History > 2006 > USA > Politics (III)

Candidate and Erring Spouse

Rose to Power in Partnership

September 29, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON and MIKE McINTIRE

To hear Jeanine F. Pirro’s supporters tell it, she is a wronged woman leg-shackled to a loser, an ambitious and effective wife brought low by her badly behaved husband, Albert.

Now her fears about his philandering have set off a federal investigation into possible eavesdropping and have threatened to derail her quest to become New York attorney general.

But to many people who have been watching the couple for decades, the Pirros look a lot like an echo of that other Westchester power couple, the Clintons, who are also political and financial partners whose fates and fortunes are profoundly intertwined. The Pirros live in Rye, the Clintons in Chappaqua.

When it comes to the Pirros, “There’s no question they are partners, there’s no question it’s a symbiotic relationship,” said Murray Richman, a Bronx defense lawyer who knows both of the Pirros. “There’s no question Jeanine would never be where she is without Al.”

Mr. Pirro, 59, a lawyer and lobbyist, has provided money and political contacts for his wife’s career and has financed their way of life: the fancy cars, the expensive houses, the pampered pot-bellied pigs. Her campaigns have been heavily financed by his business associates in Westchester, where he has a hand in many real estate projects. She, in turn, reflected her glamour and political power onto him.

“Picture those two as the celebrities, the royalty, the power brokers in Westchester,” said Bennett L. Gershman, a former prosecutor and professor of law at Pace University who has been a frequent critic of Ms. Pirro, 55.

The Pirros’ relationship has often come with a cost to Ms. Pirro, starting two decades ago when she dropped her bid for lieutenant governor in the face of questions about her husband’s ties to a company in the garbage-hauling business, an activity that was often linked to the mob. (At the time, she said Mr. Pirro was not comfortable revealing his clients.)

During Mr. Pirro’s 2000 trial on charges of tax evasion, it became clear that she had benefited from his largess. But prosecutors said they were not accusing her of knowing that her husband improperly deducted as business expenses items ranging from her two-seater Mercedes to a $135 gold mirror. More recently, mobsters were caught on tape claiming that Mr. Pirro had tipped them off to an investigation conducted by the Westchester district attorney’s office when Ms. Pirro ran it, a claim he denied.

Ms. Pirro’s loyalty to her husband has confounded those inside and outside the political world, and this week she hinted at why she stood by her man. At a news conference on Wednesday, she confirmed that she had talked to Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is now a security consultant, about planting a listening device on her husband’s boat. But she said no taping was done, and claimed that federal investigators looking into the matter were conducting a “political witch hunt.”

Then she said she was tired of having to justify her relationship with her husband. He is a “great father” to their children, she said — a teenage son and a daughter in college. “These are personal choices that I have made, and I shouldn’t have to keep explaining them.”

But earlier in her career, she was happy to talk about Mr. Pirro, whom she once described as “the most exciting person I knew: quick, bright, always doing, very much an activist.”

Jeanine and Albert Pirro met at Albany Law School, and were married in 1975, the year she graduated. She went to work in the Westchester district attorney’s office, eventually becoming head of its domestic violence unit.

Mr. Pirro, meanwhile, became one of the leading real estate lawyers in Westchester, representing developers of offices, garages, malls and movie theaters. He represented Donald J. Trump in his effort to buy an island off New Rochelle in Long Island Sound.

Raising money for Republicans like George E. Pataki, Mr. Pirro became “the consummate political insider,” in the words of Michael R. Edelman, a lawyer and Republican political commentator who has been a friend of the Pirros for three decades.

From her very first serious race — for judge in 1990 — Mr. Pirro used his connections to help his wife, according to a 1997 interview. That year, Mr. Pirro was under investigation for paying $5,000 to a Republican ward leader in Yonkers while he was seeking approvals for a theater complex there.

Mr. Pirro said the money was not a bribe but payment for a consulting arrangement that he initiated in order to gain inroads into the Republican establishment in Yonkers, where Ms. Pirro was largely unknown.

“What occurs is that we start to build a relationship in Yonkers,” Mr. Pirro said, “which is not atypical in a political power move.”

Mr. Pirro was never charged in connection with the payment, which was investigated by the same federal prosecutor, Elliott B. Jacobson, who Ms. Pirro said is involved in the current investigation of her dealings with Mr. Kerik.

Over the years, as Ms. Pirro’s stature within the Republican Party grew, she developed a solid fund-raising base of her own and could reliably attract contributions from an array of companies and wealthy individuals, many of them her neighbors in Westchester.

Still, some of her largest contributors continue to be her husband’s clients and business associates, who collectively have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to her campaigns.

Louis Cappelli, a longtime lobbying client and business partner of Mr. Pirro’s, gave $25,000 to her campaign for attorney general in July and $4,200 to her Senate campaign last year. Mr. Cappelli is a developer who, most recently, retained Mr. Pirro to assist with a project to develop a Catskills resort.

Mr. Cappelli’s wife, Kylie Travis, gave $33,900 to Ms. Pirro’s main campaign committee in March, and an additional $10,800 to two other committees related to her endorsement by the Conservative and Independence Parties, state campaign finance records show.

Another of Mr. Pirro’s business associates, Louis L. Ceruzzi, a Connecticut developer, has given $33,900 to Ms. Pirro’s attorney general campaign. Mr. Ceruzzi and people associated with his company gave $31,500 to her Senate race. Mr. Ceruzzi builds stores for Home Depot, a client of Mr. Pirro’s.

Mr. Cappelli declined to comment, and Mr. Ceruzzi did not return a message left at his office.

In 1993, Ms. Pirro was elected district attorney in Westchester, and her star continued to rise. Noted for her snappy suits and stiletto heels, she became a regular on television shows — Geraldo Rivera, “Nightline,” Court TV — commenting on cases from O. J. Simpson to Martha Stewart. In 1997, People magazine named her one of its “50 Most Beautiful People.”

In her personal life, there was trouble when DNA tests proved that Mr. Pirro had fathered a child with another woman while the Pirros were married.

Yet in terms of bad publicity, probably nothing compared to Mr. Pirro’s tax evasion case. In 1998, the Pirros paid close to $1 million in back taxes, but Mr. Pirro was indicted the following year, basically for billing personal expenses to his businesses and taking tax deductions on them.

Among the purchases were a portrait of the Pirro children commissioned by Ms. Pirro, the set for her cable television show when she was a judge, furniture for their vacation home in West Palm Beach, Fla., and drivers and maids (in uniforms) to tend to the children, the wine cellar and the family’s pet pot-bellied pigs.

In June 2000, a jury convicted Mr. Pirro on 34 counts of conspiracy, tax evasion and filing false returns. His brother, Anthony, an accountant, was also convicted. Albert Pirro served 11 months in federal prison.

While some people suggest that Mr. Pirro remained a formidable force in Westchester even after he got out of jail, others are not so sure. Mr. Edelman, the Republican lawyer, said Mr. Pirro is “out of the loop, not fund-raising, can’t pull strings, doesn’t have clout.”

Indeed, he is mostly famous these days for accumulating speeding tickets. William O’Shaughnessy, who owns two radio stations in New Rochelle and is friendly with both of the Pirros, said: “I think she loves him, and the feeling is mutual. These episodes are a cri de coeur. He’s saying, ‘Jeanine, don’t forget me!’ ”

Candidate and Erring Spouse Rose to Power in Partnership, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/nyregion/29marriage.html

New Campaign Ads Have a Theme:

Don’t Be Nice

September 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Republicans and Democrats began showing at least 30 new campaign advertisements in contested House and Senate districts across the country on Tuesday. Of those, three were positive.

For Republicans, it was the leading edge of a wave of negative advertisements against Democratic candidates, the product of more than a year of research into the personal and professional backgrounds of Democratic challengers.

“What do we really know about Angie Paccione?” an announcer asks about a Democratic challenger in Colorado. “Angie Paccione had 10 legal claims against her for bad debts and campaign violations. A court even ordered her wages garnished.”

For Democrats, it was part of a barrage intended to tie Republican incumbents to an unpopular Congress, criticize their voting records, portray them as captives to special interests and highlight embarrassing moments from their business histories.

In Tennessee, Democrats attacked Bob Corker, a Republican candidate for Senate, saying his construction company had hired illegal immigrants “while he looked the other way.”

The result of the dueling accusations has been what both sides described on Tuesday as the most toxic midterm campaign environment in memory. It is a jarring blend of shadowy images, breathless announcers, jagged music and a dizzying array of statistics, counterstatistics and vote citations — all intended to present the members of Congress and their challengers in the worst possible light. Democratic and Republican strategists said they expected over 90 percent of the advertisements to be broadcast by Nov. 7 to be negative.

At the national level, the two parties are battling over issues like national security and the war in Iraq. But Congressional races play out on local airwaves, and the flood of commercials amounts to a parallel campaign, one that is often about the characters of individual challengers and obscure votes cast by incumbents. Frequently lost in the back-and-forth are the protests of candidates who say the negative advertisements are full of deliberate distortions and exaggerations.

While Democrats have largely concentrated their efforts on the political records of Republicans, the Republicans have zeroed in more on candidates’ personal backgrounds.

Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said his investigators had been looking into prospective Democratic challengers since the summer of 2005.

“These candidates have been out there doing other things — they have never seen anything like this before,” Mr. Reynolds said of the Democratic challengers.

“We haven’t even begun to unload this freight train,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Democrats are learning just how deeply the Republicans have been digging. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who is running for a House seat, has spent much of the past few days trying to explain editorials unearthed by Republican researchers and spotlighted in new advertisements. Mr. Yarmuth wrote the editorials for his student newspapers, and in them he advocated the legalization of marijuana, among other things.

Across the airwaves, Democratic challengers are being attacked for having defaulted on student loans, declaring bankruptcy, skipping out on tax bills, and being a lobbyist, a trial lawyer or, even worse, a liberal.

Steve Kagan, a doctor and Democrat running for Congress in Wisconsin, is being attacked for having sued patients who did not pay their bills. “Why not just tell the truth, Dr. Millionaire?” said an advertisement shown Tuesday.

Heath Shuler, the former Washington Redskins quarterback running for Congress as a Democrat in North Carolina, is being attacked in advertisements for owning a business that was late in paying $69,000 in back taxes.

Democrats are equally aggressive in their advertisements, going after Republicans on votes, ties to campaign contributors and, in the case of challengers, their own personal foibles. In one Democratic advertisement, the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is shown in shadows wearing a hat as an announcer notes that he made contributions to Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican of Arizona.

Democrats are even attacking Republicans on what should be their signature issue, taxes, most recently in an upstate New York race between State Senator Raymond A. Meier, a Republican, and Michael A. Arcuri, a Democrat, to fill an open Republican seat. “Raymond Meier raised taxes in Oneida County,” the announcer says. “Meier raised taxes in Albany. What do you think he’ll do” in Washington?

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that relatively inexperienced candidates might be vulnerable, but that Republicans had even worse problems this year, with a record of votes that he said had provided a steady stream of damaging information for Democratic campaigns.

“Let me tell you: candidates with lesser name identification are vulnerable to being defined,” Mr. Emanuel said. “But candidates who are associated with an institution are also vulnerable. There are two sides to this sword.”

While some public officials have criticized negative advertisements as destructive and blamed them for discouraging voter turnout, other analysts say they have come, if only by default, to play an important role. At a time of diminishing local news coverage of House and Senate races, they are one of the few ways in which voters learn about the candidates and their positions.

“Negative ads are more likely to talk about policy than positive ads,” said Joel Rivlin, deputy director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which monitors political advertising. “How else do you find out about the flaws of a candidate besides a negative ad?”

Incumbent Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Democrats are being attacked on their voting records and positions taken on issues large and small.

With dollar figures scrolling across the screen, Democrats belittled Republicans for taking money from oil companies, suggesting that was a reason for high gasoline prices. “Drake voted for billions in tax breaks for the oil and gas industry,” said a Democratic advertisement aimed at Representative Thelma Drake, Republican of Virginia. “She gets her way, big oil and gas get theirs.”

In a blizzard of conflicting advertisements, Republicans and Democrats in all regions of the country are accusing one another of supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants or providing government benefits to them.

Bruce Braley, a Democratic candidate for a House seat in Iowa, attacked his opponent, Mike Whalen, on Social Security. “He actually backed George Bush’s half-baked plan to privatize Social Security,” an advertisement said. Mr. Whalen accused Mr. Braley, in his own advertisement, of wanting to pull out of Iraq and thus “risk the safety of our troops to advance his extreme liberal agenda.”

Mr. Emanuel said he had warned his candidates about this part of the campaign, though he made a practice of waiting until after they had signed on to run. “I tell them: ‘I’m glad you’re running. Now get ready. This is a tough business. This is the hellfire you are going to go through,’ ” he said.

Mr. Reynolds has long believed that it would be this kind of information about Democratic challengers and not voter opinion on, say, President Bush or the war in Iraq that would determine whether Republicans held Congress this year. By way of example, he pointed to the case of Mr. Shuler.

“When he was a quarterback, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t paying $69,000 in taxes,” Mr. Reynolds said. “When you run for Congress, it matters.”

Mr. Reynolds burst out laughing when asked why he was not using more positive advertisements. “If they moved things to the extent that negative ads move things, there would be more of them,” he said.

    New Campaign Ads Have a Theme: Don’t Be Nice, NYT, 27.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/politics/27ads.html

Stricter Voting Laws

Carve Latest Partisan Divide

September 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JOYCE PURNICK

MESA, Ariz. — Eva Charlene Steele, a recent transplant from Missouri, has no driver’s license or other form of state identification. So after voting all her adult life, Mrs. Steele will not be voting in November because of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register.

“I have mixed emotions,” said Mrs. Steele, 57, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a small room in an assisted-living center. “I could see where you would want to keep people who don’t belong in the country from voting, but there has to be an easier way.”

Russell K. Pearce, a leading proponent of the new requirement, offers no apologies.

“You have to show ID for almost everything — to rent a Blockbuster movie!” said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

Mrs. Steele and Mr. Pearce are two players in a spreading partisan brawl over new and proposed voting requirements around the country. Republicans say the laws are needed to combat fraud, especially among illegal immigrants. Democrats say there is minimal fraud, if any, and accuse Republicans of suppressing the votes of those least likely to have the required documentation — minorities, the poor and the elderly — who tend to vote for Democrats.

In tight races, Democrats say, the loss of votes could matter in November.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest in population, election officials said that 35 percent of new registrations were rejected for insufficient proof of citizenship last year and that 17 percent had been rejected so far this year. It is not known how many of the rejected registrants were not citizens or were unable to prove their citizenship because they had lost or could not locate birth certificates and other documents.

In Indiana, Daniel J. Parker, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said: “Close to 10 percent of registered voters here do not have driver’s licenses. Who does that impact most? Seniors and minorities.”

A law in Indiana requiring voters to have a state-issued photo ID is being challenged in the federal courts, as are the voting laws in Arizona and in many other states.

Republicans say the Democratic complaints are self-serving.

“Democrats believe they represent stupid people who are not smart enough to vote,” said Randy Pullen, a Republican national committeeman from Arizona who championed a statewide initiative on the new requirements. “I do not.”

The new measures include tighter controls over absentee balloting and stronger registration rules. The most contentious are laws in three states — Georgia, Indiana and Missouri — where people need government-issued picture ID’s to vote, and provisions here in Arizona that tightened voter ID requirements at the polls and imposed the proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration.

