History > 2006 > USA > Politics (IV)

October 30, 2006

NYT

 Democrats Are Seen to Gain in Statehouse Races

NYT        31.10.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/us/politics/31legis.html

Millions Spent

on Negative Political Ads

October 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:02 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- So far this campaign, the political parties have exposed voters to nearly $160 million in ads attacking congressional candidates. How much spent painting a positive image? About $17 million.

That's nearly $1 of nice for every $10 of nasty.

The message ingrained in such a disparity in numbers: Don't vote for a candidate; vote against the opponent.

Negative ads are the coin of the realm in politics. With one week left in the campaign, voters will continue to be bombarded on television, in the mail and over the phone as political strategists make their closing arguments to a shrinking pool of those who haven't made up their minds.

Under the terms of a 2002 campaign finance law, these messages are independent expenditures that the parties can undertake only if they do not coordinate with the candidates they are seeking to help. This type of spending by the parties on congressional campaigns is 54 percent higher than it was for the same period in the 2004 campaign season, according to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission.

It is also decidedly more negative. In 2004, the parties spent about $6 on ads in favor of congressional candidates for every $5 spent opposing candidates.

At this point, Republicans have spent $87.5 million to oppose candidates and Democrats have spent $72.6 million. But the edge on negativity, according to independent analyses of the ads, goes to the GOP.

''Negative ads only work in two situations -- when you are incredibly desperate or when you're incredibly close to the end,'' said Ray Seidelman, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College who has studied political advertising and voter turnout.

For example, the political ad in Tennessee against Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford that features the blonde with a come-hither look received widespread attention. Critics denounced the ad financed by the Republican National Committee as appealing to racism because it suggested Ford, who is black, dated white women. The ad is no longing running.

Other ads are less subtle:

--The National Republican Congressional Committee has run an ad in Indiana against Democrat Baron Hill that gives an X rating to his legislative record, citing his votes on banning the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to teens and on the use of federal money to pay for abortion-related costs.

--The NRCC tried to place an ad in New York against Democrat Michael Arcuri, the district attorney in Oneida County, accusing him of calling a sex hotline while on county business. But records show that the call to the 800 number lasted only seconds and that the number has the same last seven digits as the phone number for the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. The Arcuri campaign said a colleague of Arcuri's mistakenly placed the call.

An analysis by the Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonpartisan FactCheck.org concluded that negative ads aired by the NRCC had a ''pronounced tendency to be petty and personal.''

Rep. Tom Reynolds, the New York Republican who is chairman of the NRCC, said the party has chosen to run opposition ads to counter ''a full slate of undistinguished Democrat challengers campaigning on national issues with cookie-cutter talking points.''

''The best way for us to overcome this is to draw contrasts and offer voters a true choice,'' Reynolds said recently at the National Press Club. ''So, through television, radio and mail, we are saying to the voter: This is who the alternative on the ballot is; this is where he or she stands on the issues that matter in your community; and this is what he or she has done that is relevant to being qualified for federal office.''

Democrats are running their share of negative ads as well. For the most part, those ads link Republican candidates to President Bush, exploiting the president's low approval ratings. After the e-mail sex scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., some Democratic ads connected candidates to Republican congressional leaders.

Independent groups not affiliated with the parties are adding to the negative tone on the airwaves, in mailboxes and over the phone. Labor unions, nonprofit organizations and obscure groups are reaching out to voters in competitive races with negative messages.

One group, the Economic Freedom Fund, has been running ads and sending mail against Democratic candidates in Georgia, Iowa and West Virginia. In one mailing, the group accuses Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell of Iowa of voting to let lawyers ''sue Little League for scrapes and bruises during a game.'' At issue was Boswell's vote in 2004 against legislation that would have provided nonprofit athletic organizations with immunity from some negligence lawsuits. Critics of the bill argued that it would have affected other litigation, including civil rights claims.

Strategists and political ad analysts generally agree that negative ads work because negative opinions linger with voters longer than positive opinions.

''But it works only in the narrow sense,'' Seidelman said. ''In the long run what it does is create a tremendous amount of distrust in the process.''

Millions Spent on Negative Political Ads, NYT, 31.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Negative-Ads.html

Though Not on the Ballot,

Bush Campaigns Like a Candidate

in Georgia and Texas
 

October 31, 2006
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times

SUGAR LAND, Tex., Oct. 30 — President Bush zigzagged from Georgia to his home state, Texas, on Monday, stumping for Republicans in Bush-friendly districts while looking ever more like the candidate himself.

Here in the Houston suburb once represented by Tom DeLay, Mr. Bush was greeted at a campaign rally like a man whose public approval ratings are 73 percent, not 37 percent. Campaign volunteers who had jammed into an airplane hangar climbed atop one another’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of him. Little children sported buttons with his likeness and waved tiny Texas flags. One supporter raised a handmade “Dubya” sign.

Mr. Bush, his shirt collar open, his sleeves rolled up, soaked it all in before delivering a speech that laid into Democrats for, among other things, opposing tax cuts and lacking a strategy in Iraq. It was a reprise of a fiery talk he gave hours earlier at a college gymnasium in Statesboro, Ga.

“It’s a serious political party in the midst of a war, and they have no plan for success,” Mr. Bush said in Sugar Land, after proclaiming, “we will not run from thugs and assassins.” It was a moment when the president could defend his record in Iraq to thunderous applause.

The back-to-back rallies created just the image White House strategists are seeking for the president in the waning days of the campaign: that of a confident leader, surrounded by adoring supporters.

The intent is to fire up the party faithful and push them to the polls, but at times it seemed as if Mr. Bush was the one being fired up. The president seemed to relish playing the game of political expectations, as he tweaked Democrats as measuring for new curtains in Washington too soon.

“You might remember that around this time in 2004, some of them were picking out their new offices in the West Wing,” Mr. Bush said in Georgia.

He paused to absorb the laughter and applause, then added dryly, “The movers never got the call.”

After weeks of focusing on the economy and the war on terror, Mr. Bush has also tweaked his standard stump speech. It has been refashioned to include a broad defense of his record in a variety of areas: education, energy policy, border security, immigration, Medicare prescription drug benefits and the appointment of two conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

One of his biggest applause lines in Georgia was a restatement of his position that “marriage is a union between a man and a woman.” The line brought the crowd to its feet.

Charles Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, said: “The most important issues to Republican voters are tax cuts to the economic conservatives, and judges and marriage, pro-life issues to the social conservatives. So he’s reminding them that he’s got a good record on those things.”

Mr. Bush, of course, is not on the ballot. But with analysts predicting that Republicans could lose control of one or both houses of Congress, White House strategists are sending the president to those districts where he might just drag a Republican candidate across the finish line.

Sugar Land is in one such district, whose political landscape looks something like a Shakespeare play. The name of Mr. DeLay, who resigned from Congress after being indicted on charges of conspiring to violate Texas election laws, remains on the ballot, though he is not running. That left Mr. Bush to implore Republicans to write in the name of a candidate whose name is not easily written: Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a dermatologist who serves on the Houston City Council.

She is running against Nick Lampson, a Democrat who lost his seat in a redistricting engineered by Mr. DeLay. Polls show the two running neck and neck, but Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said Mr. Bush remained popular enough here to help Ms. Sekula-Gibbs.

“He’s still got legs,” Mr. Buchanan said.

    Though Not on the Ballot, Bush Campaigns Like a Candidate in Georgia and Texas, NYT, 31.10.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/us/politics/31bush.html

Democrats Are Seen

to Gain in Statehouse Races

October 31, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

DES MOINES, Oct. 27 — More than 6,000 state legislative seats in 46 states are on the Nov. 7 ballot, and like the seismic state elections in 1994 and 1974 the cumulative impact of the outcomes could be immense, with Democrats possibly gaining control of a majority of state capitols for the first time in a decade.

While the nation’s attention has been fixed on the question of which party will control Congress, another campaign season has been unfolding in the shadows — upstaged and overlooked but more likely to affect the day-to-day life of voters than the big-money Congressional races.

Most significantly, the groundwork for redrawing Congressional districts after the 2010 census will be done under the 50 capitol domes, and the party in power will set the table for those discussions in ways favorable to its interests. Gains made this year, analysts say, will help give incumbents a leg up in the final elections leading up to the redistricting.

If the Democrats take control of a majority of the legislatures, which polls indicate could happen, women could also attain leadership positions in greater numbers, since Democratic women in state capitals outnumber Republican women by nearly two to one. The next generation of national political leaders, by tradition, is nurtured in the state legislatures.

“This is a national election with big issues,” said Alan Rosenthal, a professor of political science at Rutgers University who tracks state election issues, “and that will filter down to the people who nobody knows about.”

One indication of both parties’ interest in the local races is the money that has been flowing into them.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee plans to spend $9 million to $10 million on legislative races, up from $6 million to $7 million in 2004. Its counterpart, the Republican State Leadership Committee, has nearly doubled spending on state races, including for legislators, to $20 million.

Republicans control both chambers in 20 states, Democrats in 19. One state, Nebraska, has a nonpartisan legislature, while the parties split control in the remaining 10 states. States to watch on Election Day include Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin, where Republicans have narrow majorities in the lower house or senate. Democrats have narrow majorities in Colorado, Maine and Montana.

