said at one tense meeting in the governor’s mansion with Bush-Cheney strategists, including Ken Mehlman and Chris Henick. “You guys are not listening.”

From the book: “In the final week, Jeb took matters into his own hands, ordering the state Republican Party to commission its own poll using his campaign’s Washington firm, Public Opinion Strategies. The new poll showed that Gore had pulled ahead by at least one percentage point. Even among white males the Texas governor was struggling. Sally Bradshaw, Jeb’s chief of staff, took the results to her boss.

“What do we do with these numbers?” she asked.

Jeb directed Bradshaw to call Austin immediately. But instead of moving swiftly to deal with the apparent erosion of support, Rove and his brain trust were furious that Jeb and his team had done a poll on their own. Campaign officials believed their numbers were better. The conversation grew so tense that at one point Bradshaw called Rove a jerk.

On Election Day, when the Florida problem finally became clear to Rove, Bradshaw advised him to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into phone calls, especially in the conservative Panhandle, to mobilize voters.

Katherine Harris is Off the Chain: Helps Herself to Campaign Funds for Home Renovations

Trish

We have to find something else for Katherine Harris to do after she loses her Florida senate race because she’s just too entertaining. Right when you think she can’t top herself, the woman pulls out another shocker.

This time…well here, see for yourself.

“I have never heard of a candidate taking money out of a campaign coffer like it’s an ATM”

Katherine Harris gave her campaign more than $3 million to run for Senate, but then took back $100,000 to finish renovating her “historic home in Washington, D.C.” her campaign revealed…

One of Harris’ many former campaign managers summed the situation up best.

“I have never heard of a candidate taking money out of a campaign coffer like it’s an ATM. It absolutely boggles my mind,” said former Harris campaign manager Jim Dornan. “This is a woman who has completely lost touch with reality. You don’t take your campaign contributors’ money, whether it’s yours or not, and spend it to renovate your house. This is absolutely insane.”

Sen. Bill Nelson’s folks were equally astounded by Harris’ bold and unerring ability to do the wrong thing.

Nelson’s campaign manager Chad Clanton was almost speechless when he heard about the report.

“I don’t know what to say. It’s just another bizarre chapter in the Katherine Harris campaign,” he said.

And remember the hooey a few months ago about putting all her worldly wealth — um, $10 million, not $3 million — into the campaign?

Harris told John Donvan, of “Nightline,” that she intends to sell all her personal assets to fund the race. “My husband has real estate, but I will not own anything.”

Since making a pledge last week to put $10 million of her money into the race, Harris has made the phrase “putting everything on the line” a new campaign theme.

“I am willing to take this widow’s mite, this pearl of great price, and put everything on the line,” she told Donvan. “No matter how much you have, are you willing to take what you have and sell it all for a great price?”

On second thought, maybe not…

Harris announced on national television that she would spend $10 million of her own money on the race, but Friday’s press release referred to the money as a loan.

Wake Up Rove, Coulter: War Protests No Longer Considered Unpatriotic

Trish

Sometimes you really don’t need a weatherman — or a pollster — to see which way the wind’s blowing. Support for the United States’ war in Iraq has come full circle in St. Augustine, Fla., the “Nation�s Oldest City.”

Instead of being flipped off, war protestors are being high-fived

Protests have taken place weekly or monthly since before the invasion and occupation, from the time Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice began beating the drums of war. In the beginning the protestors got flipped off. Now they’re being high-fived.

Now, in the fourth year of protests, the reaction demonstrators are getting is overwhelming positive, they say…

In the two hours the protesters spent under the hot sun Saturday, the number of people who screamed pro-Bush phrases and hateful words could be counted on one hand. The number of approving honks, thumbs up, thank yous, smiles and words of encouragement were in the hundreds.

“There’s another whole sector that’s changed their minds in the last six months,” [71-year-old protestor Pattie] Hunt said.

Still, protesting is oldster territory in my adopted hometown, and I suspect, in the larger environs. Younger people seem content, for whatever reason, to leave the heavy lifting to others.

“Most people are not supporting the war and not supporting Bush, but they’re not coming out,” [56-year-old Barbara] Mitchell said.

The protesters, who are mostly ages 50 to 80, said they keep showing up at the peace rallies to make their message seen, make someone stop and think, or even encourage someone to start a conversation with those near them about Bush and the war in Iraq.

[St. Augustine People for Peace and Justice] member Anne Galloway, 60, who also protested during the Vietnam war, said, “No one expects immediate gratification out here. I know there’s not a whole lot I can actually do, but I can do this.”

Nearby, Sue Davis, 54, held a sign reading “Honorable soldiers. Dishonorable ‘leader.'” Her son is in the military and is expected to be leaving for Iraq soon.

Mayor Newsom on Political Courage and Gay Marriage

Jon Ponder

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on the Democratic Party’s faint heart on same-sex marriage:

Rolling Stone: Listening to the Democratic opposition to the federal anti-gay marriage amendment, the party’s senators sounded more like Dixiecrats — talking about marriage as a states’s rights issue — rather than Democrats, pursuing this from a civil-rights perspective.