Several other states are considering similar measures, and the House of Representatives, voting largely along party lines, recently passed a national voter ID measure that is headed for the Senate.

The debate in Washington and the state capitals has been heated, with only one note of agreement: that voting, once burdened by poll taxes and other impediments, is as divisive an issue as ever.

“I have never seen such a sinister plot — I won’t say plot, I’ll say measure — as to target a group of people to try to make it difficult for them to vote,” said Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia who is fighting the new identification law in his state.

Mr. Pearce, the Arizona Republican, said: “We know people are approached to register whether they are illegal or not. We know the left side’s agenda.”

Underlying the debate is the fundamental question of voter fraud and whether people who are not who they say they are — impostors — are voting. Some suggest that the problem is so widespread that the standard methods of proving identification, like a utility bill and a signature, are no longer adequate.

“I know a lot of allegations of voter fraud, especially by noncitizens, that may have been able to tip the balance in favor of one candidate,” said Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado and an advocate of tough immigration laws.

The tighter voting rules appeal strongly to people worried about illegal immigration, Mr. Tancredo said.

There is no data, however, to show more than isolated instances of so-called impostor voting by illegal immigrants or others.

Experts in election law say most voter fraud involves absentee balloting, which is unaffected by the new photo identification laws. Few people, they say, will risk a felony charge to vote illegally at the polls, and few illegal immigrants want to interact with government officials — even people running a polling place.

Of Arizona’s 2.7 million registered voters, 238 were believed to have been noncitizens in the last 10 years; only 4 were believed to have voted; and none were impostors, plaintiffs stipulate in their lawsuit to overturn the law, statistics the state has not challenged. Nor is there evidence of impostor voting in Georgia, Indiana or Missouri.

Advocates for the new laws do not dispute the figures — just their relevance.

Thor Hearne, a lawyer for the American Center for Voting Rights, a conservative advocacy group, who was President Bush’s election law counsel in 2004, says there is little proof of impostor voting because few have looked for it.

Todd Rokita, the Indiana secretary of state, agrees. “Critics will say there is no wholesale fraud, and to that I say you don’t understand the nature of election fraud,” said Mr. Rokita, a Republican. “A lot of this goes unreported. Until you have a mechanism in place like photo ID’s, you don’t have anything to report.”

Arizona’s new rules were passed as part of Proposition 200, a referendum that denies certain state and local benefits to illegal immigrants. It got 56 percent of the vote two years ago, after Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, vetoed a Republican-backed measure passed by the Legislature.

Rooted in the state’s debates over illegal immigration, the measure is the broadest in the country, requiring a driver’s license, a state photo ID or two nonphotographic forms of identification at the polls. Lawyers for the Navajo Nation and other American Indian tribes say the provision particularly discriminates against Indians, many of whom are too poor to drive or are without electricity or telephone bills, alternative forms of identification.

Because the Arizona measures have been in place for less than two years, there is limited documentation of their impact. Lawyers fighting the rules say the measures have prevented thousands of people from registering to vote, particularly in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, a city with many Latino voters.

Supporters of the measures say elections have gone smoothly. Critics point to individual cases, like confusion at the polls in the primary elections earlier this month. They say that people without adequate documentation have been turned away or required to file “conditional provisional” ballots that are counted only if voters follow up — and that not all of them do.

Deborah Lopez, a Democratic political consultant in Phoenix, said that the once simple matter of registering voters at a rally or a fiesta now required labor-intensive door-to-door visits.

It was during a registration drive at her assisted-living center, Desert Palms, that Mrs. Steele learned she could not vote. Disabled, with a son, an Army staff sergeant, on active duty, she left Missouri recently to stay with her brother and subsequently moved into the center.

Lacking a driver’s license, she could get a new state identity card, but she said she had neither the $12 to pay for it nor, because she uses a wheelchair, the transportation to pick it up.

“It makes me a little angry because my son is fighting now in Iraq for others to have the right to vote, and I can’t,” said Mrs. Steele, who submitted an affidavit in the suit against the Arizona law.

Asked if she was a Republican or a Democrat, Mrs. Steele said she was neither: “I vote for the best person for the job.”

Or, she added, she used to.

    Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide, NYT, 26.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/us/politics/26voting.html

Digital Domain

The Big Gamble on Electronic Voting

September 24, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDALL STROSS

HANGING chads made it difficult to read voter intentions in 2000. Hotel minibar keys may do the same for the elections in November.

The mechanics of voting have undergone a major change since the imbroglio that engulfed presidential balloting in 2000. Embarrassed by an election that had to be settled by the Supreme Court, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which provided funds to improve voting equipment.

From 2003 to 2005, some $3 billion flew out of the federal purse for equipment purchases. Nothing said “state of the art” like a paperless voting machine that electronically records and tallies votes with the tap of a touch screen. Election Data Services, a political consulting firm that specializes in redistricting, estimates that about 40 percent of registered voters will use an electronic machine in the coming elections.

One brand of machine leads in market share by a sizable margin: the AccuVote, made by Diebold Election Systems. Two weeks ago, however, Diebold suffered one of the worst kinds of public embarrassment for a company that began in 1859 by making safes and vaults.

Edward W. Felten, a professor of computer science at Princeton, and his student collaborators conducted a demonstration with an AccuVote TS and noticed that the key to the machine’s memory card slot appeared to be similar to one that a staff member had at home.

When he brought the key into the office and tried it, the door protecting the AccuVote’s memory card slot swung open obligingly. Upon examination, the key turned out to be a standard industrial part used in simple locks for office furniture, computer cases, jukeboxes — and hotel minibars.

Once the memory card slot was accessible, how difficult would it be to introduce malicious software that could manipulate vote tallies? That is one of the questions that Professor Felten and two of his students, Ariel J. Feldman and J. Alex Haldeman, have been investigating. In the face of Diebold’s refusal to let scientists test the AccuVote, the Princeton team got its hands on a machine only with the help of a third party.

Even before the researchers had made the serendipitous discovery about the minibar key, they had released a devastating critique of the AccuVote’s security. For computer scientists, they supplied a technical paper; for the general public, they prepared an accompanying video. Their short answer to the question of the practicality of vote theft with the AccuVote: easily accomplished.

The researchers demonstrated the machine’s vulnerability to an attack by means of code that can be introduced with a memory card. The program they devised does not tamper with the voting process. The machine records each vote as it should, and makes a backup copy, too.

Every 15 seconds or so, however, the rogue program checks the internal vote tallies, then adds and subtracts votes, as needed, to reach programmed targets; it also makes identical changes in the backup file. The alterations cannot be detected later because the total number of votes perfectly matches the total number of voters. At the end of the election day, the rogue program erases itself, leaving no trace.

On Sept. 13, when Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy posted its findings, Diebold issued a press release that shrugged off the demonstration and analysis. It said Princeton’s AccuVote machine was “two generations old” and “not used anywhere in the country.”

I spoke last week with Professor Felten, who said he could not imagine how a newer version of the AccuVote’s software could protect itself against this kind of attack. But he also said he would welcome the opportunity to test it. I called Diebold to see if it would lend Princeton a machine.

Mark G. Radke, director for marketing at Diebold, said that the AccuVote machines were certified by state election officials and that no academic researcher would be permitted to test an AccuVote supplied by the company. “This is analogous to launching a nuclear missile,” he said enigmatically, adding that Diebold had to restrict “access to the buttons.”

I persisted. Suppose, I asked, that a test machine were placed in the custodial care of the United States Election Assistance Commission, a government agency. Mr. Radke demurred again, saying the company’s critics were so focused on software that they “have no appreciation of physical security” that protects the machines from intrusion.

This same point was featured prominently in the company’s press release that criticized the Princeton study, saying it “all but ignores physical security and election procedures.” It is a criticism that collides with the facts on Page 5 of the Princeton study, where the authors provide step-by-step details of how to install the malicious software in the AccuVote.

Even before the minibar lineage of the AccuVote key had been discovered, the researchers had learned that the lock was easily circumvented: one of them could consistently pick it in less than 10 seconds.

If skeptics cannot believe what they read about the ease of manipulating an election, they can watch the 10-minute online video: the AccuVote lock is picked, a memory card is inserted and the malicious software is loaded; the machine is rebooted, and within 60 seconds the machine is ready to throw the election in favor of any specified candidate.

Computer scientists with expertise in security issues have been sounding alarms for years. David L. Dill at Stanford and Douglas W. Jones at the University of Iowa were among the first to alert the public to potential problems. But the possibility of vote theft by electronic means remained nothing more than a hypothesis — until the summer of 2003, when the code for the AccuVote’s operating system was discovered on a Diebold server that was publicly accessible.

The code quickly made its way into researchers’ hands. Suspected vulnerabilities were confirmed, and never-contemplated sloppiness was added to the list of concerns. At a computer security conference, the AccuVote’s anatomy was analyzed closely by a team: Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins; two junior associates, Tadayoshi Kohno and Adam Stubblefield; and Dan S. Wallach, an associate professor in computer science at Rice. They described how the AccuVote software design rendered the machine vulnerable to manipulation by smart cards. They found that the standard protections to prevent alteration of the internal code were missing; they characterized the system as “far below even the most minimal security standards.”

Professor Rubin has just published a nontechnical memoir, “Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting” (Morgan Road Books), that describes how his quiet life was upended after he and his colleagues published their paper. He recalls in his book that Diebold’s lawyers sent each of the paper’s authors a letter threatening the possibility of legal action, warning them to “exercise caution” in interviews with the press lest they make a statement that would “appear designed to improperly impair and impede Diebold’s existing and future business.” Johns Hopkins rallied to his side, however, and the university’s president, William R. Brody, commended him for being on the case.

Recently, there have been signs that states are having second thoughts about trusting their AccuVote equipment. Officials in California, Florida and Pennsylvania have been outspoken about their concerns. In Maryland earlier this year, the state House of Delegates voted 137 to 0 in favor of a bill to prohibit the use of its AccuVote machines because they were not equipped to generate a paper audit trail. (The state Senate did not take up the measure and it died.)

Professor Rubin favors the use of touch screens only for “ballot marking” — capturing a voter’s intended choice — then printing out a paper ballot with only the voter’s chosen candidates that the voter can visually check. Election officials can then use the slip to tally votes with an optical scanner made by a different manufacturer.

Manual audits of the tallies in at least 1 percent of all precincts, as is now required in California, would provide a transparent method of checking for integrity. Should a full recount be necessary, the paper ballots, containing only the selected names, provide unambiguous records of original intent.

“Let computers do what they do best,” Professor Rubin said, “and let paper do what it does best.”

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University.

    The Big Gamble on Electronic Voting, NYT, 24.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/business/yourmoney/24digi.html

Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines

September 24, 2006
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A growing number of state and local officials are getting cold feet about electronic voting technology, and many are making last-minute efforts to limit or reverse the rollout of new machines in the November elections.

Less than two months before voters head to the polls, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland this week became the most recent official to raise concerns publicly. Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said he lacked confidence in the state’s new $106 million electronic voting system and suggested a return to paper ballots.

Dozens of states have adopted electronic voting technology to comply with federal legislation in 2002 intended to phase out old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines after the “hanging chads” confusion of the 2000 presidential election.

But some election officials and voting experts say they fear that the new technology may have only swapped old problems for newer, more complicated ones. Their concerns became more urgent after widespread problems with the new technology were reported this year in primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere.

This year, about one-third of all precincts nationwide are using the electronic voting technology for the first time, raising the chance of problems at the polls as workers struggle to adjust to the new system.

“I think there is good reason for concern headed into the midterm elections,” said Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat and former Ohio governor who was co-chairman of a study of new machines for the National Research Council with Richard L. Thornburgh, a Republican and former governor of Pennsylvania.

“You have to train the poll workers,” Mr. Celeste said, “especially since many of them are of a generation for whom this technology is a particular challenge. You need to have plans in place to relocate voters to another precinct if machines don’t work, and I just don’t know whether these steps have been taken.”

Paperless touch-screen machines have been the biggest source of consternation, and with about 40 percent of registered voters nationally expected to cast their ballots on these machines in the midterm elections, many local officials fear that the lack of a paper trail will leave no way to verify votes in case of fraud or computer failure.

As a result, states are scrambling to make last-minute fixes before the technology has its biggest test in November, when voter turnout will be higher than in the primaries, many races will be close and the threat of litigation will be ever-present.

“We have the real chance of recounts in the coming elections, and if you have differences between the paper trail and the electronic record, which number prevails?” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of the Election Law blog, www.electionlawblog.org.

Professor Hasen found that election challenges filed in court grew to 361 in 2004, up from 197 in 2000. “What you have coming up is the intersection of new technology and an unclear legal regime,” he said.

Like Mr. Ehrlich, other state officials have decided on a late-hour change of course. In January, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico decided to reverse plans to use the touch-screen machines, opting instead to return to paper ballots with optical scanners. Last month, the Connecticut secretary of state, Susan Bysiewicz, decided to do the same.

“I didn’t want my state to continue being an embarrassment like Ohio and Florida every four years,” said Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, adding, “I also thought we needed to restore voter confidence, and that wasn’t going to happen with the touch-screen machines.”

In Pennsylvania, a state senator introduced a bill last week that would require every precinct to provide voters with the option to use paper ballots, which would involve printing extra absentee ballots and having them on site. A similar measure is being considered on the federal level.

In the last year or so, at least 27 states have adopted measures requiring a paper trail, which has often involved replacing paperless touch-screen machines with ones that have a printer attached.

But even the systems backed up by paper have problems. In a study released this month, the nonpartisan Election Science Institute found that about 10 percent of the paper ballots sampled from the May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were uncountable because printers had jammed and poll workers had loaded the paper in backward.

Lawsuits have been filed in Colorado, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia seeking to prohibit the use of touch-screen machines.

Deborah L. Markowitz, the Vermont secretary of state and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said that while there might be some problems in November, she expected them to be limited and isolated.

“The real story of the recent primary races was how few problems there were, considering how new this technology is,” said Ms. Markowitz, a Democrat. “The failures we did see, like in Maryland, Ohio and Missouri, were small and most often from poll workers not being prepared.”

Many states have installed the machines in the past year because of a federal deadline. If states wanted to take advantage of federal incentives offered by the Help America Vote Act, they had to upgrade their voting machines by 2006.

In the primary last week in Maryland, several counties reported machine-related problems, including computers that misidentified the party affiliations of voters, electronic voter registration lists that froze and voting-machine memory cards whose contents could not be electronically transmitted. In Montgomery County, election workers did not receive access cards to voting machines for the county’s 238 precincts on time, forcing as many as 12,000 voters to use provisional paper ballots until they ran out.

“We had a bad experience in the primary that led to very long lines, which means people get discouraged and leave the polls without voting,” said Governor Ehrlich, who is in a tight re-election race and has been accused by his critics of trying to use the voting issue to motivate his base. “We have hot races coming up in November and turnout will be high, so we can expect lines to be two or three times longer. If even a couple of these machines break down, we could be in serious trouble.”

Problems during primaries elsewhere have been equally severe.

In the Illinois primary in March, Cook County officials delayed the results of the county board elections for a week because of human and mechanical problems at hundreds of sites with new voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.

In the April primary in Tarrant County, Tex., machines made by Hart InterCivic counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were cast. The problem was attributed to programming errors, not hacking.

In the past year, the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Congressional Research Service have released reports raising concerns about the security of electronic machines.

Advocates of the new technology dispute the conclusions.