What makes the races even more suspenseful is that the parties have not been so even in decades, if ever. Of the 7,382 statehouse legislative seats across the country, Democrats hold 21 more than the Republicans, a margin of less than half a percent.

In 17 of the 46 states that will elect some or all of their state senators, a shift of only three seats would alter party control in the senate, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 12 state houses, a shift of five or fewer seats would tip the balance.

Some states, like Montana and Colorado, where Democrats gained narrow legislative control for the first time in decades in 2004, are being watched by some political scientists and party leaders as barometers of the party’s Western strategy. Other states with closely divided legislatures, including Michigan, Nevada and Tennessee, could be swung by fierce contests for governor or the United States Senate.

Connecticut and New Jersey, where Democrats control both chambers of the legislature, and New York, where the parties each control a chamber, are not widely expected to see shifts in power. “We seem to be in this era of hyper-evenness of the parties at the grass-roots legislative level,” said Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Presidential hopefuls have also poured several hundred thousand dollars into legislative races in Nevada in anticipation of the early presidential caucus there in 2008. In Michigan, a new group sprang up this year, the Michigan Coalition for Progress, to help defeat Republicans in the legislature.

And then there is Iowa, where the hyper-evenness is most hyper of all. Republicans have a one-vote advantage in the Iowa House, 51 to 49, and the parties are tied at 25 in the Senate.

Noticing these whisker-width margins, prospective presidential candidates, including Gov. George E. Pataki of New York and Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, have donated money to local campaigns, hoping perhaps to make friends before the Iowa Caucuses in 2008.

Mr. Pataki’s political action committee has donated $270,000 to Iowa Republicans, Mr. Romney’s PAC almost $1.6 million, according to the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. Independent political groups, called 527s, have waded in as well to influence or swing the vote.

But the money and the high stakes, many people here say, may be having another effect in Des Moines and many other state capitals. State legislative races, with their low-glamour blend of amateur politics and homespun local concerns, may be losing their traditions of civility.

“You have more money sloshing around,” said Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa who follows legislative races. More and more, Professor Squire said, control over local campaigns is slipping toward centralized parties or interest groups. “And it is certainly a much rougher campaign than we are used to seeing in Iowa,” he said.

Just ask Kevin R. Wiskus.

Mr. Wiskus is a 42-year-old Iowa farmer and lifelong Republican from the town of Centerville, about 100 miles south of the capital, who is making his first run for public office for a House seat.

He became so outraged by his own party’s efforts to elect him that he resigned last month in protest.

A mailing sent by the state committee told voters that Mr. Wiskus’s Democratic opponent, a lawyer named Kurt Swaim, had defended a man charged with child molesting.

Mr. Wiskus knew that Mr. Swaim had been assigned the case by the court as a public defender, and decided the attack was unconscionable. He is now an independent, and said he would serve as an independent if elected.

“I was offended,” Mr. Wiskus said in an interview. “I had promised and pledged to run a clean and ethical and honorable race, and I told the Republican party I did not want any attack ads.”

The speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, Christopher Rants, a Republican who has marshaled the party’s efforts in the legislative races, said he thought the Democrats had done more than his party to coarsen the debate in Iowa with negative advertising.

One mailing about a Republican, Mr. Rants said, showed a cadaver under a sheet and suggested that the candidate’s opposition to stem-cell research was responsible for the woman’s death. Democrats and some independent scholars, including Professor Squire, say the Republicans have probably pushed the line harder and farther.

Whether the Republicans can hold onto the gains in state legislatures that they made beginning in the 1980s is probably the central question of the election.

The Democrats, for most of the 20th century, were statehouse titans all over the nation — with a peak in the mid-1970s when they controlled close to 70 percent of all legislative seats. In the post-Watergate election of November 1974, they added 628 legislature seats in just one night.

The Republicans began a surge in the 1980s, making major strides in 1994, when they gained 514 seats overnight. They finally gained dominance in 2002, picking up enough seats to surpass the Democrats for the first time in 50 years. There has been almost perfect parity since then.

    Democrats Are Seen to Gain in Statehouse Races, NYT, 31.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/us/politics/31legis.html?hp&ex=1162357200&en=7d32d5e3b9d28cbd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Ohio,

Democrats Show a Religious Side to Voters

October 31, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KIRKPATRICK

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 30 — Representative Ted Strickland, an Ohio Democrat and former Methodist minister, opened his campaign for governor with a commercial on Christian radio vowing that “biblical principles” would guide him in office.

In his first major campaign speech, Mr. Strickland said “the example of Jesus” had led him into public service. He has made words from the prophet Micah a touchstone of his campaign.

Ohio, where a groundswell of conservative Christian support helped push President Bush to re-election two years ago, has become the leading edge of national Democratic efforts to win over religious voters, including evangelicals.

Explaining his hope to win conservative Christian votes, Mr. Strickland said, “I try to make a distinction between the religious right — people who have a conservative theological perspective — and the political religious right, who seem to have as their primary motivation political influence.”

Polls show a notable decline since 2004 in support for Republicans among white evangelical Christians, who make up about a quarter of the electorate. The slip in Ohio has been especially steep. In 2004, 76 percent of white evangelical Christians in Ohio voted for Mr. Bush over the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry. But in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 53 percent of the same voters approved of the president’s performance, and 42 percent disapproved.

Democrats, meanwhile, have stepped up efforts to lure religious voters in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. But Mr. Strickland has capitalized more than anyone else on evangelical disaffection from the Republicans, helping to give him a lead of more than 20 percentage points in the race.

Mr. Strickland faces a Republican opponent, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who speaks just as openly about his evangelical faith, staunchly opposes abortion rights and same-sex unions and carries the endorsement of several nationally known Christian conservatives. But in a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Mr. Blackwell led Mr. Strickland among white evangelical voters by only three percentage points, which is within the margin of error.

“I have talked to lots of folks who say this is the first time they are not voting Republican,” Rich Nathan, pastor of the Vineyard Columbus Church, one of the largest in the state, said in an interview Sunday after a service. Mr. Strickland, he said, was “making headway.”

Still, dozens of evangelicals interviewed at Vineyard Columbus and another megachurch, Grace Brethren, said they remained wary of overtures from Democrats, even Mr. Strickland. Many said they felt more repelled by the Republicans than attracted to the Democrats.

“The Republican is lying, and the Democrats are secular,” said Joshua Porter, a video producer attending Vineyard Columbus. “Who do we vote for?”

Robert Oser, an usher at Grace Brethren, said Mr. Strickland’s liberal positions undercut him. “The Democrats are trying to change their spots,” Mr. Oser said, “but their spots are still there.”

No one brought up the New Jersey Supreme Court decision to recognize some form of same-sex unions as a factor on Election Day.

Only Mr. Oser offered the explanation for grass-roots malaise that Christian conservative groups in Washington usually suggest: that the Republicans had not done enough about abortion or other social issues.

Instead, some said they were disturbed by corruption in the Republican-controlled Statehouse here and in the Republican-controlled Congress. And many pointed to the Ohio economy, budget cuts for schools and social services and the war in Iraq.

Lawrence Porath, a parishioner at Grace Brethren, said he called himself a staunch Republican two years ago and helped turn out voters as a county leader of the Christian Coalition. But a week before this year’s midterm elections, he said he was not sure whom to vote for.

“I feel like our president has really not given us the complete truth from the beginning, on the war, or on anything,” Mr. Porath, a commercial real estate investor, said in an interview after services on Sunday.

Mr. Nathan of Vineyard Columbus said such disillusionment was common. “How is it that we evangelicals have become the strongest constituency for war of any group in America?” he asked.

When he asked that question from the pulpit, Mr. Nathan said, people stand up and cheer.

Other Democratic candidates here are also reaching out to evangelicals and other Christians. Until recently, Representative Sherrod Brown, a Lutheran who is running for Senate here, seldom spoke publicly about his religious views.

This year, however, Mr. Brown’s advisers discovered that after visiting Israel a decade ago he had written to his daughters and a Jewish friend about the emotions he felt reading aloud from the Sermon on the Mount at the site where Jesus is believed to have delivered it. Mr. Brown’s campaign quickly incorporated his private words into messages sent to Christian voters.

In an interview, Mr. Brown said he now talked about his faith “a bit, not a lot.” A campaign aide then arranged a second interview with Mr. Brown’s wife, Connie Schultz, who said her husband tithed, listened to Lutheran hymns to relax and prayed before each campaign debate.

Mara Vanderslice, an evangelical Protestant who worked on Senator Kerry’s presidential campaign, has opened a consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, based here, to help Democrats across the country reach religious voters and, she said, to help make the party more welcoming to them.

In addition to working with Mr. Strickland and Mr. Brown, Ms. Vanderslice is consulting with Democrats in Alabama, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

The Michigan Democratic Party consulted with 500 members of the clergy, including many evangelical Christians, and revised its platform. The revision included a dedication: “The Common Good. The best for each person in the state. The orphan. The family. The sick. The healthy. The wealthy. The poor. The citizen. The stranger. The First. The Last.”

At a speech this month at a Lutheran college here, Mr. Strickland put a liberal twist on the common conservative Christian theme about secular forces trying to squeeze religion from the public square.