Gavin Newsom: Where’s the moral courage? It’s lost. I have the luxury of saying this from San Francisco, I certainly respect what it’s like saying this in parts of Kentucky or North Carolina, but also believe this issue won’t go away for the Democratic party we stand up on historic principles.

We’ve never run the 90-yard dash on equality — ever. The history of this party is civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, labor rights, gay and lesbian rights. And for us to hold up civil unions and say that separate is somehow now equal — when just a-year-and-a-half we ago celebrated the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board — is transparent to the people. They see through the Democrats.

Leader Boehner Follows Former Leader DeLay’s Path to K Street

Jon Ponder

House Majority Leader John Boehner never acknowledged the corruption in his party under the leadership of his predecessor, former Rep. Tom DeLay — so we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not a reformer. But now it’s clear he’s out to make the DeLay era look, well, conservative:

Representative John A. Boehner won the job of House majority leader amid a post-Abramoff clamor for an overhaul of lobbying and ethics rules. But nearly six months later, the changes are still tied up in Congress.

And far from trying to put the brakes on lobbyists and the money they channel into Republican coffers, Mr. Boehner, who has portrayed his ties to Washington lobbyists as something to be proud of, has stepped on the gas.

He has been holding fund-raisers at lobbyists’ offices, flying to political events on corporate planes and staying at a golf resort with a business group that has a direct stake in issues before Congress.

Tapping a rich vein of longstanding relationships with lobbyists and their corporate clients, Mr. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has raised campaign contributions at a rate of about $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by former Representative Tom DeLay after he became majority leader in 2002, a review of federal filings shows.

His fund-raising pace is roughly twice what it was before he became majority leader in February; in April his two federal committees took in $334,500 from political action committees, a monthly take that Mr. DeLay did not match for more than two years after the elections in 2002.

Mr. Boehner’s biggest donors include the political action committees of lobbying firms, drug and cigarette makers, banks, health insurers, oil companies and military contractors. Seven American Indian tribes with casinos have contributed $32,000.

German Child Screams in Terror at Sight of Pres. Bush’s Recent Weight Gain

Jon Ponder

Tubby: President Bush’s new girth has obviously terrified this German child. We’re not claiming to be the fittest of the fit, but the president is a notorious ridiculer of overweight people — hey, it’s what towel-snapping frat boys do — but we will take this opportunity to remind the president that if he would just resign today (and take Cheney with him), he could be back in Crawford tomorrow with nothing to do but work on his abs all day long.

Think about it, George. Nothing to do all day long but think about yourself. Come on! You know you want to…

The Curse of Joe’s Dead Intern is Upon Katherine Harris

Trish

Miami Herald:

This wasn’t any old Joe.

It was Joe Scarborough, host of the prime-time MSNBC show Scarborough Country and a former Pensacola Republican congressman who was courted last summer by national Republicans to run against Harris. But before he could announce he wouldn’t, Harris called major donors and suggested Scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level Harris staff members, a GOP donor and Scarborough.

”This [story] encapsulates everything wrong with her as a candidate,” Dornan said

”That was the first clue that something wasn’t right with Katherine Harris,” Scarborough told The Miami Herald in a recent interview, noting that a medical examiner found his staff member’s death was natural and not the result of foul play.

…Since then, Harris has been dogged by her connections to an indicted defense contractor and by heavy staff turnover from last fall through Thursday, when five top aides announced their departure a day after her spokesman quit. Her campaign had issued a news release Wednesday suggesting only spokesman Chris Ingram was leaving.

In explaining his decision to leave, campaign manager Glenn Hodas echoed predecessors Jamie Miller and Jim Dornan. Miller had said the campaign wasn’t good for Harris’ health. Dornan said Harris had been erratic, temperamental and sometimes unfair — and tried to blame him for the ”Joe’s dead intern” story when a furious Scarborough called, demanding to know what happened.

”This [story] encapsulates everything wrong with her as a candidate,” Dornan said. ‘She reacted without thinking. She made stuff up. She called people she had no business calling. And when confronted with the insanity of her — I use this term lightly — `strategy,’ she denied it and tried to blame someone else.”

All Hell’s Breaking Loose in Washington — Plame Sues Cheney, Libby and Rove

Buck Banks

Spook suit: The Associated Press is reporting that Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters, and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, have sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential adviser Karl Rove today, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, accuses Cheney, Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of revealing Plame’s CIA identity to exact revenge on Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration’s motives in Iraq.

Several news organizations wrote about Plame after syndicated columnist Robert Novak named her in a column on July 14, 2003. Novak’s column appeared eight days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.

The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in early 2002 to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Saddam Hussein’s government had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports, but the allegation nevertheless wound up in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address.

The lawsuit accuses Cheney, Libby, Rove and 10 unnamed administration officials or political operatives of putting the Wilsons and their children’s lives at risk by exposing Plame.

“This lawsuit concerns the intentional and malicious exposure by senior officials of the federal government of … (Plame), whose job it was to gather intelligence to make the nation safer and who risked her life for her country,” the Wilsons’ lawyers said in the lawsuit.

Libby is the only administration official charged in connection with the leak investigation. He faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges, accused of lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about when he learned Plame’s identity and what he subsequently told reporters.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told Rove’s lawyer last month that he had decided not to seek criminal charges against Rove.