“Many of these are exaggerated accusations by a handful of vocal activists,” said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems, one of the largest sellers of touch-screen machines. “But if you want to talk about fraud and tabulation error, the newer technology is far more accurate.”

Mr. Radke cited a study from the California Institute of Technology that found that between the 2000 election, when touch-screen machines were not used, and the 2004 election, when they were, there was a 40 percent reduction in voter error in Maryland, making the vote there the most accurate in the country.

“There is always the potential for human error,” Mr. Radke said, “but that is easily correctible.”

But critics say bugs and hackers could corrupt the machines.

A Princeton University study released this month on one of Diebold’s machines — a model that Diebold says it no longer uses — found that hackers could easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable the machines and change the vote totals.

Mr. Radke dismissed the concerns about hackers and bugs as most often based on unrealistic scenarios.

“We don’t leave these machines sitting on a street corner,” he said. “But in one of these cases, they gave the hackers complete and unfettered access to the machines.”

Warren Stewart, legislative director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting, said that after poll workers are trained to use the machines in the days before an election, many counties send the machines home with the workers. “That seems like pretty unfettered access to me,” Mr. Stewart said.

    Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines, NYT, 24.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/us/politics/24voting.html?hp&ex=1159156800&en=f3f4c9a3bc120557&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Texas Democrats File Suit Against Voting Fraud Law

September 23, 2006
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Sept. 22 — In the latest of the nation’s skirmishes over voting rights, Texas Democrats have sued two top Republican state officials over an antifraud law that the suit says is being used to intimidate minority voters casting ballots by mail.

The action, filed Thursday in federal court in Marshall, challenges both the constitutionality of the law and the way it is being enforced. It contends that Attorney General Greg Abbott and Secretary of State Roger Williams are exaggerating the threat of election fraud and selectively applying the statute, enacted in 2003, so that they can “suppress voting by disfavored groups” that generally support Democrats.

The law makes it a crime in certain cases to carry someone else’s filled-out ballot to the mailbox, to possess another person’s blank ballot or to provide absentee ballot assistance to anyone who has not asked for it.

One plaintiff, Gloria Meeks, a 69-year-old Fort Worth woman who said she was being investigated for helping elderly and disabled voters cast ballots, provided a sworn statement saying two state investigators “peeped into my bathroom window not once but twice while I was in my bathroom drying off from my bath.”

A statement issued by Mr. Abbott’s office did not address that accusation directly but said the investigators had acted professionally, and added, “It is not uncommon for the target of a criminal investigation to make baseless allegations against law enforcement in order to deflect attention from the serious criminal allegations they face.”

Responding to the suit in another statement, the state’s solicitor general, Ted Cruz, dismissed it as baseless and called the plaintiffs “a combination of political operatives and individual criminals who have already pleaded guilty to voter fraud.”

“There are open investigations against members of both parties,” Mr. Cruz said in an interview, “but the vast majority of complaints that have come in have concerned alleged criminal conduct in the Democratic primary and party elections.”

Mr. Cruz also noted that the law had been sponsored by a Democratic member of the Texas House.

In an era of exceptionally partisan politics, the question of who gets to vote has become a most contentious one, especially now as the midterm elections approach. This week, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that beginning in 2010 would deny the vote to the millions of people who lack a birth certificate, a passport or proof of naturalization. Last year, Georgia was barred from requiring voters to produce a government-issued photo identification card. And in 2004 Florida had to discard a list, intended to keep felons from voting, because it had neglected to include Hispanics.

The new suit was filed in the name of the Texas Democratic Party and six voters by J. Gerald Hebert, a Virginia lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor specializing in voting rights. The plaintiffs include two Texarkana women, Willie Ray, a member of the City Council, and Jamillah Johnson, who have both pleaded guilty and been sentenced to probation for violating the 2003 law by handling other people’s votes.

Another plaintiff, Parthenia McDonald, 78, of Fort Worth said she had joined the suit because she used a wheelchair and needed help to vote. “I can’t even get out of my front door, so I couldn’t go to my mailbox,” Ms. McDonald said.

Under the statute, assisting voters with mail-in ballots is legal if done by a member of the family or household or someone the voter voluntarily designates in writing on the envelope. The suit says these guidelines are often too vague to interpret properly. It says the restrictions and the way the state has enforced them disenfranchise the poor, people who speak no English and others overwhelmingly likely to vote Democratic.

But the former Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, Steven D. Wolens of Dallas, took sharp issue with the suit’s claim that the “plain intent” of the measure was to suppress the minority vote “and to squelch completely legitimate, nonfraudulent activities of civic organizations, including political parties.”

“That was not my intent,” Mr. Wolens said in an interview. “My purpose was to eliminate vote fraud in absentee balloting.”

He said he and his wife, Mayor Laura Miller of Dallas, had both been victimized as political candidates by “rigged elections with people harvesting votes.”

Mr. Wolens, a lawyer who is no longer in the Legislature, said he had not examined the suit and could not say whether his statute was now being used to suppress minority or Democratic voting.

Attorney General Abbott, a former Texas judge running for re-election this year, has long highlighted his efforts against voter fraud, calling it “an epidemic” and likening it to the infamous ballot-box stuffing in South Texas that won the 1948 Democratic senatorial primary for Lyndon B. Johnson.

But the suit said he had prosecuted only about eight people under the new law, all affiliated with the Democrats and all but one African-American or Hispanic.

Mr. Cruz, the solicitor general, said that other cases involving both parties were under investigation and that in any case the attorney general did not initiate voting fraud cases but received them from local authorities.

In the case of Ms. Meeks, the woman who said investigators had peeped into her bathroom, Angela Hale, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, called her “the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation that stems from a complaint referred to the office of attorney general by a citizen in Tarrant County.”

“The investigation of Ms. Meeks has been conducted professionally and properly, to the full extent allowed by law,” Ms. Hale said in a statement.

Ms. Hale also defended Mr. Abbott’s use, in a PowerPoint presentation on voter fraud, of a postage stamp about sickle cell anemia, an ailment found chiefly among African-Americans, to show how possibly fraudulent mail ballots were examined for suspicious similarities. But she said another exhibit in the presentation, a “clip art” illustration of black voters in line at a polling booth, had been removed.

    Texas Democrats File Suit Against Voting Fraud Law, NYT, 23.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/us/politics/23suppress.html

U.S. Senate Democrats decry voter photo ID bill

Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:01 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats on Friday said legislation that would require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections was little more than a poll tax and urged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to stop the bill.

The measure, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week largely along party lines, would require voters to present at the polls a photo identification that also proves citizenship for federal elections beginning in 2010.

Republicans said proof of citizenship is needed to crack down on voter fraud and ensure illegal immigrants do not vote in U.S. elections.

Democrats said there is no evidence of widespread abuse and that the cost and effort required to get such a document would discourage poor voters, the elderly and people with disabilities.

"Worst of all, this bill recalls a dark era in our nation when individuals were required to pay a poll tax to cast their ballot and has been termed a 21st century poll tax," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and three other Democrats wrote in a letter to Frist, a Tennessee Republican.

Democrats said the only identification that would meet that requirement is a passport, which costs $97 to obtain. Only about 25 percent of Americans have passports.

Democrats fear Republicans will attach the photo identification measure to a domestic security spending bill the House and Senate could vote on next week.

They say such a move would be politically motivated to draw Democratic opposition to the homeland security bill that otherwise would easily pass just weeks ahead of the November 7 congressional elections.

If the identification measure were enacted it would likely face legal challenges. Recently judges in Missouri and Georgia ruled unconstitutional state laws requiring voter photo identification.

    U.S. Senate Democrats decry voter photo ID bill, R, 22.9.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-23T020123Z_01_N22219956_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-ELECTIONS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College

September 22, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

LOS ALTOS HILLS, Calif., Sept. 21 — In his early 20’s, John R. Koza and fellow graduate students invented a brutally complicated board game based on the Electoral College that became a brief cult hit and recently fetched $100 for an antique version on eBay.

By his 30’s, Dr. Koza was a co-inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket and found it one of the few sure ways to find fortune with the lottery.

Now, a 63-year-old eminence among computer scientists who teaches genetic programming at Stanford, Dr. Koza has decided to top off things with an end run on the Constitution. He has concocted a plan for states to skirt the Electoral College system legally to insure the election of whichever presidential candidate receives the most votes nationwide.

“When people complain that it’s an end run,” Dr. Koza said, “I just tell them, ‘Hey, an end run is a legal play in football.’ ’’

The first fruit of his effort, a bill approved by the California legislature that would allocate the state’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, sits on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. The governor has to decide by Sept. 30 whether to sign it, a decision that may well determine whether Dr. Koza’s scheme takes flight or becomes another relic in the history of efforts to kill the Electoral College.

“It would be a major development if California enacts this thing,” said Tim Storey, an analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “It will definitely transform it from a smoldering thing into a fire.’’

There have been many efforts over the decades to kill the Electoral College, the little-known and widely misunderstood body that actually elects the president based on the individual states that a candidate wins. Most recently, former Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois and former Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana spearheaded a drive, Fair Vote, for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

The brainstorm behind Dr. Koza’s effort, led by a seven-month-old group, National Popular Vote, was to abandon that approach and focus on creating interstate compacts. Those are contracts that bind states over issues like nuclear waste and port authorities.

Dr. Koza’s compact, if approved by enough legislatures, would commit a state’s electors to vote for the candidate who wins the most national votes, even if the candidate loses in that state.

Robert Hardaway, a professor of law at the University of Denver who wrote “The Electoral College and the Constitution: The Case for Preserving Federalism” (1994), has counted 704 efforts to change or abolish the Electoral College. Most, he said, were ill advised, including this one.

“It’s legal, but it would be a terrible idea,” Professor Hardaway said. “Look at the trauma the country went through having a recount in Florida. Suppose what would happen, in the face of a close national election, if we had to have a recount in every little hamlet.”

Dr. Koza, whose dissertation at the University of Michigan was titled “On Inducing a Nontrivial, Parsimonious Grammar for a Given Sample of Sentences,” said the idea came to him in early 2004, although he and Barry Fadem did not go public with it until February. Working with state lotteries as chief executive of Scientific Games in Atlanta, he had learned how interstate compacts work. Multistate lotteries like Powerball are based on such compacts. What, he wondered, if a similar agreement bound states together to thwart the Electoral College?

“The bottom line is that the system has outlived its usefulness,” said Assemblyman Thomas J. Umberg, the Anaheim Democrat who sponsored the bill here. “It’s past time that Americans should elect their president by direct vote of the people.”

Mr. Umberg and his staff met some of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s top staff members on Wednesday and came away encouraged about the prospects of the legislation. Although they received no commitment, it was clear that the governor, a Republican, was seriously considering the question and had not made up his mind about it, Mr. Umberg said.

“It’s anybody’s guess which way he’ll go,” Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, an Irvine Republican who opposes the bill, said. “He’s not your normal partisan politician.”

National Popular Vote bills were proposed in six legislatures this year. California’s was the only one to pass it, though the Colorado Senate voted for a version. The group has found sponsors for bills in 22 states next year.

“And we fully expect that by Jan. 1 we will be able to say that we have sponsors in all 50 states,” said Mr. Fadem, an East Bay lawyer who specializes in referendums and initiatives and is president of National Popular Vote.

The goal is to create a snowball effect. The measures may be unlikely to pass in time for the 2008 presidential race, Mr. Fadem said, but the idea could find enough traction as an issue for candidates to address.

As attractive as it is to guarantee the White House to the winner of the national vote, Dr. Koza said, he has other goals in mind.

“More important,’’ he said, “is changing the way presidential campaigns are conducted in this country. Now, the candidates spend almost all of their time in a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida and ignore the rest of the country. This would force candidates to campaign nationally for every vote.”

Mr. Storey said he remained skeptical that the idea would pass in enough legislatures to take effect. Almost certainly, he said, the states that are usually highly contested will oppose it, fearing the loss of attention and campaign spending. Also, Mr. Storey said, the battle might become partisan, as it did in California, where just one Republican legislator ended up supporting the bill.

Mr. DeVore said, “I just took a look at who was behind the movement, and they were left-wing partisans.”

Dr. Koza acknowledged that he had been a Democratic elector, twice, and his living room is festooned with photographs of him beside former Vice President Al. Gore and former President Bill Clinton.

He insisted, however, that the movement was fundamentally nonpartisan, and he pointed to the many Republicans who had agreed to co-sponsor bills on his plan. In New York, five lawmakers, all Republican, sponsored the bill this year.

Jerry F. Hough, a professor of political science at Duke, said that he was “an enthusiastic supporter of a popular vote for president,” but that he had problems with Dr. Koza’s plan. Professor Hough said he would like runoff provisions, for instance.

He also agreed conservatives could see the effort as a liberal stealth move to regain lost power, comparing it to the Republicans’ successful effort, after Franklin D. Roosevelt won four terms, to limit presidents to two.

“The two-term limit was clearly in the face of F.D.R.,” Professor Hough said. “And I would say this is clearly in the face of Al Gore’s loss in 2000.”

    Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College, NYT, 22.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/politics/22electoral.html?hp&ex=1158984000&en=576ef360d016d7bb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Keep Away the Vote

September 21, 2006
The New York Times

One of the cornerstones of the Republican Party’s strategy for winning elections these days is voter suppression, intentionally putting up barriers between eligible voters and the ballot box. The House of Representatives took a shameful step in this direction yesterday, voting largely along party lines for onerous new voter ID requirements. Laws of this kind are unconstitutional, as an array of courts have already held, and profoundly undemocratic. The Senate should not go along with this cynical, un-American electoral strategy.

The bill the House passed yesterday would require people to show photo ID to vote in 2008. Starting in 2010, that photo ID would have to be something like a passport, or an enhanced kind of driver’s license or non-driver’s identification, containing proof of citizenship. This is a level of identification that many Americans simply do not have.

The bill was sold as a means of deterring vote fraud, but that is a phony argument. There is no evidence that a significant number of people are showing up at the polls pretending to be other people, or that a significant number of noncitizens are voting.

Noncitizens, particularly undocumented ones, are so wary of getting into trouble with the law that it is hard to imagine them showing up in any numbers and trying to vote. The real threat of voter fraud on a large scale lies with electronic voting, a threat Congress has refused to do anything about.

The actual reason for this bill is the political calculus that certain kinds of people — the poor, minorities, disabled people and the elderly — are less likely to have valid ID. They are less likely to have cars, and therefore to have drivers’ licenses. There are ways for nondrivers to get special ID cards, but the bill’s supporters know that many people will not go to the effort if they don’t need them to drive.

If this bill passed the Senate and became law, the electorate would likely become more middle-aged, whiter and richer — and, its sponsors are anticipating, more Republican.

Court after court has held that voter ID laws of this kind are unconstitutional. This week, yet another judge in Georgia struck down that state’s voter ID law.

Last week, a judge in Missouri held its voter ID law to be unconstitutional. Supporters of the House bill are no doubt hoping that they may get lucky, and that the current conservative Supreme Court might uphold their plan.

America has a proud tradition of opening up the franchise to new groups, notably women and blacks, who were once denied it. It is disgraceful that, for partisan political reasons, some people are trying to reverse the tide, and standing in the way of people who have every right to vote.