“There are those in Columbus and elsewhere who argue that the biblical mandates to love your neighbor and to work for justice are meant only for individuals and have no application to the political sphere,” Mr. Strickland said. “They dismiss the Democrats and those religious leaders who claim that our faith requires us to insist that governments and government leaders — not just private citizens — seek justice, love, mercy, and humbly work to help the least, the last and the lost in our society.”

In an interview, Mr. Strickland said that Christian conservatives had a right to their interpretation of the Bible, but that “it is an anemic interpretation, at best.”

Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values and a prominent Christian conservative organizer here, accused Mr. Strickland of using his faith. “He abandoned his theology degree,” Mr. Burress said, “and all of a sudden he has found that it is a good political toy.”

Still, Mr. Burress commended the Democrats for at least competing for conservative Christian voters. And, he added, “if he is successful in breaking into that bloc of voters, it is going to be a very interesting 2008.”

    In Ohio, Democrats Show a Religious Side to Voters, NYT, 31.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/us/politics/31church.html

Polls raise hopes of Democrats

in 36 governor races

Updated 10/29/2006 7:48 PM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats long expected they would take back the governor's office in New York this fall. And they had high hopes for Massachusetts, even though Republicans have held on there for 15 years.

But Arkansas, Republican-held for the past decade? Colorado, which chose Republicans in the last three presidential elections? Ohio, which has not elected a Democratic governor since 1986?

If the polls are accurate and a Democratic wave hits on Nov. 7, it seems poised to reach beyond Congress all the way to governor's mansions. With roughly a dozen seats in play, Democrats are well ahead or in a close contest in all of them. Nationwide, voters will elect 36 governors though more than half the races are not that competitive.

Democrats confidently predict they will win a majority of governorships, reversing the Republican edge since 1994. Republicans, after years of celebrating their numerical advantage — now 28-22 — are fighting to limit their losses.

"The math is troublesome and the overall environment is challenging for Republicans," said Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who visited at least five states in the past week to boost Republican gubernatorial hopefuls. "But we've got a number of really strong candidates who are fighting an uphill battle."

Governor's races generally do not get as much attention as the contests for control of the House and Senate.

Yet a state's top politician has a much more immediate impact on a person's day-to-day life than congressional representatives, affecting schools, roads, even the companies that set up shop in a city or town.

Governors also craft domestic policy on health care, welfare, education and more. It was governors, for instance, who led the charge for welfare reform in the mid-1990s.

Political parties see the national implications, with strategists arguing that an effective governor can help organize and promote the state party, which in turn can help deliver votes for Congress and the presidency. And governorships can cultivate future national leaders, with four out of the last five presidents having first served as governor.

"Winning a majority of governorships is just as significant as us winning the House and Senate," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, head of the Democratic Governors Association. "That will help us in winning back the White House in '08."

As this year's races have unfolded, Democrats have enjoyed a nearly unbroken stream of encouraging news. They have had to broaden their strategy as more states have become competitive, including some previously seen as solidly Republican, like Nevada and Florida.

"The good news is we're up in so many races. The bad news is we're up in so many races, in terms of the resources," said Penny Lee, DGA executive director. The group has spent more than $11 million so far, a record, though still far behind their Republican counterparts' $20 million to date, on top of candidates' spending.

The latest polls show Democrats well ahead in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Arkansas and Colorado, with close contests in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Maryland and Nevada.

That means Democrats are within reach of seven of the eight open seats where a Republican is leaving office — with only Idaho looking solidly Republican. And they are in the running to knock out two sitting Republican governors in Minnesota and Maryland. The only open Democratic seat, in Iowa, is too close to predict.

Republicans hoped to take Democrat-held seats in Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin. In all three races, Democrats have pulled slightly ahead in recent weeks, though all remain close. The best news for the Republicans is in California and Rhode Island, where Republican governors who at one time looked vulnerable have pulled ahead.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the narrowest of majorities with 26 governorships.

If Democrats end up with a majority, what would that actually mean in the states?

•In Massachusetts, where Democrat Deval Patrick, vying to be the state's first black governor, is ahead by more than 20 percentage points, the state would likely have one-party rule, with Democrats long in control of the legislature and all other statewide offices. Patrick has promised to cut inefficiencies in government, reduce gun crime, support a health care program the state recently approved and pursue alternative energies like a disputed wind farm off Nantucket Sound.

•In Ohio, Democrat Rep. Ted Strickland, with a commanding lead in pre-election polls, has vowed to address the tax structure of school funding, an issue that Republicans in control of both houses of the Legislature have been unwilling to revisit, even though the state Supreme Court ruled the current system unconstitutional.

•In New York, Democrat Eliot Spitzer — ahead by about 50 percentage points in recent polls — has campaigned on raising school spending, closing hospitals to cut costs and a promise to not raise taxes. With a Republican stateP Senate and a Democratic Assembly, he will have to negotiate.

Despite the polls, both parties are focused on raising more money for the home stretch and marshaling get-out-the-vote resources.

Phil Musser of the Republican Governors Association maintained that each race will be decided by issues in that state, but did not dispute the trend emerging nationwide.

"I don't think we're seeing a wave per se. But to say there isn't some impact of the national environment on governors elections is probably disingenuous," he said. "We are running in the head wind here. That's a fact of life."

    Polls raise hopes of Democrats in 36 governor races, UT, 29.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-29-democrats-governors_x.htm

A Warm Welcome for Bush the Campaigner,

in Indiana

October 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

SELLERSBURG, Ind., Oct. 28 — In an appearance that amounted to his first traditional campaign rally of the election season, President Bush on Saturday told wildly cheering supporters here that Democrats did not want to investigate, prosecute or even detain terrorists and had no plan for Iraq.

And, introducing a relatively new line in his election-year stump speech, Mr. Bush criticized the “activist” New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling this week that same-sex couples were entitled to the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples.

“We believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and should be defended,” Mr. Bush said, reminding the crowd of his two conservative Supreme Court appointees, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “I will continue to appoint judges who strictly interpret the law.”

Aides said Mr. Bush’s appearance on Saturday was the first of many planned for the final days before the Nov. 7 election, as he pivots from the role of fund-raiser in chief to that of cheerleader in chief.

For Mr. Bush, it was a return to the kind of campaigning he likes best. He gave his speech in rolled-up shirtsleeves, standing before an ecstatic crowd packed into a high school gymnasium. They waved pompoms and held signs that said “Welcome to Bush Country” or simply “W,” and hooted their support with deafening enthusiasm. Their cheers nearly overwhelmed the shouts of an antiwar demonstrator, whose protests were barely audible, and occasionally drowned out the president.

Mr. Bush went onstage with Representative Mike Sodrel, one of three Indiana Republicans facing tough Democratic opposition this year. The president’s list of Democrats’ deficiencies included their votes against the administration’s program to wiretap phone conversations of terrorism suspects without warrants and their opposition to trying terrorism suspects in special military tribunals without habeas corpus.

“In all these vital measures for fighting the war on terror, the Democrats in Washington follow a simple philosophy: Just Say No,” Mr. Bush said, borrowing the line from Nancy Reagan’s 1980s campaign against drugs. He continued that theme in a call-and-response with the crowd, asking, “When it comes to listening in on the terrorists, what’s the Democratic answer?”

“Just say no,” the audience answered.

“When it comes to detaining terrorists, what’s the Democratic answer?” Mr. Bush asked.

“Just say no,” the crowd of roughly 4,000 answered.

“When the Democrats ask for your vote November the seventh, what are you going to say?” Mr. Bush asked.

“Just say no,” the crowd replied.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have pushed for greater restrictions on the president’s authority to order wiretaps without warrants. Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said they had called for a more solid legal foundation in trying terrorism suspects.

Mr. Manley said the president was practicing “the politics of fear and smear.”

“Of course we want to listen to and detain terrorists,” Mr. Manley said. “We just don’t want to give the president a blank check.”

Continuing his national security theme, Mr. Bush left here for South Carolina to attend a rally for troops at the Charleston Air Force Base.

To a crowd of hundreds of servicemembers gathered on the tarmac, Mr. Bush gave a streamlined version of his stump speech, removing direct mention of Democrats or the coming election, and appeared to direct criticism at the opposition.

“I know some in America don’t believe Iraq is the central front in the war on terror — that’s fine, and they can have that opinion,” Mr. Bush said. “But Osama bin Laden knows it’s the central front in the war on terror.”

And he offered words for those who have lost loved ones in the war.

“I make them this pledge,” he said. “We will honor their sacrifice by completing the mission, by defeating the terrorists and laying the foundation of peace for generations to come.”

Mr. Bush has not set aside his fund-raising duties entirely. On Saturday evening, he appeared at a private event for the Republican National Committee on Kiawah Island, a resort community off the coast of South Carolina, that organizers said raised about $1 million.

    A Warm Welcome for Bush the Campaigner, in Indiana, NYT, 29.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/us/politics/29bush.html

Democrats Get Late Donations From Business

October 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and ARON PILHOFER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.

The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

Though Democratic control of either chamber of Congress is far from certain, the prospect of a power shift is leading interest groups to begin rethinking well-established relationships, with business lobbyists going as far as finding potential Democratic allies in the freshman class — even if they are still trying to defeat them on the campaign trail — and preparing to extend an olive branch the morning after the election.