    Keep Away the Vote, NYT, 21.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/opinion/21thu1.html

For Governors in G.O.P. Slots, a Liberal Turn

September 20, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 — Here are the things that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be bragging about on the campaign trail: an initiative to lower greenhouse gases with the onus on big companies, a $1 increase in the state’s minimum wage and a program to open up access to prescription drugs.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who six months ago fashioned himself a Republican reformer bent on hobbling entrenched Democratic institutions, is not just tolerating positions generally associated with liberal candidates. Rather, he is using them as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, marking the first time in a generation that a Republican governor here has clung to the left during a re-election fight.

The strategy is not unique to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s campaign. Across the nation’s 36 races for governor, candidates in states heavy with moderate or Democratic voters are playing up their liberal positions on issues including stem cell research, abortion and the environment, while remaining true to their party’s platform on taxes and streamlining government.

In Massachusetts, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, who is seeking to fill the seat that will be vacated by Gov. Mitt Romney, has openly split with Mr. Romney on abortion rights and stem cell research; her views are shared by the Republican candidate for governor in Illinois, Judy Baar Topinka, who also supports civil unions for same-sex couples.

In Maryland, the Republican incumbent, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., is pushing for increasing state aid for programs for the disabled and imposing tighter restrictions on coal-fired plants; the Republican governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, opposes the death penalty. In Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell also parts ways with the Republican Party on civil unions and financing for stem cell research.

Governing Republican and campaigning Democratic is not a new technique; George E. Pataki, the New York governor, has made a career winning elections as a Republican in a mostly Democratic state. But political experts say that the strategy is particularly pervasive this year, as Republicans seek to distance themselves from an unpopular president and to respond to what is widely recognized as polarization fatigue among many voters.

“The conservative side of Republican party has been so dominant in recent years that we haven’t seen a lot of this phenomenon at work until this year,” said Bruce E. Cain, the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now, Mr. Cain said, the easiest way for Republicans to “stay competitive is to take deviations from the standard G.O.P. lines.”

In many ways, the strategy reflects the dynamics of local contests, in which voters are willing to overlook the party affiliation of a candidate if they believe he stands with them on one or two important issues, or pushes through policies that are inherently nonpartisan and that will improve their daily lives.

“The ideology that binds Republican governors is getting things done for their constituents,” said Philip A. Musser, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “From the broadest perspective, voters in these races go into the booth caring less if governor is pro life or pro choice and more about whether he is going to reduce their property taxes or make their life easier at the D.M.V.”

Unlike other campaign seasons, when a popular president has been an asset to local politicians, many candidates this year are trying to distance themselves from President Bush, either by staking out ground in contrast to him or, as is the case with Mr. Schwarzenegger, treating the president like a communicable disease.

Democratic candidates across the country have responded by constantly reminding voters of their opponents’ conservative leanings, wherever they exist, and trying to tie them as much as possible to the White House.

In recent months, Mr. Schwarzenegger has gone out of his way to point out where he differs with the president — stem cell research and the role of large companies in creating heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide — and to openly criticize the White House order to police the Mexican border with National Guard troops.

When Mr. Bush visited California last spring, the governor made sure they were scarcely seen together.

On the legislative front, after a humiliating defeat last year of his ballot initiatives designed to take power from nurses and teachers, Mr. Schwarzenegger leapt in the opposite direction this summer.

With the Legislature, he signed off on laws imposing the country’s most stringent controls on carbon-dioxide emissions, raising the minimum wage $1 — after vetoing a similar measure twice before — and helping low-income Medicare beneficiaries to pay for prescriptions.

His campaign tour bus is painted green, along with the vaguely preservationist phrase “Protecting the California Dream,” as his slogan.

His campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, suggested that this was business as usual for Mr. Schwarzenegger, who, he said, “doesn’t rule out ideas just because they came from someone from another party.’’

“In every poll across the country what voters say they yearn for is politicians in both parties to stop fighting,’’ Mr. Schmidt said, “The one person in the country who is doing that is Governor Schwarzenegger.”

The Democrat who wants to unseat the governor, Phil Angelides, has spent the better part of the last few months trying to remind voters that Mr. Schwarzenegger is a Republican through and through, who supported the war in Iraq, the president who ordered it and many right-of-center policies.

“Two months of pretending to be a Democrat doesn’t make him a Democrat,” said Amanda Crumley, the communications director for the Angelides campaign, with a certain amount of fury in her voice. “Just like he has done for the last three years, if he is re-elected, which he won’t be, he will continue to govern like the Bush Republican that he is.”

While Mr. Schwarzenegger’s behavior may seem like pure survival tactics in the deep woods of one of the nation’s bluest states, other recent Republican governors in California have sought to accentuate their conservative leanings.

Pete Wilson, who was governor for most of the 1990’s, supported a ban barring state services for illegal immigrants, capitalizing on anger over illegal immigration to win re-election, and his predecessor, George Deukmejian, won the ardor of suburban voters by presenting himself as tough as nails on crime.

Each state race has its own quirks and circumstances, but the song remains the same in many of them. In the Republican primary in Illinois, Ms. Baar Topinka, the state treasurer, was criticized by opponents for her support of same-sex unions. She nonetheless prevailed in that race.

In some states, however, it is a matter of survival.

Mr. Ehrlich of Maryland has not had much success with his legislature, and he talks openly about his more liberal positions.

“He is a centrist Republican running in a state with heavy Democratic majority,” said James G. Gimpel, a professor at the University of Maryland. “So the reality of re-election suggests that he has to do that. There aren’t enough Republicans to elect him in this state even if they all turned out.”

    For Governors in G.O.P. Slots, a Liberal Turn, NYT, 20.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/us/politics/20centrists.html?hp&ex=1158811200&en=29c461c13294d41a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

As Senator Falters, a Democrat Rises in Virginia

September 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — From the start, the Virginia Senate race was an emblematic campaign for 2006: combat boots vs. cowboy boots, in the inevitable shorthand.

A highly decorated Vietnam veteran and former secretary of the Navy who opposed the war in Iraq (James Webb, Democrat) in an uphill battle against a paragon of sunbelt conservatism with national ambitions (Senator George Allen, Republican.)

But in the past month, ever since Mr. Allen’s demeaning reference to a young man of Indian descent at a campaign event, this race has become more than an intriguing clash of symbols; according to the polls, it is now truly competitive.

Increasingly, Democratic strategists see Virginia as a prime target for one of the six seats they need to regain a majority. Perhaps most important for Mr. Webb, whose late-starting campaign has lagged far behind Mr. Allen’s in fund-raising, the Democrat’s contributions have begun to climb, advisers say. “He’s got George Allen on the run in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Bob Kerrey, former Democratic senator from Nebraska, who was rallying donors at a reception for Mr. Webb last week in New York.

In one of the sharpest exchanges of the campaign, Mr. Webb and Mr. Allen squared off on the war in Iraq on “Meet the Press” on NBC on Sunday, with Mr. Allen defending the Bush administration’s policy and denouncing the “second-guessing and Monday-morning quarterbacking” of the critics. “We’re going to need to do what it takes to succeed,” Mr. Allen said, when asked if he would support additional troops in Iraq, “because it’s essential to the security of the United States of America.”

Mr. Webb responded: “I know what it’s like to be on the ground. I know what it’s like to fight a war like this, and either — there are limits to what the military can do. Eventually, this is going to have to move into a diplomatic environment, and that’s where this administration seems to have blinders. They are not talking to Syria, they are not talking to Iran, and there are ways that we can do this, move this forward.”

Mr. Webb also took several digs at what he called theorists in the administration and among its allies who know combat only in the abstract. Mr. Allen, like the majority of the current Congress, did not serve in the military.

In recent days, the Allen campaign, acknowledging a newly competitive race, has gone on the attack. A Mason-Dixon poll conducted this month found Mr. Allen’s lead, once in the double-digits, had shrunk, with 46 percent for Mr. Allen, 42 percent for Mr. Webb, and a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

For his part, Mr. Webb, 60, a writer and former marine who served four years in the Reagan administration, was rolling through Virginia in a camouflaged Jeep last week, driven by a buddy from Vietnam, reflecting on his long, strange political journey.

He entered the race, his first for elected office, early this year, starting with “zero dollars and no staff.” He eventually won the support of national Democrats, who saw him as a compelling voice for their party on national security. He was propelled into the race, Mr. Webb said, in large part by the war in Iraq.

As he is quick to remind his audiences, Mr. Webb spoke out against an invasion early on, arguing that containment had worked in the cold war and would work, again, against Saddam Hussein. American occupation forces in Iraq would “quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets,” he warned in an op-ed article in The Washington Post in September 2002. He went to see Mr. Allen to voice his concerns, and said Mr. Allen’s position, essentially, was “you’re asking me to be disloyal to my president.”

Mr. Webb, who had voted for Mr. Allen, said he left that meeting thinking, “Boy, did I make a mistake.” Mr. Allen has said he cast his vote for the war out of loyalty to the country, not the president.

The war is not an abstract issue for Mr. Webb. His son, Jimmy, 24, a lance corporal in the Marines, shipped out to Iraq this month. He wears his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail, in tribute to him and “all the people sent into harm’s way.”

Mr. Webb tells his audiences that the idea came from his son, who noted that Mr. Allen always wore cowboy boots, though “there are no cowboys in Virginia.”

Asked at a news conference last week if he felt torn about his son heading to Iraq, given his views on the war, Mr. Webb replied: “My son is doing what our family has always done. I’m very proud of his service. Like most people in the military, we separate politics out from service to country.”

Mr. Webb has not only lived but chronicled the American military tradition in novels like “Fields of Fire,” films like “Rules of Engagement” and in nonfiction works like “Born Fighting,” an exploration of his Scotch-Irish roots. A graduate of the Naval Academy, Mr. Webb served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam, where he was badly injured and awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star.

He said he was drawn to the Republicans, 30 years ago, because of their stance on national security. “Those were real issues to me, and I cared a lot about them,” he said. He worked on Capitol Hill and joined the Reagan administration in 1984 as an assistant secretary of defense, becoming Navy secretary in 1987. He resigned in a fight with his superiors over budget cuts and other issues, saying at the time, “It’s no secret that I’m not a person who wears a bridle well.”

He said he was ultimately drawn to the Democratic Party because of the tradition of Andrew Jackson and his commitment to giving average people a voice. On the campaign trail, he talks about the growth of inequality and the pressures on the middle class.

Mr. Allen, 54, a former governor and the son of a legendary coach for the Washington Redskins, has been running as an experienced leader strong on national security, focused on innovation and education and committed to what he calls Virginia values and Reaganesque conservatism on issues like cutting taxes.

His record as governor from 1993 to 1997 included tougher education standards, welfare legislation with time limits on benefits and parental notification requirements for abortions. In 2000, he defeated the Democratic incumbent, Charles S. Robb, for a Senate seat. Mr. Allen has proved a loyal ally of President Bush, a point Democrats hope to use to their advantage, given Mr. Bush’s decline in popularity. Mr. Allen is considered to be a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and refused to rule it out in Sunday’s debate.

But Mr. Allen was thrown badly off stride by the reaction to his comments to the college student and Webb volunteer who attended an Allen rally in southwestern Virginia. Mr. Allen has insisted that his use of the term “macaca” had no racial connotations.

Dick Wadhams, the Allen campaign manager, said the race was competitive, “no doubt about it,” but said Mr. Webb’s political inexperience, fuzziness on the issues and lack of enthusiasm for campaigning — Mr. Webb does not appear to have a high comfort level on the campaign trail — would all work in the Allen campaign’s favor. “We still have a financial advantage,” Mr. Wadhams said. “And we still have an incumbent who’s won two tough elections.”

In the past week, the Allen campaign has taken aim at Mr. Webb on two counts: highlighting his opposition, in an article he wrote 27 years ago, to women in combat and at the Naval Academy, and asserting that Mr. Webb has no right to use videotape of President Ronald Reagan praising him in a new television advertisement.

On women in combat, Mr. Webb said that he was sorry for any pain his writing had caused, that times had changed, and that he should be judged by what he did in the intervening years to expand opportunities for women.

Some Republicans worry that the growth of Northern Virginia, with its increasingly urban voters and what some pollsters say is discontent with the status quo in Washington, poses a real challenge to their party. Mr. Webb’s allies, for their part, worry he will not have enough money to hold his own against Mr. Allen on television.

The anxieties on both sides point to a central truth: Virginia, at the moment, is a very competitive race.

    As Senator Falters, a Democrat Rises in Virginia, NYT, 18.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/us/politics/18webb.html?hp&ex=1158638400&en=6f075f84b72cf84e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

How 3 G.O.P. Veterans Stalled Bush Detainee Bill

September 17, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE, KATE ZERNIKE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

This article is by Carl Hulse, Kate Zernike and Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham cornered their partner, Senator John W. Warner, on the Senate floor late Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Warner, the courtly Virginian who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had been trying for weeks to quietly work out the three Republicans’ differences with the Bush administration’s proposal to bring terrorism suspects to trial. But Senators McCain, of Arizona, and Graham, of South Carolina, who are on the committee with Mr. Warner, convinced him that the time for negotiation was over.

The three senators, all military veterans, marched off to an impromptu news conference to lay out their deep objections to the Bush legislation. Mr. Warner then personally broke the news to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, and the next day the Armed Services Committee voted to approve a firm legislative rebuke to the president’s plan to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions.

It was a stinging defeat for the White House, not least because the views of Mr. Warner, a former Navy secretary, carry particular weight. With a long history of ties to the military, Mr. Warner, 79, has a reputation as an accurate gauge to views that senior officers are reluctant to express in public. Notably, in breaking ranks with the White House, Mr. Warner was joined by Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a rare public breach with the administration he served as secretary of state.

As Mr. Warner left his Senate office on Friday afternoon, he carried a briefcase of material to prepare for a potential legislative showdown in the coming days. At stake, he said, was more than the fate of “these 20-odd individuals,” a reference to the high-level terrorism suspects awaiting possible trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“It’s how America’s going to be perceived in the world, how we’re going to continue the war against terror,” Mr. Warner said.

Then he showed off the motto on his necktie: “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Ronald Reagan had a similar tie, Mr. Warner said, and had given him a copy.

Democrats and Republicans alike had assumed that Mr. Warner, a smooth negotiator not given to public confrontation, would relent to the administration, especially considering the importance Republicans had placed on passing the legislation as midterm elections approached.

The thinking was that Mr. McCain, who was tortured as a Vietnam prisoner of war, would not budge, nor would Mr. Graham, a military lawyer and zealous guardian of military standards. That left Mr. Warner as the best potential target for the White House. But as he considered the consequences of the proposal, the chairman decided to stick to his guns, saying he believed the nation’s reputation was at stake.

“He is a man of the Senate,” said Mr. Graham, arguing that Mr. Warner’s stance spoke volumes because it went against his nature to have so visible a conflict. “He is also a military man and has thought long and hard about this.”

Mr. Bush seems equally determined to win provisions he says are needed to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects. He and his allies are ratcheting up pressure on Senate Republicans who support alternate rules adopted this week by the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Warner, like his two colleagues, has a network of high-ranking current and retired military officers who provide regular guidance and support. While he has been consulting them privately, some are expected to weigh in publicly in the days ahead. One aide said on Saturday that the number of Senate Republicans behind the three senators was widening beyond the 8 or 10 they had anticipated, with lawmakers — heavily influenced by Mr. Powell’s stance — preparing to soon go public with their views.

In interviews, two senior Bush administration officials acknowledged that the White House had underestimated the depth of opposition Mr. Bush’s proposal would provoke. They also said they had focused mostly on gaining Mr. Graham’s support and mistakenly believed they had it, based on statements he made about the Geneva Conventions in Senate hearings. A Republican senator separately described the clash between the White House and Mr. Warner’s group as “a train wreck.”

The administration officials and the Republican senator were granted anonymity because they would not openly discuss negotiations between the White House and Congress.

Mr. Warner’s convictions about how military trials should proceed appear to stem largely from his personal experience, beginning with his Navy service in World War II. Hanging with the photographs on his office wall is a worn, small placard that his mother displayed on the door of their Washington home from 1944 to 1946: “There’s a Man from this family in the Navy.”

“I’m a man that’s been through a lot,” Mr. Warner said, recounting his days as secretary of the Navy in the early 1970’s when he was personally confronted with issues of military prisoners. “I mean, I’ve been through this before.”

Mr. Graham has similarly drawn on his legal and military background in challenging the White House. “The Geneva Convention means more to me than the average person,” he said. He said “some people” considered the conventions “a waste of time, but I know they have been helpful.”

Mr. Graham acknowledged that the political battle was bruising, but said he could not tolerate a change in the American interpretation of the conventions if it meant short-term benefits at long-term costs.

“President Bush is very sincere in wanting the tools he needs to fight the war on terror,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “I don’t want the tools they are given to become clubs to be used against our people.”

In a letter sent Friday to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, Mr. Graham also took issue with a provision of the administration’s approach that would allow the use of secret evidence in trials of terrorism suspects.

"Where in American jurisprudence do you find support for the concept that a person accused can be tried and convicted on evidence which that person has no opportunity to see, confront or rebut?” Mr. Graham wrote. The bonds between Mr. Warner, Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham were forged in difficult times. Mr. Warner and Mr. McCain first met when Mr. Warner was the Navy secretary and Mr. McCain was returning to his Navy career after his captivity. Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham became close during the 2000 primaries in South Carolina, when Mr. McCain came under attack from Bush Republicans. They teamed up last year in forcing the White House to accept a ban on torture.

After the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s earlier plan for military tribunals in June, they joined with top military lawyers to form the chief bulwark against what they said were efforts to undermine military law and the 60-year-old protections of the Geneva Conventions.

“It’s not a question of defiance or intransigence, it’s the way we’ve worked,” Mr. Warner said. “We’ve continued to indicate a willingness to look at situations — is there a bridge that we can build between certain provisions? And our core principles are very rooted in the three of us.”

Mr. Graham added, “There are three branches of government, not one.”

Mr. Warner sought to serve as a counterbalance to the occasionally combative Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham during a turbulent week that fractured the Republican majority on its signature issue, national security. It saw Mr. Powell enlisting with the three Republicans against Mr. Bush, and left Mr. Graham chewing out General Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A director, in a closed meeting.

In the Senate, Mr. Warner is known for hearing out colleagues and trying to find consensus.

“John Warner is always very gracious,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is also on the Armed Services Committee and sided with Senators Warner, McCain and Graham. “He is patient and he is thoughtful. And people sometimes mistake that for uncertainty about his position.”

Administration officials said they had focused on Mr. Warner as the key to overcoming Republican opposition in the Senate. When he raised a question with General Hayden about the State Department’s view on the matter, Mr. Warner received a phone call within hours from Ms. Rice.

Ms. Rice followed up with a letter to Mr. Warner, which administration officials distributed on Capitol Hill on Thursday to counter the letter from Mr. Powell, which had objected to the administration’s plan to redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

But once it became clear that Mr. Warner was dug in, the administration began setting its sights on other senators, inviting them to the White House. On Friday afternoon, Mr. Frist’s office arranged a conference call between staff members for Senate Republicans and Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, to emphasize talking points for making the administration’s case on Capitol Hill.

As the fight swirled around him last week, Mr. Warner got a call from his grandson, Nicholas, a boarding school student who was an intern in his office this summer, asking what all the fuss on television was about.

“I took the time to try to explain it to him,” Mr. Warner said. “That’s one of the jobs we have to do, explain to the American people.” He added: “Neither McCain nor Graham nor I nor anybody wants to tie the hands of the intelligence community.”

    How 3 G.O.P. Veterans Stalled Bush Detainee Bill, NYT, 17.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/washington/17detain.html?hp&ex=1158552000&en=e77de259889d39ae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Campaign Ads for Democrats, Bush Is the Star

September 17, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — From Rhode Island to New Mexico, from Connecticut to Tennessee, President Bush is emerging as the marquee name in this fall’s Congressional elections — courtesy not of his Republican Party but of the Democrats.

A review of dozens of campaign commercials finds that Mr. Bush has become the star of the Democrats’ advertisement war this fall. He is pictured standing alone and next to Republican senators and members of Congress, his name intoned by ominous-sounding announcers. Republican candidates are damned in the advertisements by the number of times they have voted with Mr. Bush in Congress.

Not surprisingly, given that Mr. Bush’s job approval rating continues to hover around 40 percent, it is hard to spot the president in any of the Republican advertisements that were reviewed. In what may be taken as an indication of changing Republican tastes, Senator John McCain of Arizona is popping up everywhere.

There is Mr. Bush on television screens in Colorado, in an advertisement urging the election of Angie Paccione, a Democrat, leaning over to plant a big kiss on the forehead of Representative Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican.

There is Mr. Bush on the television screens in New Mexico, standing on a stage shoulder-to-shoulder with Representative Heather A. Wilson, a Republican struggling to keep her seat. “Heather Wilson supports George Bush on the war in Iraq with no questions asked,” the announcer says, in an advertisement for Patricia Madrid, the Democrat.

The White House has entered this campaign season looking to seize control of the political dialogue by moving the debate away from issues like Iraq and to Mr. Bush’s role in the campaign against terrorism. The decision by Democrats to invest in advertising directly attacking the war in Iraq, the administration’s war on terrorism and the once overwhelmingly popular president is a marked turn from how they handled these issues in 2002 and 2004.

The emergence of this recurrent theme in Democratic advertising is not a coordinated push by the legions of consultants, party leaders, campaign managers and candidates. Democrats said using advertisements involving Mr. Bush was almost an obvious thing to do, given his lack of popularity, and reflects the effort by many in the party to turn this election into a national referendum on Mr. Bush.

“In certain districts he’s exactly who we want to pivot off,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat leading the effort to win the House. “I tell all the candidates: Him and his agenda are on the ballot this year.”

Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a firm based in Virginia that tracks advertising, said Saturday that candidates and independent issue groups had already spent $900 million on statewide and national campaigns this year. Mr. Tracey said he expected that by Election Day, the spending would be $1.6 billion, a new record. At a minimum, millions are being spent by the Democrats on ads featuring Mr. Bush.

The strategy has risks. In part, the goal of the Democrats’ advertisements is to rile up their base. But Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, said that the constant attacks on Mr. Bush appeared to be accomplishing something Republicans had been unable to do: riling up Republican base voters.

“One thing we are seeing in our polling is that the Democratic campaign is helping to jazz up Republican voters,” Mr. Bolger said. “There are two concerns among Republicans: Is our base going to turn out, and how are we going to get out swing voters. The Democrats are taking care of our first concern.”

Many Republicans, and some Democrats, say it will be hard for Democrats to win unless they go beyond attacking Republicans and offer a program of their own. And Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman, said the Republicans’ own experience in politics suggested that running against someone who is not on the ballot is challenging. “The last time this kind of morph ad was tried was in ’98 when we tried to nationalize the races against Clinton and it didn’t work,” he said.

Kenneth M. Goldstein, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin who studies campaign advertisements, said the focus by Democrats on Iraq and security was a sharp shift from what he had observed in the last two election cycles. Then, Mr. Bush was far more popular and public opinion on the war had not changed, but Mr. Goldstein argued that the Democrats still might have made a mistake in not trying to at least challenge Republicans on the war.

“If you’re running a campaign, you try to engage on a subject or change the subject,” Mr. Goldstein said. “The Democratic strategy in 2002 and 2004 was very much to change the subject.”

This time around, Mr. Bush can be found in Democratic advertisements running in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Arizona, Tennessee, New Jersey and other states.

In New Jersey, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat facing a tough election battle, strode along the New Jersey waterfront, attacking the president — rather than, say, the Republican he is running against this fall, Thomas H. Kean Jr. — as failing to improve security in the nation’s ports.

“Five years after 9/11, President Bush still doesn’t get it: homeland security starts here,” Mr. Menendez says.

In Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic challenger to Senator Lincoln Chafee, turns to a room of voters and says, “I want to make it absolutely clear that we need to effect a responsible deployment of our troops out of Iraq.” In South Florida, Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. is pictured between photographs of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, under the words, “Shaw votes for the Bush/Cheney agenda 90 percent of the time.” The announcer says that Mr. Shaw, who is facing a tough challenge from Ron Klein, is “refusing to question their handling of the war in Iraq.”

Howard Wolfson, a Democratic consultant, produced a television advertisement for Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democratic challenger to Representative John E. Sweeney of New York, that opens with the image of Mr. Bush saying, “We are making good progress in Iraq.”

“You wouldn’t have done that two years ago,” Mr. Wolfson said.

Republicans have responded with advertisements attacking Democrats for raising taxes and as being weak on national security. And they have invoked their own political totems: In Indiana, Republicans use a picture of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader who would probably become the next speaker should Democrats take the House, in an advertisement attacking Brad Ellsworth, a Democratic sheriff running a very threatening challenge to Representative John Hostettler.

“Pelosi and other Democrats want to raise your taxes, cut and run in Iraq and give amnesty to illegal immigrants,” the announcer says.

The Republicans have turned to images of Mr. McCain in ads, including one for Mr. Kean in New Jersey.

But for sheer star power, nothing matches a president, as Republicans certainly demonstrated in 2002 and 2004, when Mr. Bush was a constant presence in almost all the Republican campaigns. Mr. Bush’s image this fall is being invoked by Democrats as a proxy for Americans who want change in Washington; who oppose the war in Iraq; who think Mr. Bush has not done enough to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks; or who are angry with changes Mr. Bush has pressed in Medicare.

“It’s not just photos,” said John Lapp, who runs the Democratic campaign committee’s independent advertising program. “It’s statements and actions and votes that show a pattern of people being with Bush.”

Steve Murphy, a consultant whose firm made the Iraq advertisement for Ms. Madrid of New Mexico, said: “The war is a dominant issue. For all these Republican candidates who are going through gyrations to distance themselves from Bush — well, if they support Bush on the war, there is nothing more illustrative of the fact that they are in bed with Bush.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat leading his party’s campaign to take back the Senate, said: “In 2004, people were still happy with Bush’s course in Iraq. Now they are not.”

That shows in terrorism, too. Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, walks through an airplane as he criticizes the administration’s efforts in protecting the nation from terrorism, and mocks any suggestion that the White House deserves credit for the arrests in Britain of a ring of terror suspects accused of plotting to bomb airlines headed for the United States.

“Thank God the British stopped them,” Mr. Ford says, adding: “Today our ports and borders remain vulnerable to terrorists.”

    In Campaign Ads for Democrats, Bush Is the Star, NYT, 17.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/us/politics/17ads.html?hp&ex=1158552000&en=7e75e8ab38cbe6f0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The President

Bush Says G.O.P. Rebels Are Putting Nation at Risk

September 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — President Bush made an impassioned defense on Friday of his proposed rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, warning that the nation’s ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Republicans in the Senate did not come around to his position.

Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.

Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers — he referred to them repeatedly as “professionals” — would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action.

“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” he said. “But the practical matter is if our professionals don’t have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward.”

The administration has said the Central Intelligence Agency has no “high value” terrorism suspects in foreign detention centers, having transferred the last of them this month to military custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But officials said they considered the program crucial to efforts to foil attacks.

“This enemy has struck us, and they want to strike us again,” Mr. Bush said, “and we’ll give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country. It’s a debate that, that really is going to define whether or not we can protect ourselves.”

It was also a debate Mr. Bush had hoped to have this week exclusively with Democrats as he and his party’s leadership set out to draw unflattering distinctions between Republicans and Democrats on fighting terrorism for the fall elections.

Instead, Mr. Bush spent Friday in a second day of heavy debate, casting some of the most respected voices on military matters in his own party as hindering the fight against terrorism. As of late Friday there seemed to be no break in the impasse, even as White House officials worked behind the scenes to build new support in the Senate for the legislation the president wants.

Leading the efforts against him in the Senate are three key Republicans on the Armed Services Committee with their own military credentials: the chairman and a former secretary of the Navy, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia; Senator John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war in Vietnam; and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military judge. And publicly taking their side is Mr. Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell.

The dispute centers on whether to pass legislation reinterpreting a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 that bars “outrages upon personal dignity”; the Supreme Court ruled that the provision applies to terrorism suspects. Mr. Bush argued that the convention’s language was too vague and is proposing legislation to clarify the provisions. “What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’?” he said at one point.

Mr. McCain and his allies on the committee say reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would open the door to rogue governments to interpret them as they see fit.

In a statement late Friday, Mr. McCain stuck to his position, saying that his proposed rules included legal protections for interrogators. “Weakening the Geneva protections is not only unnecessary, but would set an example to other countries, with less respect for basic human rights, that they could issue their own legislative reinterpretations,” he said.

Mr. Bush rejected the crux of Mr. McCain’s argument when a reporter asked him how he would react if nations like Iran or North Korea “roughed up” American soldiers under the guise of their own interpretations of Common Article 3.

“You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country,” Mr. Bush said, casting the question as steeped in moral relativism. “The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law.”

He also discounted an argument made in a letter from Mr. Powell that his plan would encourage the world to “doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

Asked about that analysis, Mr. Bush said, “If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic.”

Mr. Bush was alternately combative and comedic during the hourlong session with reporters. At one point, in describing how he thought the economy and Republican tax policies would help his party in November, he said: “I’ve always felt the economy is a determinate issue, if not the determinate issue in campaigns. We’ve had a little history of that in our family, you might remember.”

It was an off-hand reference to his father’s losing presidential re-election campaign in 1992, when he was damaged by economic woes and the breaking of his “read my lips” vow not to raise taxes.

Mr. Bush said it was “urban myth” that his administration had lost focus on capturing Osama bin Laden. The president said he was frustrated by the United Nations at times, especially when it came to addressing genocide in Darfur.

Asked about a Senate report concluding that there was no working relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in Iraq, Mr. Bush said forcefully, “I never said there was an operational relationship.”

The questioner had included a reference to Mr. Bush’s Aug. 21 news conference at which he had said, “Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would — who had relations with Zarqawi,” referring to the Qaeda mastermind in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Democrats for the most part on Friday were content to allow Republicans to fight among themselves on the terrorism question.

“When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But Republicans boasted that their top issue, terrorism, was dominating the political news for yet another day and overtaking Democratic criticisms of the war in Iraq.

Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting.

    Bush Says G.O.P. Rebels Are Putting Nation at Risk, NYT, 16.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/us/16bush.html

The myth of fair elections in America

The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America's electoral process is wide open to abuse.
But as Paul Harris discovers, the system has actually worsened since then

Thursday September 7, 2006
Observer.co.uk

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.

Everyone remembers the debacle in Florida, 2000. The recounts, the law suits and the eventual deciding of a presidential election - not by the voters - but by the Supreme Court. The memory still causes a collective shudder to America's body politic.

Which makes the fact that America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before so utterly shocking. Across the country a bewildering series of scandals or dubious practises are proliferating beyond control. The prospect of a 'second Florida' is now more likely not less. There are many - and not all of them are conspiracy theorists - who believed it may have happened in Ohio in 2004.