Lobbyists, some of whom had fallen out of the habit of attending Democratic events, are even talking about making their way to the Sonnenalp Resort in Vail, Colo., where Representative Nancy Pelosi of California is holding a Speaker’s Club ski getaway on Jan. 3. It is an annual affair, but the gathering’s title could be especially apt for Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader, who will be on hand to accept $15,000 checks, and could, if everything breaks her way, become the first woman to be House speaker.

“Attendance will be high,” said Steve Elmendorf, a former Democratic Congressional aide who has a long list of business lobbying clients. “All Democratic events will see a big increase next year, no question.”

While business groups contained their Democratic contributions to only a handful of candidates throughout the year, a shifting political climate and an expanding field of competitive Congressional races has drawn increased donations from corporate political action committees.

For the first nine months of the year, for example, Pfizer’s political action committee had given 67 percent of contributions to Republican candidates. But October ushered in a sudden change of fortune, according to disclosure reports, and Democrats received 59 percent of the Pfizer contributions.

Over all, the nation’s top corporations still placed larger bets on Republican candidates. But at the very time Republicans began to fret publicly about holding control of Congress, a subtle shift began occurring in contributions to candidates, particularly in open seats.

“We keep fighting up until the last minute of the last day,” said William C. Miller, vice president for political affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, carefully measuring his words to remain positive about the Republicans’ chances. “But when the smoke clears on Nov. 8, there are certainly going to be lots of opportunities for us to get to know the new freshman class.”

An analysis by The New York Times of contributions from Oct. 1 to 18, the latest data available, shows that donations to Republicans from corporate political action committees dropped by 11 percentage points in favor of Democratic candidates, compared with corporate giving from January through September.

Republicans still received 57 percent of contributions, compared with 43 percent for Democrats, but it was the first double-digit October switch since 1994. “A lot will hold their powder for now,” said Brian Wolff, deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “But after the election, we will have a lot of new friends.”

Even before the election, many new contributions were funneled toward open races, like the Eighth Congressional District in Arizona. The Democratic candidate, Gabrielle Giffords, received checks of $5,000 each from the political action committees of United Parcel Service and Union Pacific. Lockheed Martin split the difference, donating $3,000 to Ms. Giffords and sending the same amount to her Republican rival, Randall Graf.

Until October, Lockheed Martin, the giant military contractor, had been following its pattern from recent elections of giving about 70 percent of contributions from its political action committee to Republicans. But Lockheed Martin’s generosity shifted in the first half of October, with Democrats receiving 60 percent of donations, or $127,000.

While Republicans and Democrats are feverishly soliciting contributions until Election Day, campaign finance reports filed this week provide a window into the final days of a raucous midterm election campaign. The analysis of 288 corporate political action committees, which have contributed more than $100,000 this election cycle, found that at least 65 committees had increased their ratio of contributions to Democrats by at least 15 percentage points, including Sprint, United Parcel Service and Hewlett-Packard.

A notable exception to the flurry of last-minute giving is Wal-Mart.

“We had a two-year strategy to build up relationships with Democrats,” said Lee Culpepper, the vice president for federal government relations at Wal-Mart. “This wasn’t something that we decided in August that we needed to do and we ran out helter-skelter to try to do it.”

One sign of fresh interest in the prospects of Democratic Congressional races came one morning this week when more than 100 lobbyists crowded into Democratic Party headquarters on Capitol Hill. Over Dunkin’ Donuts and coffee, the executive director of the party’s Congressional committee, Karin Johanson, delivered a private briefing on the race to a sea of unfamiliar faces, despite spending 30 years in politics.

“People are excited,” she said later in an interview. “It was, by far, the best attended one ever.”

As some young Republican lobbyists fled Washington to spend the final days working on too-close-to-call races in Ohio or Pennsylvania, their senior counterparts stayed behind to begin studying prospective members of the new freshman class. Even if Republicans hold control, the next Congress will almost certainly include at least a handful of moderate Democrats who defeated Republicans and will be looking for allies in the corporate world.

Peter Welch, the Democratic candidate for Vermont’s single House seat, has already been telephoning some members of the Washington business lobby, offering an opportunity to begin a good relationship if he wins election. Never mind that his Republican opponent, Martha Rainville, has received a host of endorsements from the business community.

“The real story of the 2006 contributions is what happens in the early phase of 2007, with a change in party control,” said Bernadette A. Budde, senior vice president of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee. “There will be proverbial meet-and-greets all over town so we will have a sense of who these people are.”

Many of these meet-and-greet sessions will have a dual purpose: political action committees will offer contributions to help candidates wipe away debt their campaigns accrued during the race.

Spending in the midterm election campaign is forecast to reach $2.6 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, including $1 billion from political action committees. While many business groups have been eager to appear as if they have been handily contributing to Democratic efforts, it was not until this month that the trend became apparent enough to quantify beyond party leaders or prospective committee chairmen.

Democrats who are not in tight races — or even standing for re-election in some cases — have seen their contributions increase more than some of those facing the most competitive contests. That is an easy way, lobbyists say, for political action committees to increase the share of their Democratic contributions, a percentage that is carefully tracked by party leaders when they reach the majority.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, who leads a coalition of centrist Democrats, said he has detected a friendlier relationship with the business community in recent months, a welcome change from years of Republican rule when “Democrats were basically frozen out in every way.”

“I hope that the new Democratic majority will take a more open and cooperative approach,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “I hope there won’t be a sense of, ‘Oh, you gave too much money to Republicans, so we’re not going to talk to you.’ ”

    Democrats Get Late Donations From Business, NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/politics/28hedge.html

Democrats Fear Disillusionment in Black Voters

October 27, 2006
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

Last weekend, Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat who hopes to oust Senator George Allen, crammed in visits to 12 black churches, and for several weeks he has been pumping money into advertisements on black radio stations and in black newspapers.

In Missouri, Claire McCaskill, the Democrat trying to unseat Senator Jim Talent, has been running advertisements about sickle cell anemia, a genetic illness that mostly afflicts black people, and the importance of stem cell research in helping to find a cure.

For Democrats like these in tight races, black voter turnout will be crucial on Election Day. But despite a generally buoyant Democratic Party nationally, there are worries among Democratic strategists in some states that blacks may not turn up at the polls in big enough numbers because of disillusionment over past shenanigans.

“This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we’re having to go out of our way to counter them this year,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist.

This will be the first midterm election in which the Democratic Party is mobilizing teams of lawyers and poll watchers, to check for irregularities including suppression of the black vote, in at least a dozen of the closest districts, Ms. Brazile said.

Democrats’ worries are backed up by a Pew Research Center report that found that blacks were twice as likely now than they were in 2004 to say they had little or no confidence in the voting system, rising to 29 percent from 15 percent.

And more than three times as many blacks as whites — 29 percent versus 8 percent — say they do not believe that their vote will be accurately tallied.

Voting experts say the disillusionment is the cumulative effect of election problems in 2000 and 2004, and a reaction to new identification and voter registration laws.

Long lines and shortages of poll workers in lower-income neighborhoods in the 2004 election and widespread reports of fliers with misinformation appearing in minority areas have also had a corrosive effect on confidence, experts say.

The harder question is whether this jaded outlook will diminish turnout.

Recent polls have found record levels of outrage from Democrats about the current political leadership, which may offset the effect of black disillusion.

But Saleemah Affoul of Milwaukee, for one, is not so sure. Like many other black people in her neighborhood, Ms. Affoul said she was convinced that no matter how she voted, it would not be counted fairly.

“I do think the system is rigged,” she said. “I vote anyway because my forefathers worked too hard to win me that right. But not everyone feels that responsibility around here.”

Walking along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the gritty and mostly black section of Brewers Hill on the North Side of Milwaukee, Ms. Affoul said that cynicism in her neighborhood was on the rise.

She traced her own skepticism to one afternoon two months before the last presidential election when she overheard several young black men saying they were not going to vote because they feared being arrested at the polling station for their unpaid parking tickets. The neighborhood had been flooded with fliers from the Milwaukee Black Voters League, a fictitious group, saying that even minor infractions like parking tickets disqualified people from voting.

Ms. Affoul, 66, said she argued with the men but failed to convince them that they had been misinformed.

“I realized that maybe the poll tax isn’t gone after all, and that if people were willing to try that trick, they might be willing to do a lot more that I don’t even know about,” she said.

Black voters are expected to play crucial roles in races for governor and the Senate in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia.

In Maryland, where blacks make up about 30 percent of the electorate, the Democratic candidate for governor, Martin O’Malley, who is white, is trailing the Republican incumbent, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., by several points. Mr. O’Malley needs a large turnout among blacks in Baltimore to win, and he has mobilized more than 2,000 get-out-the-vote workers in black neighborhoods. He also helped his chances of attracting the black vote by selecting Anthony G. Brown, a black lawyer, as his running mate.

In Tennessee, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. is depending on a strong showing from blacks in Memphis, which he represents, to edge past Bob Corker and become the first black senator from a Southern state since Reconstruction.

In Virginia, Democrats hope that recent accusations of racism against Senator Allen will motivate blacks to vote for his Democratic opponent, Mr. Webb.

Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said the reason for the rise in black voters’ cynicism could be summed up in a single word: confirmation.

Mr. Walters said that episodes of voter suppression that were dismissed in 2000 as unfounded recurred in 2004 and were better documented because rights groups dispatched thousands of lawyers and poll watchers. In addition, the first national data-tracking tool, the Election Incident Reporting System, offered a national hot line that fed a database of what ended up to be 40,000 problems.