This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. The Times is editorialising on a shocking government report into electoral rules in Ohio's biggest county, Cuyahoga, which contains the city of Cleveland. It details a litany of errors and a large discrepancy between the paper record of a ballot and the result recorded by the new Diebold electronic voting machines the county has just installed. It also worried that 31 per cent of black people were asked for identification as they voted compared to 18 per cent of other voters. '[The] report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide,' the paper thundered.

But Ohio is far from isolated. The problem is simply that America has no national standard for tallying the votes in its elections. Apart from a few federal mandates to safeguard broad constitutional rights, it is left up to local officials to sort out the details on the ground. This means in one state a machine might be used. In others a simple paper ballot and a pen. Or it varies from county to county. In one small town a touch screen machine might be on hand, a few miles away other voters might use a punch ballot and in the next county after that you might use a pen. Or pull a lever. Or countless other complex ways to do what should be so, so simple. It also means in one place there is a solid (paper) record of a vote that can be recounted, while in others, it is all down to famously fallible machines and their electronic memories.

In some places you can't vote if you have a prison record. In others, you can. In some states you need identification to vote. In others you don't. In some a drivers' licence will be enough, in others it won't. All this is fundamentally a violation of the basic genius of democracy: it should be simple and uniform. In America that is simply not true.

Then there is another layer of trouble. Because elections are organised locally they are often run and controlled by state office holders or county level election supervisors. Often these officials are nakedly partisan and all too willing to use the power of that office to favour one party over another. Their county or state is, after all, their patch of turf and they seek to protect it for their side.

Then you add a large dose of dirty tricks that are again all too common at a local level in US politics. Forget Ohio or Florida. Just look at Milwaukee where mysterious fliers appeared in 2004 in a black neighbourhood informing residents that all felons and their relatives - even those guilty of traffic violations - could not vote. Or an election in New Hampshire in 2002 where senior state Republicans hired a firm to jam the Democrats phone bank system. Three people are now in jail due to that little escapade. Similar examples of other abuses can be found all over the country.

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that there is a cunning secret plan, set out in detail beforehand and then masterfully carried out to deliberately steal presidential elections. In fact, you don't actually need a shadowy plot to get much the same effect.

There is little doubt that at a grassroots level America's election is in disarray and being abused. And at a time of narrow election victories where presidential races come down to a single state (Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004) a microscope is instantly cast on that state's electoral practises. And lo, they are found wanting. Or open to fraud. Or being abused. Or local groups (from both sides) are going hell for leather to keep the other side from the polls. This is not because this is being planned out of Washington and targeted into those key states. It is because it is actually happening all over the country. We just notice because it has come down to the wire at that particular state.

You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be seriously worried about this state of affairs. In many ways, it is more worrying that the system is not being deliberately stolen from on high. It is actually broken from the ground up.

    The myth of fair elections in America, O, 8.9.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,,1866780,00.html

Democrats See Chances to Gain in Florida

September 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Sept. 6 — Gov. Jeb Bush is leaving office because of term limits, and Florida Republicans’ new Senate nominee, Representative Katherine Harris, is perhaps the party’s weakest here in decades. So the state’s hobbled Democrats see a rare opportunity to regain some of the ground they have lost in this swing state over the last 12 years.

The going will be rough. Governor Bush’s popularity will almost certainly help Attorney General Charlie Crist, who in Tuesday’s primary became the Republican nominee to succeed him. And the State Legislature, controlled by Republicans since 1996, will stay that way. Republicans now hold every statewide office except for that of Senator Bill Nelson, who now faces a challenge from Ms. Harris, and all but 7 of Florida’s 25 seats in the House.

Yet Democrats believe they can capitalize on national anger toward Republicans this year, and on local concern about home insurance rates and education policy, including what many see as an overemphasis on standardized testing. They are hoping that social conservatives will be kept at home on Election Day by Mr. Crist’s moderate positions: he supports stem cell research and civil unions for same-sex couples, and, though against abortion, has said he would not support new restrictions on it.

Republican dominance notwithstanding, Florida has more registered Democrats, who number 4.2 million, than Republicans, at 3.9 million, according to the Division of Elections.

“Florida is so evenly divided that fairly small constituencies can make a big difference,” said Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University. “All the Democrats would have to do is undermine turnout among the Republican base just a bit.”

The state also has a rich pool of two million unaffiliated voters, concentrated in the central corridor between Tampa and Orlando, who sustain its standing as a swing state. The Democratic nominee for governor, Representative Jim Davis of Tampa, would have to win over those voters while keeping conservative Democrats in the Florida Panhandle from backing Mr. Crist.

Mr. Crist, a state senator and education commissioner before he was elected attorney general in 2002, is a gifted campaigner who will stump with Governor Bush at his side and probably raise a lot of money in the process. He collected $14 million in his primary race against Tom Gallagher, the state’s chief financial officer, whom he defeated by 64 percent to 33 percent on Tuesday. In contrast, Mr. Davis raised just $4 million and defeated his primary opponent, State Senator Rod Smith, by about 47 percent to 42 percent.

Democrats are also expected to wage aggressive fights in the races for attorney general and chief financial officer, positions that Republicans have held since 2002. They will fight hard too for the Congressional seats of Ms. Harris, who is relinquishing hers to run for the Senate, and Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Fort Lauderdale, who is considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable Republicans.

“The question mark is turnout,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. In particular, she said, the Democratic Party will need to improve turnout among blacks and non-Cuban Hispanics, including the growing population of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida.

Mr. Crist may have an unusual advantage with black voters, some of whom lost interest in Mr. Davis during the primary after an independent political committee called attention to his vote as a state legislator in 1990 against restitution for two black men who had been wrongfully imprisoned for murder.

But Joe Garcia, a Democratic political strategist in Miami, said that even if the race was only slightly competitive, national Democratic leaders would come to campaign for Mr. Davis because winning the governor’s seat would help them capture Florida’s 27 electoral votes in the 2008 presidential race.

Josh Earnest, a spokesman for Mr. Davis, said nine Democrats “with reported presidential ambitions” called the nominee on Wednesday to congratulate him on his primary victory and offer assistance in the general election.

Mr. Garcia questioned whether Mr. Bush’s influence would really help Mr. Crist. He suggested that Democrats, trying to hamper the governor’s ability to bolster Republican candidates, would tie him to his brother at a time when the president’s popularity has plummeted.

“You want Jeb Bush to carry you,” he said, “that’s fine, but his big brother is going to be there with him.”

Others, including Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, dismissed the idea that the governor could be anything but an asset to Mr. Crist and other Republicans.

“He’s pretty much going out on top,” Professor Jewett said.

Whether the governor and other Republicans will campaign for Ms. Harris is another question. Al Cardenas, a former leader of the Florida Republican Party, said the party would watch Ms. Harris closely over the next few weeks. She struggled with fund-raising and lost more than a dozen staff members during her erratic primary campaign, and on Tuesday she won just under half the vote in a four-way race.

“I’d like to see her have competent staff, begin to run a tight schedule, pick up on her fund-raising and take it to Bill Nelson in a way that starts impressing those of us who have been around for a while,” Mr. Cardenas said. “Whether folks will gravitate toward her will have a lot to do with how she picks up the ball and runs with it.”

    Democrats See Chances to Gain in Florida, 7.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/us/07florida.html

Washington Memo

Candidates of Both Parties Turn Criticism of Rumsfeld Into Political Chorus

September 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — Democrats and at least some Republicans appear to agree on one thing as the election approaches: Attacking Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a way to lift them to victory.

For Democrats, the calculation is clear. They have begun a concerted effort, including pressing for a no-confidence vote on Mr. Rumsfeld in Congress this week, to portray him as the embodiment of what has gone wrong in Iraq.

For a small but growing number of Republicans, attacking Mr. Rumsfeld is a way to criticize how the war has been conducted without turning against the war itself.

“If I had my way, he wouldn’t be secretary of defense now,” Mike McGavick, the Republican challenger to Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said in an interview Tuesday. “I would have accepted his resignation after Abu Ghraib. I have lost confidence in him.”

Politically at least, it may not be in the interest of any of Mr. Rumsfeld’s critics for the defense secretary to vacate his post before Election Day. But with the White House insisting again on Tuesday that the president would not abandon his secretary of defense, it seems clear that Mr. Rumsfeld is destined to be as big a player in this fall campaign as many of the members of Congress who are actually on the ballot.

“Both hawks and doves can call for Rumsfeld to step down and still be consistent with their position,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “It applies to both parties.”

“It’s really a free shot for Republicans,” said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant who worked as a civilian employee for the Defense Department in Iraq. “You can be in favor of what we are trying to accomplish in Iraq and not be in favor of Rumsfeld.”

Democratic strategists said the party had long planned to use Mr. Rumsfeld in the campaign as a symbol of a war gone wrong, including incorporating him into advertising and having candidates call on him to resign. But they said the effort gathered force after he gave a speech last week in which he appeared to compare Iraq war critics to Nazi appeasers before World War II.

“It’s a great issue,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic consultant who is advising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as Democrats in two upstate New York districts whose advertisements have included challenges to the war in Iraq. “It forces the stay-the-course Republicans to chose between the president and their districts.”

Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is leading his party’s effort to take back the House, said, “We are going to go after Rumsfeld.”

For Republicans, this is slightly more difficult because the White House made clear that President Bush supports Mr. Rumsfeld and that he is not going anywhere any time soon.

“The president strongly supports the defense secretary,” said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, rebutting the Democratic call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster. “It’s not going to happen. Creating Don Rumsfeld as a boogeyman may make for good politics but would make for very lousy strategy at this time.”

But to varying degrees and volume, Republicans have been critical of Mr. Rumsfeld — who had surgery on his left shoulder Tuesday to repair a torn rotator cuff — and strategists for both parties said that was a trend that was likely to increase over the next few weeks.

Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican who is struggling to win re-election in the face of attacks on his support for the war, said Tuesday that he would support a vote against Mr. Rumsfeld in the House, should it come up.

“I don’t like the guy — I simply don’t think he has measured up on running the war in Iraq,” Mr. Shays said. “Would I vote for a no-confidence resolution on Secretary Rumsfeld? Yes.”

Representative Jo Ann Davis, Republican of Virginia, also criticized Mr. Rumsfeld in a speech in mid-August.

“It’s probably the only thing in my life I’ve ever agreed with Hillary Clinton about,” she said. “He’s probably a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s a great secretary of defense.”

Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey, called for Mr. Rumsfeld to step aside. At a debate in Ohio, Senator Mike DeWine, a Republican struggling to win re-election, declared, “I have consistently said that Donald Rumsfeld has made mistakes running this war.”

Republicans in Congress said they were confident they could block a Democratic plan to force no-confidence votes on Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration’s national security policies on Wednesday. The legislative maneuvering is intended to force Republicans facing tough election battles to either break with the White House or join the wave of criticism for Mr. Rumsfeld and his management of the war.

A no-confidence vote in the Senate could be a problem for Republicans in tough races like those of Mr. DeWine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Jim Talent of Missouri. Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, accused Democrats of playing a “pure political game.”

Some Republicans in tough races have stuck by the defense secretary. In a television debate on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, offered his full support for Mr. Rumsfeld, a statement that Senate Democrats instantly highlighted in e-mail messages sent to reporters.

Even if Mr. Frist succeeds in stopping a vote, Democrats clearly intend to make Mr. Rumsfeld a central star of their campaign. Democrats said his speech last week had the effect of firing up the campaign; Mr. Emanuel said moderate Democrats who may have had apprehensions about going after Mr. Rumsfeld lost their concern after reading his remarks.

From Connecticut to Colorado, Democratic candidates for the House have either criticized Mr. Rumsfeld or urged his removal. Democratic candidates for Senate in Rhode Island, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona, among others, have assailed him.

“I’ve talked it over with most of our candidates, and the majority, if they haven’t already, will call on him to step down,” Senator Schumer said.

    Candidates of Both Parties Turn Criticism of Rumsfeld Into Political Chorus, NYT, 6.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06rumsfeld.html

In Bellwether District, G.O.P. Runs on Immigration

September 6, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

AURORA, Colo. — It was not by chance that Republicans brought their summer tour of hearings on illegal immigration to this growing community just outside Denver.

Not only is Aurora bearing the costs of schooling and providing other services for a significant population of illegal immigrants, it is in the heart of a swing district and so is central to the intense battle for control of the House of Representatives.

And while Congress is unlikely to enact major immigration legislation before November, inaction does not make the issue any less potent in campaigning. In fact, many Republicans, on the defensive here and around the country over the war in Iraq, say they are finding that a hard-line immigration stance resonates not just with conservatives, who have been disheartened on other fronts this year, but also with a wide swath of voters in districts where control of the House could be decided.

“Immigration is an issue that is really popping, “ said Dan Allen, a Republican strategist. “It is an issue that independents are paying attention to as well. It gets us talking about security and law and order.”

Leading Republicans, leery of a compromise on immigration, are encouraging their candidates to keep the focus on border control, as in legislation passed by the House, rather than accept a broader bill that would also clear a path for many illegal immigrants to gain legal status. The latter approach, approved by the Senate with overwhelming Democratic support and backed by the White House, makes illegal immigration one of the issues on which Republicans face a tough choice of standing by President Bush or taking their own path.

“The American people want a good illegal-immigration-reform bill,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, “not a watered-down, pro-amnesty bill.”

Here in the Seventh District, the Republican push brought a Senate subcommittee hearing the other day to explore the costs of illegal immigration. The taxpayer-financed, ostensibly nonpartisan meeting took on the air of political theater.

“They are here in this district with this topic attempting to drum up support in a closely contested Congressional race,” fumed Lisa Duran, director of an immigrant rights group.

If that was the tactic, it may have worked. The angry confrontation thrust the session into the headlines, reminding residents that the issue remained a leading one in the House race between Rick O’Donnell, the Republican nominee, and Ed Perlmutter, the Democrat, who are running to fill a seat being vacated by Representative Bob Beauprez, a Republican seeking the governorship.

The issue remains on voters’ minds “because people are trying to keep it on their minds,” said Mr. Perlmutter, who accused Republicans of staging the hearing for political gain.

Mr. Perlmutter, a former state legislator, is trying to navigate tough political terrain by coming down hard for border enforcement while leaving the door open for illegal immigrants to seek citizenship eventually. His opponent, a former state higher education official, says such a position will not sell in Denver suburbs characterized by unease that the nation has inadequately policed its borders.

“I know the voters in my district are adamantly opposed to anything that smacks of amnesty,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

Republicans went into this year determined to keep the midterm elections from becoming a referendum on national issues and Mr. Bush, insisting that they would run on local concerns instead. But in this district, as in most others with tightly contested races around the country, the campaign is turning on the overarching national issues.

On immigration, many Republicans, like Mr. O’Donnell, have put distance between themselves and the Bush administration, emphasizing stronger border security and ignoring or rejecting the president’s support for the broader legislation.

Similarly, on Iraq, Mr. O’Donnell is trying to find a middle ground that, though basically supportive of Mr. Bush, allows the candidate to be critical of the war’s management. Like the president, Mr. O’Donnell says that American troops should not be withdrawn until Iraq is stabilized and that setting a deadline for a pullout could lead to disaster. Yet he is trying to separate himself from the administration’s handling of the war, saying that “we may need new leadership at the Pentagon.”

Mr. Perlmutter has tried to put his Republican opponent on the defensive over a third issue, embryonic stem cell research. He made it the subject of his first television commercial, pointing to the potential benefits for a daughter of his who has epilepsy. “It is personal to me,” he said.

Until recently, Mr. O’Donnell sided with Mr. Bush in opposing expanded federal financing of such research. Now he says the effort should move forward, given a scientific advance, reported last month, that may allow stem cells to be obtained from embryos without destroying them. He rejects Mr. Perlmutter’s assertion of a flip-flop on the research, which both men say is popular with voters. “I didn’t move,” he said, “the research did.”

But here as elsewhere, Democrats too are still trying to calibrate their positions on the big issues, a reflection of what the two parties agree is a fluid political situation. Even as they try to tap into the antiwar sentiment in their liberal base, many Democrats in swing districts, like Mr. Perlmutter, are articulating positions on Iraq that they hope will insulate them from the “cut and run“ charges being leveled by Republicans. So Mr. Perlmutter paints his opponent as an adherent of what he portrays as Mr. Bush’s policy: “stay the course until we run aground.”

Yet he does not endorse a quick exit, calling instead for the beginning of a phaseout of the troops, tied to a multinational reconstruction effort, with American forces out completely by the spring of 2008.

“We will have been in Iraq for five years by that time,” he said.

Certainly the topics dominating the campaign landscape have proved challenging. “The war and the issue of immigration are sufficiently complicated that both parties are having a hard time getting a real clear, laserlike fix on the whole thing,” said John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University.

Just a few weeks ago politicians and analysts suspected that immigration had lost its political punch in Colorado, after the legislature enacted a tough immigration overhaul including tighter identification rules for those seeking state government services.

But the issue refuses to die. Mr. O’Donnell said it was the subject most frequently raised with him by residents. At the hearing here the other day, presided over by Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, more than 200 people showed up even though it had promised to be a fairly dry look at the fiscal effects of illegal immigration.

On the street outside, the emotions surrounding the debate were on vivid display. Advocates on both sides chanted slogans, sought to outshout each other and displayed signs like “No Human Being Is Illegal” and “Stop the Invasion.”

Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican elected eight years ago, testified on illegal immigration’s costs to the state, saying the influx was not a driving issue when he first took office but had since risen to the top of Colorado’s concerns. “The state did take some important steps,” Mr. Owens said of the recently enacted immigration measure, “because of weaknesses in federal law. But there is a lot more that needs to be done.”

In an interview, Mr. O’Donnell accused his party’s leader, Mr. Bush, of being soft on illegal immigration. “I don’t know why the administration hasn’t enforced the laws,” he said, adding that his objective was border security.

Mr. Perlmutter said he shared that goal. But he said the government also had to deal with the millions of illegal residents already in the United States, enabling some to “earn your citizenship if you are learning English, paying taxes, haven’t committed a crime and have a job,” as the Senate bill provides. He blames Republicans for allowing the problem to fester.

Hoping to throw Mr. O’Donnell off stride, the Perlmutter campaign also resurrected an opinion article he wrote in 2004 suggesting that male high school seniors be required to perform six months of community service, with the option of assisting in border security. Mr. Perlmutter equated that plan to a draft; Mr. O’Donnell said he had simply been endorsing a call for community service that many civic leaders have backed.

As they fine-tune their messages, the two men agree on at least one thing: this evenly split district will be a bellwether in November.

“The issues that end up driving this campaign,” Mr. O’Donnell told a Rotary Club luncheon in nearby Commerce City, “are going to set the tone for this country.”

    In Bellwether District, G.O.P. Runs on Immigration, NYT, 6.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06colorado.html?hp&ex=1157601600&en=12d6490dbd8cec9b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Search of Accurate Vote Totals

September 5, 2006
The New York Times
Editorial

It’s hard to believe that nearly six years after the disasters of Florida in 2000, states still haven’t mastered the art of counting votes accurately. Yet there are growing signs that the country is moving into another presidential election cycle in disarray.

The most troubling evidence comes from Ohio, a key swing state, whose electoral votes decided the 2004 presidential election. A recent government report details enormous flaws in the election system in Ohio’s biggest county, problems that may not be fixable before the 2008 election.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, hired a consulting firm to review its election system. The county recently adopted Diebold electronic voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record of every vote cast. The investigators compared the vote totals recorded on the machines after this year’s primary with the paper records produced by the machines. The numbers should have been the same, but often there were large and unexplained discrepancies. The report also found that nearly 10 percent of the paper records were destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised.

This is seriously bad news even if, as Diebold insists, the report overstates the problem. Under Ohio law, the voter-verified paper record, not the voting machine total, is the official ballot for purposes of a recount. The error rates the report identified are an invitation to a meltdown in a close election.

The report also found an array of other problems. The county does not have a standardized method for conducting a manual recount. That is an invitation, as Florida 2000 showed, to chaos and litigation. And there is a serious need for better training of poll workers, and for more uniform voter ID policies. Disturbingly, the report found that 31 percent of blacks were asked for ID, while just 18 percent of others were.

Some of these problems may be explored further in a federal lawsuit challenging Ohio’s administration of its 2004 election. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who has been criticized for many decisions he made on election matters that year, recently agreed to help preserve the 2004 paper ballots for review in the lawsuit.

Ohio is not the only state that may be headed for trouble in 2008. New York’s Legislature was shamefully slow in passing the law needed to start adopting new voting machines statewide. Now localities are just starting to evaluate voting machine companies as they scramble to put machines in place in time for the 2007 election. (Because of a federal lawsuit, New York has to make the switch a year early.) Much can go wrong when new voting machines are used. There has to be extensive testing, and education of poll workers and voters. New York’s timetable needlessly risks an Election Day disaster.

Cuyahoga County deserves credit for commissioning an investigation that raised uncomfortable but important questions. Its report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide. Every jurisdiction in the country that runs elections should question itself just as rigorously, and start fixing any problems without delay.

    In Search of Accurate Vote Totals, NYT, 5.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/opinion/05tue1.html

G.O.P. Sets Aside Work on Immigration

September 5, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — As they prepare for a critical pre-election legislative stretch, Congressional Republican leaders have all but abandoned a broad overhaul of immigration laws and instead will concentrate on national security issues they believe play to their political strength.

With Congress reconvening Tuesday after an August break, Republicans in the House and Senate say they will focus on Pentagon and domestic security spending bills, port security legislation and measures that would authorize the administration’s terror surveillance program and create military tribunals to try terror suspects.

“We Republicans believe that we have no choice in the war against terror and the only way to do it is to continue to take them head-on whether it is in Iraq or elsewhere,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

A final decision on what do about immigration policy awaits a meeting this week of senior Republicans. But key lawmakers and aides who set the Congressional agenda say they now believe it would be politically risky to try to advance an immigration measure that would showcase party divisions and need to be completed in the 19 days Congress is scheduled to meet before breaking for the election.

President Bush had made comprehensive changes in immigration laws a priority, even making the issue the subject of a prime-time address, but House Republicans have been determined not to move ahead with any legislation that could be construed as amnesty for anyone who entered the country illegally. They held hearings around the country in recent weeks to contrast their enforcement-only bill with a Senate measure that could lead to citizenship for some.

“I don’t see how you bridge that divide between us and the Senate,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. “I don’t see it happening. I really don’t.”

Democrats say they are not surprised by the immigration impasse and believe some Republicans would prefer to keep the issue alive to stir conservative voters rather than reach a legislative solution.

They plan to highlight the collapse of immigration legislation sought by Mr. Bush and the likelihood that Congress will not meet an Oct. 1 deadline to pass most required spending bills as evidence that Republicans have lost sight of the concerns of average Americans. The Democrats are also intensifying calls for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

“Every day, people around the country recognize that this is a failed administration,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “If Republicans want to spend the whole month on nothing that is relevant to the American people, we are happy to do that.”

With Democrats poised to pick up seats in the House and Senate and Republicans determined to hang on to their majorities for the final two years of the Bush administration, the next few weeks promise to be highly combative, particularly after the August primaries made it clear that voters are not in a forgiving mood.

In a draft of a planning memorandum to be circulated to Republican senators, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, who is entering his last months as majority leader, said, “I expect minority obstructionism to be at an all-time high.” Republicans are already preparing for a post-election session to begin Nov. 13 and run at least up to Thanksgiving.

Mr. Frist laid out an ambitious agenda, including a vote on John Bolton’s renomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. But his memorandum did not even mention immigration. In an appearance in Iowa last week, Mr. Frist said broad legislation addressing what to do about millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States might have to await the next Congress.

Staff members from the Senate and House Judiciary Committees met last week to try to find some basis for common ground on the fate of the illegal population, but one participant said they made no progress.

Representative Mike Pence, the leader of the House conservative caucus and a proponent of an immigration compromise proposal that has attracted some White House interest, said he was also doubtful that legislation would reach Mr. Bush’s desk before the elections.

“Anything’s possible,” said Mr. Pence, Republican of Indiana, “but that’s probably not likely.”

Lawmakers of both parties who helped shape the Senate measure insisted that consensus was still within reach, even on the more difficult immigration issues, and immigrant advocacy groups are planning a series of marches this week to prod lawmakers to take action. Some Republicans warned that their party could suffer politically if it falls short.

“If there’s not legislation with Republicans in charge,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, “there’s going to be blame here, and justifiable blame, if we do not produce a bill.”

Two other senators who played a leading role in writing the Senate bill, John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, intend to urge Mr. Bush to bring lawmakers to the White House to broker a resolution.

“We can get the job done, but it’s going to require presidential leadership,” Mr. Kennedy said.

With the immigration measure seemingly stalled, Republicans say they will put most of their time and energy into security-oriented measures to drive home a theme that has served them well in the last two elections — that they are better equipped to thwart terrorism than are Democrats.

“They’ll wave the white flag in the war on terror,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said Sunday of the Democrats on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

But Democrats believe that voters will not be easily persuaded by the Republican push on national security and that the public increasingly sees the Iraq war as an impediment to the war on terror.

In a letter to Mr. Bush on Monday, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate urged him to begin pulling American troops out of Iraq this year.

“Mr. President, staying the course in Iraq has not worked and continues to divert resources and attention from the war on terrorism that should be the nation’s top security priority,” said the letter signed by Mr. Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, as well as the senior Democrats on relevant committees.

The Democrats also urged Mr. Bush to fire Mr. Rumsfeld, and they intend to try to force no-confidence votes in coming days that could put Republicans on the spot, given statements by some in the party that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign. But the leadership remains supportive.

“I doubt there is any other American who could have done a better job over the last five years,” Mr. Boehner said of the defense secretary.

Since they will not finish the spending bills on time, Republican leaders will have to push through a stopgap measure to keep the government running through the election. But Republicans do hope to advance some nonsecurity measures. The major legislation on the floor in the House this week is a bill that would ban trading in horses to be slaughtered for human consumption.

    G.O.P. Sets Aside Work on Immigration, NYT, 5.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/us/05cong.html?hp&ex=1157515200&en=2c8b722db77e3b65&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Seen to Be in Peril of Losing House

September 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — After a year of political turmoil, Republicans enter the fall campaign with their control of the House in serious jeopardy, the possibility of major losses in the Senate, and a national mood so unsettled that districts once considered safely Republican are now competitive, analysts and strategists in both parties say.

Sixty-five days before the election, the signs of Republican vulnerability are widespread.

Indiana, which President Bush carried by 21 percentage points in 2004, now has three Republican House incumbents in fiercely contested races. Around the country, some of the most senior Republicans are facing their stiffest challenges in years, including Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida, the veteran Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee; Representative Nancy L. Johnson of Connecticut, a state increasingly symbolic of this year’s political unrest; and Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, the No. 4 Republican in the House.

Two independent political analysts have, in recent weeks, forecast a narrow Democratic takeover of the House, if current political conditions persist. Stuart Rothenberg, who had predicted Democratic gains of 8 to 12 seats in the House, now projects 15 to 20. Democrats need 15 to regain the majority. Charles Cook, the other analyst, said: “If nothing changes, I think the House will turn. The key is, if nothing changes.”

Republican leaders are determined to change things. Unlike the Democrats of 1994, caught off guard and astonished when they lost control of the Senate and the House that year, the Republicans have had ample warning of the gathering storm.

“I have been in all these tough races, and the ones in those tough races are doing what they have to do,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, who spent all but two days of the August recess campaigning for fellow Republicans. “It is a difficult environment. I can see us losing a seat or two. But I don’t see us losing our majority at all.”

Representative Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, countered, “The Republicans are playing defense in over 40 races — one-tenth of the House.”

“My biggest worry,” Mr. Emanuel said, “is getting overpowered from a financial perspective.”

A turnover in the Senate, which would require the Democrats to pick up six seats, is considered a longer shot. Democrats’ greatest hopes rest with Pennsylvania, Montana, Rhode Island, Ohio and Missouri; the sixth seat is more of a leap of faith.

It would require Democrats to carry a state like Tennessee, Arizona or Virginia, where Democratic hopes are buoyed as Senator George Allen, a Republican, deals with the fallout from his using a demeaning term for a young man of Indian descent at a rally last month.

Democrats must also beat back Republican challenges to Senate seats in Washington, New Jersey, Maryland and Minnesota.

National polls show that key indicators — presidential approval ratings, Congressional approval ratings, attitudes on the direction of the country — reflect an electorate unhappy with the status quo and open to change.

“It’s the most difficult off-year cycle for the Republicans since 1982,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee. “Environmentally, it’s about as good from the Democratic perspective as they could hope to have.”

In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, just 29 percent said the country was headed in the right direction, a measure of national pessimism that rivals the 26 percent who felt that way in October 1994. The war in Iraq, the price of gas and a sense of economic unease all play roles, analysts say. The mood is particularly sour in states like Indiana and Ohio, where it is stoked by local issues and the Republican governors’ political difficulties.

Representative Chris Chocola, easily re-elected two years ago from the district centered in South Bend, Ind., is battling a Democrat, Joe Donnelly, in a race so tight that several people offered Mr. Chocola their sympathies on the campaign trail this week. “You doing O.K.?” a bank executive asked at a groundbreaking for a small manufacturing company. Mr. Chocola replied, “It’s an exercise in democracy.”

Mr. Chocola began advertising in March, rather than in May as he has in his three previous races. The attacks and counterattacks have been swift and nasty. In one recent round, the Chocola campaign charged that Mr. Donnelly, who owns a printing and rubber stamp company, had paid his property taxes late 15 times. “Joe Donnelly wants to raise our taxes,” the ad warned. “Even worse, he’s delinquent paying his own.”

Mr. Donnelly’s advertisement pointed out that the company Mr. Chocola once ran, which manufactures products for the agricultural industry, had itself missed a tax payment of $67 one year. “But hypocrisy is normal in Washington,” the ad said, concluding, “It’s time for a new congressman.”

Outside groups are advertising heavily there, as well: trial lawyers and MoveOn.org against Mr. Chocola, the Chamber of Commerce in his favor.

Even in such a climate, Republicans retain some formidable institutional advantages to help them hold on, Mr. Cole and others say. After 12 years in control of the House, Republicans have done much to fortify their incumbents, including having district lines so carefully drawn that even in a tumultuous year only about 40 House races are seriously competitive, compared with roughly 100 considered in play in 1994.

Moreover, Republicans are counting on their vaunted get-out-the-vote campaign, which proved so effective in 2002 and 2004, to overcome what many concede is a less than enthusiastic conservative base. The Republicans are also expected to have a financial edge this fall, although the Democrats have worked hard to narrow it.