“All of a sudden after 2004, these weren’t just baseless or isolated incidents,” Mr. Walters said.

The type of misleading letter sent this month to 14,000 Hispanic immigrants in Orange County, Calif., threatening them with arrest if they tried to vote, was hardly a first. In 2004, similar fliers appeared in predominantly black neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, on official-looking letterheads. The fliers said that because of unusually high voter registration, Republicans were to vote on Election Day, and Democrats were to vote the next day.

Fliers sent in Lake County, Ohio, told people that if they had registered through the N.A.A.C.P., they could not vote.

Asked whether such tactics from 2004 could influence black turnout next month, the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, whose National Action Network is also mobilizing voter protection teams, said that despite insufficient action from Democrats in responding to the problems, he believed that black turnout would be high.

“Just because more of us believe that folks are trying to rob us of certain rights doesn’t mean we are more likely to give up and leave the front door unlocked,” Mr. Sharpton said.

The rollout of new voting machines may also be contributing to black voters’ fears.

“African-Americans are more susceptible to conspiracy theories about the new technology because they have been subject to actual conspiracies more often than the rest of the population,” said David A. Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, a research organization dedicated to African-American issues.

Marsha Lindsey, a black paramedic and former poll worker in Dayton, Ohio, said that after 2004 she stopped arguing with her black friends when they said there was no point in voting.

Spencer Overton, a law professor at George Washington University and author of “Stealing Democracy: the New Politics of Voter Suppression,” said the threat of voter suppression presented difficult strategic decisions.

“Voter suppression is a real threat,” Mr. Overton said, “but Democrats can’t invest so much into voter protection that they don’t have adequate resources to turn out their voters to the polls in the first place.”

The Rev. DeForest B. Soaries, who is black and was appointed by President George W. Bush as the first chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission, an agency meant to help carry out the Help America Vote Act, said Democrats overestimated the problem of voter suppression in much the same way Republicans overestimated the problem of voter fraud.

Skepticism is especially pronounced in poor black neighborhoods, Mr. Soaries said, because these communities are often disproportionately affected by problems with machines and the number and training of poll workers. When problems do occur in these areas, he added, they occur against a historical backdrop of voter suppression.

Whatever its consequence, the topic is very much on Democrats’ minds. At a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Atlanta, at the home of Representative John Lewis, who is black, conversation centered on perceptions that widespread voter disenfranchisement would haunt the 2006 elections.

Former President Bill Clinton addressed the issue there, criticizing some Republican campaign tactics. After mentioning rough-edged political ads and other strategies, he said, “And when that doesn’t work, they try to keep you from voting.”

Headed into a statewide candidates’ forum on prison overhaul, for pastors from Baltimore, the Rev. Heber Brown III, who is black, said that the success of black voter mobilization efforts in 2004 set the stage for some disillusion.

“Last time, you had hip-hop leaders like Russell Simmons, Eminem and Sean Combs with the Vote or Die campaign and lots of young blacks voted but what did they get?” said Mr. Brown, 26, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore County. “Now when you talk to young black voters you can’t just say, ‘Get out the vote,’ you have to first do a lot of explaining, cut through a lot of confusion about the 2004 vote and first talk about how change takes time.”

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

    Democrats Fear Disillusionment in Black Voters, NYT, 27.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/us/politics/27race.html

G.O.P. Moves Fast to Reignite Issue of Gay Marriage

October 27, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — The divisive debate over gay marriage, which played a prominent role in 2004 campaigns but this year largely faded from view, erupted anew on Thursday as President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Wednesday’s ruling, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, had immediate ripple effects, especially in Senate races in some of the eight states where voters are considering constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.

President Bush put a spotlight on the issue while campaigning in Iowa, which does not have a proposal on the ballot. With the Republican House candidate, Jeff Lamberti, by his side, Mr. Bush — who has not been talking about gay marriage in recent weeks — took pains to insert a reference into his stump speech warning that Democrats would raise taxes and make America less safe.

“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Mr. Bush said at a luncheon at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that raised $400,000 for Mr. Lamberti.

The president drew applause when he reiterated his long-held stance that marriage was “a union between a man and a woman,” adding, “I believe it’s a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended.”

The ruling in New Jersey left it to the Legislature to decide whether to legalize gay marriage. Even so, the threat that gay marriage could become legal energized conservatives at a time when Republican strategists say that turning out the base could make the difference between winning and losing on Nov. 7. With many independent analysts predicting Republicans will lose the House and possibly the Senate, President Bush’s political team is counting on the party’s sophisticated voter turnout machinery to hold Democratic advances enough that Republicans can at least maintain control.

“It’s a game of margins,” said Charles Black, a Republican strategist who consults frequently with Karl Rove, the chief White House political strategist. “You’ve got about 20 House races and probably half a dozen Senate races that are either dead even or very, very close. So if it motivates voters in one or two to go vote, it could make a difference.”

Democrats predicted Thursday that the debate would not dramatically alter the national conversation in an election that has been dominated by the war in Iraq and corruption and scandal in Washington. But across the country, Republicans quickly embraced the New Jersey ruling as a reason for voters to send them to Capitol Hill.

In Virginia, the court decision could not have come at a better time for Senator George Allen, a Republican whose campaign for re-election had been thrown off course by allegations that he had used racially insensitive remarks. The Virginia ballot includes a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Mr. Allen supports it; his Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, argues that the ban is unnecessary.

On Thursday, Mr. Allen could be found in Roanoke at a rally held by backers of a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage. Victoria Cobb, an organizer of the events, said the New Jersey ruling was giving the cause “a new momentum.”

“It’s an issue that’s going to play a big role in the next 12 days,” Mr. Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, said in an interview.

In Tennessee, another state with a proposal to ban gay marriage, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Democrat running for the Senate, was sparring with Republicans over an advertisement in which the Republican National Committee asserts that Mr. Ford supports gay marriage — an assertion Mr. Ford says is wrong. On Thursday, he responded with his own advertisement, calling the Republican ad “despicable, rotten lies.”

Mr. Ford says he will vote for the Tennessee gay marriage ban. With early voting under way, the Republican candidate, Bob Corker, is telling voters that he has already cast his ballot in favor of the gay marriage ban.

And in Pennsylvania, where Senator Rick Santorum, the Senate’s leading Republican backer of a gay marriage ban, is fighting for his political survival, conservative advocacy groups were working furiously to revive the gay marriage debate. Pennsylvania does not have a ballot initiative.

“It’s an important wedge issue to talk about between candidates where there are two distinct viewpoints on the issue,” said Joseph Cella, president of Fidelis, a national Catholic advocacy group that has embraced Mr. Santorum for his views on abortion and gay marriage. Mr. Cella said his organization, which was also working to pass a gay marriage ban in Colorado, was contemplating an advertising campaign.

As of January 2006, 45 states had enacted some form of law — from a simple statute to a constitutional amendment — banning same-sex marriage. In addition to Virginia, Tennessee and Colorado, the states that have proposed constitutional amendments on the November ballot include Arizona, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

For conservatives, the debate brings back memories of 2004, when they rallied in opposition to a Massachusetts court ruling that same sex couples had a right to marry. The issue proved central in places like South Dakota, where Senator John Thune, a Republican, railed against activist judges in his successful campaign to oust Tom Daschle, then the Senate Democratic leader.

This year, by contrast, conservatives have felt frustrated that the debate over gay marriage and the judiciary is no longer front and center.

“I think they’ve been a little sedate,” Mr. Cella said. But in the wake of the New Jersey ruling, he said, conservatives “are really getting motivated, and this is a shot in the arm to propel that.”

Democrats, though, insist they are not concerned.

“It’s not going to be close to the issue it was in 2004,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “In 2004 they scared people that the court ruling in Massachusetts would just change America and families dramatically. By 2006, it’s clear that hasn’t happened, and so the scare tactic, what motivated people to go to the polls, just isn’t there.”

One place the New Jersey court ruling is not likely to have much of a political impact is, paradoxically, New Jersey, a largely Democratic state that does not have a proposed gay marriage ban on the ballot.

The Republican Senate candidate, State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., has been distancing himself from his party throughout the campaign, in which he has focused largely on economic issues, domestic security and alleged ethical improprieties on the part of his Democratic opponent, Senator Robert Menendez. A Kean spokeswoman said Thursday that theme is unlikely to change.

“We’re going to stick with the issues that we’ve been winning on this entire campaign,” the spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said. Gay marriage, she said, “is not an issue that he’s not talking about, or that he’s trying to avoid. But in terms of our marquee issues that we’re winning on, I don’t think it rises to an issue that’s going to define the campaign.”

    G.O.P. Moves Fast to Reignite Issue of Gay Marriage, NYT, 27.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/us/politics/27marriage.html

In Tight Race, Ad on Black Candidate Stirs Furor

October 26, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 25 — The Tennessee Senate race, one of the most competitive and potentially decisive battles of the midterm election, became even more unpredictable this week after a furor over a Republican television commercial that stood out even in a year of negative advertising.

The commercial, financed by the Republican National Committee, was aimed at Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the black Democrat from Memphis whose campaign for the Senate this year has kept the Republicans on the defensive in a state where they never expected to have trouble holding the seat.

The spot, which was first broadcast last week and was disappearing from the air on Wednesday, featured a series of people in mock man-on-the street interviews talking sarcastically about Mr. Ford and his stands on issues including the estate tax and national security.

The controversy erupted over one of the people featured: an attractive white woman, bare-shouldered, who declares that she met Mr. Ford at a “Playboy party,” and closes the commercial by looking into the camera and saying, with a wink, “Harold, call me.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ford, who is single, said he was one of 3,000 people who attended a Playboy party at the Super Bowl last year in Jacksonville, Fla.

Critics asserted that the advertisement was a clear effort to play to racial stereotypes and fears, essentially, playing the race card in an election where Mr. Ford is trying to break a century of history and become the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction.

Hilary Shelton, director of the N.A.A.C.P.’s Washington bureau, said the spot took aim at the sensitivities many Americans still have about interracial dating.

John Geer, a professor at Vanderbilt University and a specialist in political advertising, said that it “is playing to a lot of fears” and “frankly makes the Willie Horton ad look like child’s play.”

Professor Geer was alluding to the case of a convicted black murderer used in Republican commercials contending that the 1988 Democratic nominee for president, Michael S. Dukakis, was soft on crime.

Mr. Ford has been campaigning as an independent, new generation Democrat dedicated to changing the atmosphere in Washington; to putting more attention on the needs of the middle class and on bread and butter issues like health care and to bringing a fresh approach to the war in Iraq. He has strongly resisted Republican efforts to pigeonhole him as a liberal.

Bob Corker, the Republican candidate, offers himself as committed to Tennessee values, with a track record in business and public life of solving problems, in contrast to what he asserts is Mr. Ford’s “total life experience” in Washington, politics, and serving the Ford political dynasty in Memphis.

The debate over the spot was more impassioned on the campaign trail Wednesday, when Mr. Ford and his allies took their bus across a wide swath of eastern and middle Tennessee, campaigning in small towns and courthouse squares.

Representative Lincoln Davis, the conservative Democrat from the heavily rural district in the state’s midsection, introduced Mr. Ford at a rally in Crossville with a fierce attack on the advertisement.

“I’m ashamed at what I see Republicans putting out today,” Mr. Davis declared, as an overwhelmingly white audience of more than a hundred cheered on the small town square. “You tell Karl Rove that we don’t want this stuff on TV in Tennessee. We don’t want our kids seeing that.”

Mr. Ford told his audience here, and elsewhere in recent days, that the attacks coming his way were simply a sign of desperation, a sign the Republicans have nothing else to say. He added, “You know your opponent is scared when his main opposition against you is, ‘My opponent likes girls.’ ” The audience erupted in laughter.

“You know it’s a big problem if at the end of a race, if the best they can come up with is this sleaze they’re putting up,” he said. “What are they going to brag about? Taking care of the middle class? What are they going to brag about, managing this war the right way?”

In an interview, Mr. Ford demurred when asked if he thought the advertisement was injecting race into the campaign. “You need to ask those people over there what they tried to do with that ad,” he said. “It’s tasteless — but I’ve come to expect that from my opponent.”

Mr. Corker, a former mayor of Chattanooga, quickly tried to distance his campaign from the advertisement. The Corker campaign had been claiming momentum in recent days, citing a flurry of recent polls indicating the Republican had regained a slight lead after steadying its message and its campaign organization.

A spokesman for the Corker campaign, Todd Womack, said the campaign was pleased that the spot had been taken off the air. “It was tacky, over the top,” Mr. Womack said. “Tennesseans deserve better.”

The spot was paid for by the Republican National Committee but was produced by an independent expenditure group that is supposed to have an arm’s length relationship with the actual campaigns. As a result, Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he did not see the spot before it was broadcast and did not have the power to order it removed.

Even so, Mr. Mehlman said he did not see a racial subtext to the ad. “I will tell you that when I looked at the ad, that was not my reaction,” he said. “I hear and respect people who had a different reaction, and I hope they respect me too.”

Moreover, Republican spokesmen said they did not believe the advertisement had been taken off the air in response to the controversy, but had simply, in the words of one, “run its course.”

The furor puts Mr. Mehlman in a difficult position. He has spent considerable time as the national chairman preaching the inclusiveness of the Republican Party and its openness to black candidates and black voters. He said in an interview Wednesday night that he did not believe that this would damage his Republican outreach efforts.

Officials with the Republican independent expenditure committee, who include longtime allies of the Bush political circle, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Senate race here is one of three, along with Missouri and Virginia, that are pivotal to control of the Senate, and all three are considered neck-and-neck. Mr. Ford and Mr. Corker are seeking the seat left vacant by the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, who is retiring.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll published this week showed Mr. Corker leading Mr. Ford, 49 percent to 44 percent. The poll was conducted last Friday through Monday, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

If he wins, the campaign Mr. Ford has been running here will be considered a roadmap for Democrats in conservative and rural areas. Mr. Davis invariably introduced him this week as a man who would never “take away your Bible or your gun,” but would raise the minimum wage so people could afford them.

At one point, Mr. Davis’s eyes welled up as Mr. Ford worked his way through a crowd — largely friendly, although not entirely so — at a heavily Republican barbecue. “You’re watching history,” Mr. Davis said.

Mr. Ford said later that he was not thinking history. “I’m trying to win a race,” he said, before he jumped into his bus, whose destination sign read, “success express.”

    In Tight Race, Ad on Black Candidate Stirs Furor, NYT, 26.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/politics/26tennessee.html

Growing Absentee Voting Is Reshaping Campaigns

October 22, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — For millions of Americans, Election Day is already over.

Thirty states now allow no-excuse absentee voting, and most of them also allow voters to cast early ballots in person at county clerks’ offices or satellite polling places.

In Montana, absentee ballots were mailed Sept. 22. As many as 40 percent of Florida’s voters will cast their ballots before Election Day, Nov. 7. Oregon’s elections are conducted entirely by mail, and Washington is moving that way. California sent out 3.8 million absentee ballots the week of Oct. 8.

Candidates are maneuvering to adapt to a changed political calendar, accelerating their advertising, their mailings and their get-out-the-vote calls. They are figuring out exactly who votes early and are trying to get to them before they cast their ballots. They are raising more money and spending it faster.

“Love it or hate it, it’s the wave of the future,” said Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party. “Election Day started here on Oct. 10 and lasts 29 days. It’s tremendously burdensome on our fund-raising and the people we have out in the field.”

Phil Angelides, the Democrat trying to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, spent $250,000 to mail 725,000 brochures last week, timed to drop into mailboxes the same day the absentee ballots arrived.

Mike McGavick, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat from Washington, pushed up his television advertising schedule to run spots that an aide called his “closing argument” three weeks before Election Day. More than half of the state’s voters will cast ballots by mail before Nov. 7.

In the Denver suburbs, Rick O’Donnell, a Republican candidate for Congress, said he had been emphasizing his hard line on illegal immigration in recent speeches and advertisements to motivate loyal Republicans who he believed were more likely to vote early. Mr. O’Donnell is now pivoting to a message on taxes to try to appeal to independents and undecided voters who are waiting until Election Day.

“It is a different message when it is a different group of people,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

“Every day we get a list of additional people who just in the last 24 hours have applied for ballots,” he said. “The amazing thing is they are voting tonight at home on the kitchen counter. They come up to me and say, ‘I voted for you.’ ”

Experts estimate that more than 20 percent of voters nationwide will cast their ballots before Election Day by mail or at early-voting locations, a proportion of the electorate that is rising with each election. Some states and counties open the ballots before Election Day and keep the results secret; others count them with regular ballots.

Analysts and party officials who study early voting trends say that a decade ago those who took advantage of absentee ballots tended to be relatively well off and highly educated, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by almost two to one. But as the ease of early voting has spread, the ratio is slipping and some analysts say that nearly as many Democrats as Republicans now vote early.

Those who favor the practice say it is convenient for voters and increases turnout. Most elections officials welcome the trend because it reduces the strain on polling places and poll workers on Election Day.

But some experts say there is no proof that early voting increases turnout and may well have the opposite effect because some voters request absentee ballots and then neglect to send them in. They are also concerned that absentee ballots are more open to fraud than votes cast at established polling places.

Candidates and political parties are ambivalent. They can get partisans to vote early and then use them as volunteers to help turn out other voters. They can be sure their voters will not be discouraged or turned away at crowded polling places on Election Day.

But for candidates, the trend toward early voting vastly complicates campaigning, as Mr. Torres said. With voting spread over 29 or even 45 days, candidates have to budget their time and money carefully to make sure they are reaching all potential voters before they cast their ballots. They cannot rely solely on a late blitz of advertising, mail and phone calls to motivate voters. They cannot pray for a piece of late-breaking news to alter the outcome.

Nationwide in 2004, an estimated 25 million votes were cast early, roughly 20 percent of the 122 million total. In 2000, about 14 percent of the electorate voted early. There are no reliable national figures for 1996 and earlier, said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon.

Absentee voting offers an opportunity for political parties to refine and use increasingly sophisticated methods of identifying supporters known as microtargeting. Starting with lists of voters requesting absentee ballots and then researching how they voted in past elections, parties can identify loyalists.

The parties also use magazine subscription lists, catalog mailings and even cable television choices to further identify potential supporters. Both parties use the techniques, but Republicans started earlier and claim an advantage over Democrats in identifying and turning out their voters.