The strategic imperative facing the Republicans, many analysts say, is clear: transform each competitive race from a national referendum on Mr. Bush and one-party Republican rule into a choice between two individuals — and define the Democratic challengers as unacceptable.

“Democrats are trying to indict an entire class of people, who happen to be called Republican candidates for Congress,” said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster handling dozens of House races. “We have to bring individual indictments with different cases and different pieces of evidence.”

Mr. Bolger added, “If you like positive campaigns, you’re going to be let down.”

The question, analysts say, is whether the Republicans’ race-by-race strategy can overcome what is shaping up, so far, as a classic midterm election driven by national issues. “I don’t really care what the national climate is,” said Representative Tom Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “At the end of the day, House races are a choice between two people.”

Democrats will be pushing hard to remind voters of the big picture, and their frustrations with it. In southeastern Indiana, Baron Hill, a Democrat who is trying to reclaim the Congressional seat he lost two years ago to Representative Mike Sodrel, held an event at a gas station where he pumped fuel at a 2004 price, $1.80, rather than $2.79.

“People are angry,” Mr. Hill said. “They want to know why we’re paying $3 a gallon and Congress is giving tax breaks to oil companies.”

Another major variable is whether Republicans are able, as they were in 2002 and 2004, to make the national security issue work in their favor. Democratic strategists say they are determined — this time — to answer every suggestion that their party and their candidates are less committed to the national defense.

“The key on national security: every time they hit us, answer them back strongly and hard,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “People are not happy with how George Bush conducted the war in Iraq, and they know we’re not safer.”

Over the next four weeks of Congress, beginning on Tuesday, both parties will try to frame the security debate.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority whip, made his party’s case on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We’ve liberated Afghanistan and Iraq, and by staying on offense we’ve protected America here at home,” Mr. McConnell said, acknowledging that the struggle was “a tough slog.” But in terms of the ultimate goal of protecting the home front, he said, “that policy has been a 100 percent success.”

In the end, Democrats are acutely aware of how close they have come since 1994 to regaining power on Capitol Hill, and how often a majority (218 votes) slipped from their grasp, notably in 2000, when the Republicans held on with just 221 seats. Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, a veteran Republican strategist, said Democrats simply had trouble “closing the deal.”

Mr. Emanuel, discussing the widespread predictions that his party would win the House if the election were held today, said simply: “It isn’t today. That’s the unfortunate part.”

Robin Toner reported from Washington for this article, and Kate Zernike from Indiana.

    G.O.P. Seen to Be in Peril of Losing House, Ts, 4.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/washington/04campaign.html?hp&ex=1157428800&en=6e1428a2510550a2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Hopeful Says Rumsfeld Should Resign

September 3, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. CHEN

MOUNTAINSIDE, N.J., Sept. 2 — State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican nominee for United States Senate in New Jersey, says he is so frustrated with the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq that he is pushing for something that few Republicans have supported: the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In an interview at his campaign headquarters here, just shy of midnight on Friday, Mr. Kean said that he had become dissatisfied over the summer with what he said was Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to consider “competing points of view.”

But what compelled him to advocate publicly for a “fresh face” leading the troops, Mr. Kean said, were Mr. Rumsfeld’s recent remarks chiding critics of the war for “moral and intellectual confusion,” and comparing them to those who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

“By engaging in that kind of rhetoric, this secretary has stepped over the line,” Mr. Kean said.

Mr. Kean stopped short of criticizing President Bush, other than saying he had not been “well served” by Mr. Rumsfeld. He says he does not support a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, because he thinks that could lead to a humanitarian crisis and destabilize the region.

Still, Mr. Kean’s call for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down comes as more Republicans are distancing themselves, however gingerly, from Mr. Bush and an unpopular war.

Nowhere has this change of heart been more prevalent, perhaps, than in places where Republicans are engaged in close races. In Rhode Island, Stephen Laffey, a populist Republican who is challenging Senator Lincoln Chafee in a hotly contested primary, has called on Mr. Rumsfeld to resign. In Connecticut, Representative Christopher Shays recently changed his mind on a phased withdrawal and now supports a timetable, something that many Democrats have long advocated.

And then there is New Jersey, where Mr. Kean is locked in a tough fight with his Democratic opponent, Senator Robert Menendez. While Mr. Kean says that he would have voted for the original resolution authorizing the use of force, he agrees that the United States has made some “egregious mistakes.”

As examples Mr. Kean cited the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, what he called a poorly executed plan to purge Baathists from the Iraqi military and a lack of sufficient troops at the outset of the conflict. He said he was also stunned, earlier this year, by the number of retired generals who called for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation.

Jennifer E. Duffy, a political analyst with the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan online newsletter, in Washington, said she saw shrewdness in Mr. Kean’s move. “He can keep his position on the war, and yet still make this call, because all he’s asking is for someone to either come up with or execute the plan,” she said. “The aim is to show a willingness to challenge Bush. I’m sure that Menendez will find some way to attack it, but I don’t see it as a bad move.”

When told of Mr. Kean’s comments, Matt Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Menendez, wondered aloud whether Mr. Kean had been prompted by a press release just a few hours earlier. In that release, Mr. Menendez repeated his earlier calls for Mr. Rumsfeld to resign, and asked Mr. Kean to join him. (Mr. Kean said that he was unaware of the press release, and that his decision on Mr. Rumsfeld had been made days, if not weeks ago.)

“Rumsfeld needs to go, but it is George Bush who has mismanaged the war in Iraq — it is his responsibility to change the course of events — and the fact that Tom Kean Jr. won’t stand up to him now shows that he will never have the strength or the courage to demand real change in Iraq,” Mr. Miller said.

Mr. Rumsfeld has brushed aside calls for his resignation, saying such criticism was typical during wartime. “The secretary has addressed this from time to time and continues to serve at the pleasure of the president,” Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman, said Saturday.

At the same time, however, Eric Ruff, the Pentagon’s press secretary, expressed concern in an interview late Saturday that Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarks to the American Legion had been mischaracterized by some. "The secretary’s speech did not accuse critics of the war of being soft on terrorism," he said, after news of Mr. Kean’s stance first appeared on The New York Times Web site. "It is a straightforward speech that raises important questions about how America and free societies are going to confront 21st century terrorists, who are serious, lethal and relentless."

Though Mr. Kean, 37, has been criticized by Democrats as being too inexperienced, he has earned a lot of good will as the namesake son of a popular former governor and chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

A poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that if Iraq were not such an albatross, Mr. Kean would be leading Mr. Menendez by 11 percentage points. The telephone poll, which had a margin of sampling error of four percentage points, was taken of 651 randomly selected registered voters statewide.

For Mr. Kean, though, the issue of Iraq is not just about troops and equipment. He studied Central Asia in graduate school at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, and said that it was imperative that the United States develop a consistent foreign policy that would apply to Iran, North Korea and terrorist organizations.

“Iraq is one component of foreign policy,” Mr. Kean said. “We’ve got a responsibility to win the hearts and minds of individuals at home and abroad.”

    G.O.P. Hopeful Says Rumsfeld Should Resign, NYT, 3.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/nyregion/03kean.html

Rove’s Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel

September 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 — Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, is struggling to steer the Republican Party to victory this fall at a time when he appears to have the least political authority since he came to Washington, party officials said.

Mr. Rove remains a dominant adviser to President Bush, administration officials say. But outside the White House, as President Bush's popularity has waned, and as questions have arisen among Republicans about the White House's political acumen, the party's candidates are going their own way in this difficult election season far more than they have in any other campaign Mr. Rove has overseen.

Some are disregarding Mr. Rove's advice, despite his reputation as the nation's premier strategist. They are criticizing Mr. Bush or his policies. They are avoiding public events with the president and Mr. Rove.

Influential conservative commentators have openly broken with the White House, calling into question the continued enthusiasm of evangelicals, economic conservatives and other groups that Mr. Rove has counted on to win elections. . Some Republicans are ignoring Mr. Rove's efforts to hold the party together on issues like immigration and Iraq.

In a reflection of this difficult environment, the White House has decided to concentrate nearly all of its resources on the critical fight to keep control of Congress, party officials said, largely stepping away from the governors' races, at least for now.

In Michigan last week, Dick DeVos, a Republican candidate for governor and a longtime contributor to Mr. Bush, startled national Republican Party leaders with a searing attack on the president for failing to meet with the leaders of the Big Three automakers. "We're being ignored here in Michigan by the White House, and it has got to stop," Mr. DeVos said.

His communications director, John Truscott, said the attack was timed to coincide with Mr. Rove's visit to Michigan for a fund-raiser, in an effort to goad Mr. Bush into a response. Asked if the DeVos campaign was worried about angering Mr. Rove, Mr. Truscott said, "That never even crossed our mind."

Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, who was chairman of the Congressional Republican campaign committee in 2002, said Mr. Rove and the White House seemed measurably less involved this year.

"It's been more of a bunker mentality, don't you think?" Mr. Davis said. "They have been good in terms of raising the money. The problem is, you have a president with a 38 percent approval rating, and it just changes the dynamics of what they can do."

This midterm election presents Mr. Rove with a particularly difficult challenge. Beyond testing his reputation for always finding a way to win, the outcome could determine the extent of Mr. Bush's influence for the rest of his presidency and shape the way he is perceived by history. Mr. Rove has warned associates that a Democratic takeover in Congress would mean an end to Mr. Bush's legislative hopes and invite two years of potentially crippling investigations into the administration.

The White House said that Mr. Rove would consider an interview for this article if it were conducted off the record, with the provision that quotes could be put on the record with White House approval, a condition it said was set for other interviews with Mr. Rove. The New York Times declined.

The diminishment in Mr. Rove's influence reflects the fact that his power is to some extent a function of Mr. Bush's popularity. In some cases, Republican candidates have made a deliberate strategic decision that the way to win is to distance themselves from the White House,.

But a central problem, Republicans said, is that Mr. Rove is seen as juggling two potentially conflicting agendas: Protecting the president's legacy and taking steps to help Republican candidates win re-election.

Mr. Rove enters the campaign season after a year of personal tumult. Until mid-June he faced the threat of indictment in the investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity, and in April, he was stripped of some of his duties in the White House. Mr. Rove was moved from an office in a West Wing corner suite to a smaller windowless office across the hall, a shift one friend said he found demoralizing.

Mr. Rove's associates said that throughout the leak investigation, he was coiled and withdrawn. They said his demeanor brightened the moment he learned he would not be indicted. Associates described him as displaying relentless optimism about an election that is filling Republicans with a sense of doom.

Mr. Rove determines the bulk of the president's schedule and is a crucial figure in determining what Mr. Bush should say this fall. He is the White House's main conduit to conservatives whose willingness to turn out at the polls could help determine the party's success. Mr. Rove has become a star fund-raiser for the Republican Party, raising $10,357,486 at 75 events in 29 states, according to the Republican National Committee. Mr. Rove runs regular White House meetings, typically at 6:30 a.m. in the White House mess, reviewing high-profile House and Senate races with the White House political director, Sara Taylor, and sometimes with Congressional leaders. He shares his view of the landscape with Mr. Bush in a daily 8:30 a.m. briefing.

Mr. Rove — with Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, and Ms. Taylor, both of whom have assumed a higher profile than in past years — has settled on a narrow strategy to try to minimize Congressional losses while tending to Mr. Bush's political strength.

The White House will reprise the two T's of its successful campaign strategy since 2002: terrorism and turnout.

They have decided to focus the majority of White House resources on defending embattled Republican House and Senate members in six crucial states, said party officials who did not want to be identified discussing internal deliberations. As of now, those states are Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, though officials said the battle lines could shift in the coming weeks.

The White House is largely turning away from the 36 governors' races, although Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush will continue to help Republican candidates for governor raise money as part of their national fund-raising efforts, party officials said. The decision has broad significance because building a foundation of Republican governors had been a main part of Mr. Rove's goal of creating a long-lasting Republican majority.

Mr. Rove has spoken of creating political realignment since he arrived in Washington.

"The country is still close, but it has moved in a Republican direction, and this election confirmed that," he said on "Meet the Press" after the 2004 election. Mr. Rove's associates say that he still believes the nation is heading in that direction.

The Republican National Committee expects to spend over $60 million, which would be a record, for the midterm elections. Officials say half of that would pay for get-out-the-vote operations in the targeted states.

In states where Mr. Bush's presence could be problematic, like Pennsylvania and Connecticut, the turnout operation gives Mr. Rove a way to provide below-the-radar help.

Mr. Mehlman, whom Mr. Rove assigned to master new get-out-the-vote techniques years ago, has handed custom compact discs with lists of voters, along with information on their voting and consumer habits, to every state Republican chairman.

One administration official said that in the midst of all this, Mr. Rove was also looking beyond Mr. Bush's term, to the creation of his library. And he is quietly making his influence felt in the 2008 presidential campaign. Most significantly, the White House has signaled to Bush supporters that they are free to work for Senator John McCain of Arizona, which could provide Mr. Rove a network of intelligence in 2008. Mr. Rove has made clear to associates that he is not supporting any candidate in that race.

Mr. Rove's associates said it was inevitable that his clout would diminish somewhat given the president's declining approval rating and the history of two-term presidents generally weakening by their sixth year in office.

"Anytime you're in the position of being the prime mover, and you've got five people saying we should do it this way and five others saying we should do it that way, you're going to aggravate five people inevitably when you come down with a decision," said Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman. "But Karl is willing to do that, and you're going to get your share of slings and arrows when you are."

Indeed, Democrats — aware of Mr. Rove's reputation for pulling out all the stops when necessary and his ability to call on a shadow political machine of interest groups and donors to attack opponents — said they remained worried about what kind of effort Mr. Rove might unleash in the closing weeks of the campaign.

But the limits of Mr. Rove's influence were made clear this year when he was unable to convince the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Allan G. Bense, to run in the Republican primary for Senate against Representative Katherine Harris, whom the party judged to be a weak candidate. Mr. Rove invited Mr. Bense for a sit-down at his vacation home in Rosemary Beach, Fla., as part of a long but failed effort to get him to challenge Ms. Harris for the nomination, said Towson Fraser, a spokesman for Mr. Bense.

And Mr. Rove's associates said he appreciates the need of candidates to distance themselves from the White House to win. But he was described as angered by candidates who go too far in attacking Mr. Bush out of concern that attacks could further damage an already weakened president, they said.

Mr. Rove meets in person only infrequently with the Republican heads of the Senate and House campaign committees, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, though Mrs. Dole said he was always ready to jump on a plane to a fund-raiser at her request.

Mr. Reynolds said the White House had been untiring in raising money and providing surrogates. But he made clear that when it came to the House races, he was running the show.

"I'm the one who put together what I think is our best effort to win a House majority in 2006," Mr. Reynolds said.

In the Ohio Senate race, Mr. Rove has found himself in a back-and-forth with Senator Mike DeWine. Mr. DeWine has at times resisted Mr. Rove's counsel that he employ an unrelenting focus on terrorism, exhibiting what other Republican officials described as ambivalence about a television commercial depicting the World Trade Center burning.

Candidates and strategists across the country say that that they hear from Mr. Rove infrequently.

Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said he encountered Mr. Rove at a dinner at Vice President Dick Cheney's home here in late July. "We chatted for a minute," Mr. Romney said. "He was interested in how the governors' races were looking. But it was interest as a fellow Republican."

    Rove’s Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel, NYT, 2.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/washington/03rove.web.html?hp&ex=1157256000&en=ace162f43b729e50&ei=5094&partner=homepage