Critics of early voting, however, say that extending the balloting period can discourage voters and distort results. Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, said his research showed that no-excuse absentee voting hurt turnout, although 2004 was an exception.

Mr. Gans said that many voters, concerned about fraud and chaos at polling places after the contested 2000 election, took advantage of the new, more liberal rules for absentee and early voting. But he also said there were more cases of fraud in absentee balloting than in Election Day voting, citing recent cases of absentee vote-buying in Illinois, Florida and Georgia and a concern about overseas ballots in Florida in 2000.

The Georgia case, from 1996, involved two candidates for county commissioner in Dodge County, who set up tables at opposite ends of the hall in the county courthouse offering $20 cash payments for absentee votes. Both candidates were convicted of vote fraud.

Mr. Gans also said that early voting could minimize the impact of events that occurred close to Election Day, leading to what he called a “differential of information” among voters.

“What if on the Friday before the election Osama bin Laden is captured?” he asked. “Or we had a terrorist act or the stock market tanked, or we learned of a major issue of moral turpitude involving a major candidate?”

The weekend before the 2003 election to recall Gray Davis, the California governor, The Los Angeles Times reported that several women had said that Mr. Schwarzenegger, the winning candidate, had groped them. At that point, more than 2 million of the 9.4 million votes cast in the election had already been mailed.

In giving voters more flexibility in casting their ballots, there are those who say that something intangible is lost. Election Day is a civic ritual, they say, the one occasion every two or four years when millions of citizens show up in a public place to exercise their right to choose their representatives.

“Absentee voting erodes that sense of community,” Professor Gronke said. “It is voting alone.”

    Growing Absentee Voting Is Reshaping Campaigns, NYT, 22.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/us/politics/22ballot.html

Political Memo

Guardedly, Democrats Are Daring to Believe

October 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — There is something unusual bubbling in Democratic political waters these days: optimism.

With each new delivery of bad news for Republicans — another Republican congressman under investigation, another Republican district conceded, another poll showing support for the Republican-controlled Congress collapsing — a party that has become so used to losing is considering, disbelievingly and with the requisite worry, the possibility that it could actually win in November.

“I’ve moved from optimistic to giddy,” said Gordon R. Fischer, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “I really have.”

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is in line to become chairman of the Financial Services Committee in a Democratic House, offered wry evidence of the changing perception of the race. His office, Mr. Frank said, has been contacted by a portrait-painting firm offering to talk about possibilities for the traditional committee chairman’s painting, one of those perks of power long absent from the lives of House Democrats.

“I’ve acquired a lot of new friends this year,” Mr. Frank said. “And I haven’t gotten any nicer.”

For Democrats these days, life is one measure glee, one measure dread and one measure hubris. If they are as confident as they have been in a decade about regaining at least one house of Congress — and they are — it is a confidence tempered by the searing memories of being outmaneuvered, for three elections straight, by superior Republican organizing and financial strength, and by continued wariness about the political skills of President Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove.

Mr. Rove has made it clear that he considers Democratic optimism unjustified, predicting that his party’s cash advantage and get-out-the-vote expertise will dash Democratic dreams yet again. And Democrats say they welcome every passing dawn with relief, fearful that the next one will bring a development that could fundamentally alter the nature of the race, like the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden on election eve, which is what happened in 2004.

“I know a lot of people are in somersault land,” Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said reproachfully of fellow Democrats. “I just don’t have the liberty and freedom to do that.”

Still, Democratic ebullience could be found in all corners of Washington over the past few days. It was palpable at social and work gatherings, where Democrats traded gossip about how big a Democratic majority in the House could be; in Capitol Hill conference rooms, where Democrats were preparing transition plans (under orders to keep them quiet); and in offices of Democratic strategists and pollsters, who were drawing up growing lists of Republicans who might be vulnerable.

“I feel better than I ever have,” said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from upstate New York. “I think we have the best chance to take over simply because of the pileup of disasters.”

Stanley B. Greenberg, who was the White House pollster for President Bill Clinton in 1994 when Republicans shocked Democrats by capturing the House, commissioned a poll recently and e-mailed it around town with a single-word headline: “Meltdown.” In an interview, Mr. Greenberg said, “I don’t see how we can lose the House; I don’t think it’s even close.”

Ellen R. Malcolm, president of Emily’s List, a Democratic women’s network, and a longtime Democratic fund-raiser, said Democratic trepidations were beginning to melt away with each passing news cycle. “People are getting more encouraged by the day,” Ms. Malcolm said. “Every poll that comes in seems to be better than the one before.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, who is in line to become speaker if her party wins the House, has put out the word that no one should be talking with too much certainty or detail about the days after Nov. 7. But even Ms. Pelosi has slipped on occasion. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, when asked which suite of offices she would use as speaker, she said with a laugh, “I’ll have any suite I want.”

The change in mood, and evidence of Democratic strength in the polls and in fund-raising, is feeding some crucial deliberations by Democratic leaders as the discussion in some quarters goes from whether Democrats can win to how large a margin the party can gain.

Democratic candidates in districts that had been considered long shots are now pleading with Mr. Emanuel’s committee to send money their way. And some leading Democrats, among them Mr. Greenberg, are urging Mr. Emanuel to seize the moment by expanding the field in which Democrats are competing, saying the party has a chance to cement a big lead in the House in November.

This argument has worried some Democratic strategists, who warn that overconfidence could press party leaders into making decisions that may siphon resources from closely fought races and risk the Democrats’ advantage. “On the House side, it makes sense to be focusing on 25 seats to win 14, not 50,” said Steve Rosenthal, a political and labor consultant with close ties to the party, who described many Democrats as “overenthused.”

“If we had unlimited resources it would be different,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “But we have to be careful.”

Mr. Emanuel said he was polling to see where the party might move next. But he said that barring some last-minute infusion of money, he was considering a relatively limited increase in the number of seats where Democrats would spend. In the past week, Democrats have expanded their field to just over 40 races from about 35, running advertisements against Republicans they consider newly vulnerable in Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, upstate New York and Washington State.

Some Democrats have expressed apprehension that this exuberance may be irrational, or at least premature, and are counseling restraint. Part of that is tactical: Democrats are trying not to help the Republican Party as it works to turn out its conservative base by presenting apocalyptic visions of a Congress led by liberals like Mr. Frank, Ms. Pelosi and Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York.

Part of the Democrats’ queasiness stems from painful familiarity with Mr. Rove’s record of success, and from their own recognition that they hold only slim leads in many races and could yet fall victim to an assertive and sophisticated Republican turnout operation.

“I’m a little concerned that we are spending all our time talking about what our agenda will be in January rather than how we are going to get our votes out in early November,” said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party.

Some of that concern is about the long-term psychic damage the party’s rank-and-file may suffer if Democrats collapse at the finish line again. “We’ve all had these disappointments that contain our enthusiasm as we look to the last few weeks of this race,” said Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader defeated in 2004.

Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist who advised the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, said: “We all sat around in 2004 and looked at exit polls that said John Kerry was going to be president. And that was wrong. We’ve been up this hill before.”

To win the House, Democrats must capture 15 seats. Of the 40 or so they see in play, at most 5 are held by Democrats, strategists for both sides say.

The prospects for a Democratic takeover in the Senate, where the party needs six seats, are tougher. Republicans say four of their incumbents are in serious danger of losing — in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — and are trying to build a firewall by pouring most of their resources into Senate races in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia, where polls show the contests even.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said his committee, which has consistently out-raised its Republican counterpart this year, had more than enough money to compete with the Republicans in those states. Mr. Schumer said he was holding back some resources in case Republicans made an unexpected move in the final days of the campaign.

“They keep trying to pull rabbits out of the hat, but none of them come out,” he said. “But we are holding some money in abeyance for some kind of October surprise.”

While there may be a price to overconfidence, in a sense of complacency at some campaign headquarters, there are advantages at the grass-roots level, where it can fuel the excitement that Democrats hope will result in significant gains on Nov. 7. Republicans face the flip side of this problem, with the prospect that their voters, discouraged by the party’s travails, will stay home.

All this has put Democrats in an unfamiliar place, but one they seem to be enjoying. “I’m a congenital pessimist,” said Howard Wolfson, a consultant advising Democrats in several competitive contests in upstate New York. “But I’m as bullish on our chances as I have been at any time over the last 12 years.”

    Guardedly, Democrats Are Daring to Believe, NYT, 22.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/us/politics/22dems.html
 

Campaign 2006

Open Seats Lift Democratic Hopes in the House

October 21, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

GOLDEN, Colo., Oct. 19 — Ed Perlmutter, a former Democratic state senator, has had other opportunities to run for the House seat representing the district around Denver, but he waited until this year, when the Republican incumbent decided to run for governor rather than seek re-election.

“It is a clean slate,” Mr. Perlmutter said about the appeal of a race without an entrenched office-holder. “It gives people a real shot at seeing who the right guy is.”

In the age of gerrymander, the open seat — one where incumbents step aside because of age, ambition, scandal or other considerations — is a rare but sometimes golden opportunity for one party to wrest control from the other. This year, Democrats like Mr. Perlmutter are taking full advantage, giving their party a potentially vital edge in the battle for control of the House.

“I hate open seats,” Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in an interview last month as he discussed his party’s difficulties in defending its openings.

Deprived of the name recognition, fund-raising and other powers of incumbency — not least the ability to steer federal dollars into local projects — candidates trying to defend open seats for their parties can have a much harder time of it than do sitting members of Congress.

This year, there are 33 open House seats, including three that are vacant at the moment but had been held steadily by one party, and polls suggest that Democrats have a good chance to capture enough Republican-held districts to put them well on their way to tilting the balance of power in Washington.

Surveys show Mr. Perlmutter in command of his race against his Republican opponent, Rick O’Donnell, in the contest to succeed Representative Bob Beauprez, a Republican who is running for governor.

In races for 20 other Republican open seats, recent polls show the Democrat leading in at least 8, putting the party more than halfway to the 15 seats needed to capture the House. Just one of 12 Democratic open seats appears at risk, and even that is considered a long shot.

The state-of-play shows why leaders of both parties pleaded with incumbents who were contemplating leaving the House to stick around, begging them to pass up career changes, more time with the grandchildren or a run for the Senate.

Grabbing open seats has proven critical in past Congressional realignments. In the watershed election of 1994, House Republicans converted 22 Democratic open seats; in the Watergate election of 1974, House Democrats flipped 13 Republican seats. Now, for Democrats to seize the majority, the open seats will be crucial. “You have to win the open seats by a rather substantial proportion because, unless you have a nationalized race, the incumbents are going to win,” said John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute.

It is a testament to the partisan makeup of most Congressional districts that even with such a strong political tide running against the Republican majority, Democrats are still trying to assemble enough victories to gain control of the House.

But Colorado’s Seventh, which ranges from industrial Commerce City through bedroom communities to the old Gold Rush town of Golden, is a textbook swing district drawn to foster competition. Mr. Perlmutter was considered a top prospect for the new seat in 2002, but said he decided not to run to tend to a young family and a law practice. In 2004, Mr. Beauprez was solidly ensconced, but when he started publicly pondering a run for governor in 2005, Mr. Perlmutter got serious about a race.

The benefits of incumbency can be both large and small — from visibility and the ability to help individual constituents to an aura of political invincibility that discourages challenges and keeps donations flowing.

Mr. Perlmutter, who represented part of the House district as a state legislator, still had to win a tough and expensive primary to get into the general election, though it ultimately helped raise his profile. Mr. O’Donnell, a lifelong resident of the district who lost a primary to Mr. Beauprez in 2002, escaped a primary this year. But he quickly discovered he had work to do to become known.

“Over the summer, I would knock on people’s doors, and they would say, ‘Who are you? What are you running for?’ ” Mr. O’Donnell said. “A couple hundred thousand dollars in TV ads takes care of that.”

In their closely watched race, Mr. O’Donnell has sought to emphasize a hard line on immigration and raise the specter of Democratic tax increases while Mr. Perlmutter has pressed the need for change in Republican-controlled Washington and emphasized stem-cell research, an issue he has personalized, saying it represents the potential for treatment of his daughter’s epilepsy.

If there were a year not to be an incumbent, Mr. O’Donnell argues, this is it with the Republicans he hopes to join in the House facing an electorate anxious about the war in Iraq, frustrated with the Congress and angry over constant scandal.

“This year, I am thrilled to be an open-seat candidate,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

Yet Mr. Perlmutter and his Democratic allies have worked to tie Mr. O’Donnell to the Bush administration and an unpopular war. In doing so, they have saddled Mr. O’Donnell with the disadvantages of incumbency while he lacks the long-term relationship with district voters that might help a sitting lawmaker.

In a new advertisement broadcast this week by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on behalf of Mr. Perlmutter, a beaming Mr. O’Donnell was shown leaving Air Force One with President Bush as the president arrived for a fund-raising visit this summer. “Another vote for George Bush’s agenda,” says the advertisement.

Mr. O’Donnell and his aides acknowledge that in the Denver area, where snow is already falling this year, it is tough sledding for Republicans. “I am under no illusions,” he said. “It is going to be painstaking, vote by vote by vote.”

Republicans hardly needed added trouble in a year when the party controlling the White House traditionally suffers. But their task was greatly complicated by the departure of three veteran lawmakers in safe seats who exited under ethical clouds and left their local ballots in shambles.

Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader under indictment in Texas, quit after winning his primary and state Republicans lost a legal fight to replace him on the ballot, forcing them to put their hopes in a difficult write-in campaign. The name of Mark Foley, who resigned over sexually explicit e-mail to former pages, will remain on the ballot in his Florida district, though votes cast for him will go to another candidate. Representative Bob Ney of Ohio, who recently pleaded guilty to corruption charges, dropped out of his race but left his replacement contending with the fallout from his bribery scandal. Democrats could conceivably win all three seats.

In Arizona, Representative Jim Kolbe, who is retiring, refused to endorse the conservative Republican who won the primary to replace him, putting Republican retention of that seat in jeopardy. In Colorado Springs, Republican divisions over the candidate to succeed Representative Joel Hefley, who is retiring, have national Democrats examining whether to make a serious run at that solidly Republican seat.

“In a year like this, the only Republican open seats that are certain to stay Republican are rock-solid, overwhelmingly Republican districts,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan Congressional handicapper.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just bought advertising time in the race for a Nevada open seat that was previously considered out of reach, and party strategists are looking into investing in others where Republicans are showing signs of weakness.

“We are trying to figure out the combination on the lock of the gerrymandered districts,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, campaign committee chairman.

Republicans are fighting back, spending on television advertisements for Mr. O’Donnell and others in open seat races. But they are also being forced to spend in places like Idaho, where they had expected to avoid a fight. Party officials predict that in the end, many of the seats will remain in Republican hands.

    Open Seats Lift Democratic Hopes in the House, NYT, 21.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/us/politics/21colorado.html

NYT        October 18, 2006

New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes        NYT        19.10.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/us/politics/19voting.html

New Laws and Machines

May Spell Voting Woes

October 19, 2006
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese.

“Talk about panic,” said Freddy Oakley, the county’s top election official. “I’ve got gray-haired ladies as poll workers standing around looking stunned.”

As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results.

In Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, a shortage of technicians has vendors for new machines soliciting applications for technical support workers on job Web sites like Monster.com. Ms. Oakley, who is also facing a shortage, raided the computer science department at the University of California, Davis, hiring 60 graduate students as troubleshooters.

Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the states considered most likely to experience difficulties, according to voting experts who have been tracking the technology and other election changes.

“We’ve got new laws, new technology, heightened partisanship and a growing involvement of lawyers in the voting process,” said Tova Wang, who studies elections for the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. “We also have the greatest potential for problems in more places next month than in any voting season before.”

Election officials in many of the states are struggling with delays in the delivery of machines before the election as old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines are phased out. A chronic shortage of poll workers, many of them retirees uncomfortable with new technology, has worsened matters.

Wendy S. Noren, the top election official for Boone County, Mo., which includes Columbia, said delays in the delivery of new machines had left her county several weeks behind schedule and with 600 poll workers yet to be trained. Ms. Noren said she also had not yet been provided with the software coding she needed to print the training manuals.

“I think we will make it,” she said, “but my staff is already at the point of passing out, and the sprint is just starting.”

New computerized registration rolls and litigation over new voter identification laws in states like Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and Missouri have left many poll workers and voters unclear about the rules, including whether they are in effect, as the courts have blocked many of the new laws.

“We’re expecting arguments at the polls in these states that will slow everything down and probably cause large numbers of legitimate voters to be turned away or to be forced to vote on provisional ballots,” said Barbara Burt, an elections reform director for Common Cause.

Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.

“In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won’t be able to get a recount,” said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.

Deborah L. Markowitz, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, was less inclined to sound the alarm. She said that since it was not a presidential election year and many states had encouraged voting by mail, fewer people would turn up at the polls than in 2004.

With computerized registration rolls, Ms. Markowitz said, there will be far fewer people incorrectly excluded from the new databases compared with when registration rolls were on paper.

“There will be isolated incidents, there is no doubt about that,” she said. “But over all the system will move faster and with fewer problems.”

Charles Stewart, head of the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a study this year indicating that from 2000 to 2004, new technology helped reduce the number of improperly marked ballots by about one million votes.

“If you think things are bad and worrisome now, they were much worse before 2000,” Mr. Stewart said, adding that breakdowns in the mechanics of voting are simply more highlighted, not more prevalent.

Still, this is a year of firsts for some local election officials. Cherie Poucher, elections director for Wake County, N.C., which includes Raleigh, said she expected 350,000 voters on Election Day, up from the 30,000 in the May primary. She worries that the county’s 218 optical scan machines may be unable to handle the increased load. During the primary, 12 of the new machines would not boot up and needed to be replaced.

“In the end, we were lucky,” Ms. Poucher said. The machines were replaced within hours, she said, and since her county uses optical scan machines rather than paperless machines, voters were able to deposit paper ballots into a ballot box until replacements arrived.

“I’m an optimist,” she said. “But if we have more failures than we have total machines, it could be really difficult even with the paper ballots.”

Ms. Burt of Common Cause said there was some disagreement about the likelihood of problems, and difficulty in predicting where problems might emerge, in part because there is little uniformity in how elections are conducted.

Except for rudimentary federal rules on voting age, federal financing for states and counties, and protections for minorities and the disabled, elections are shaped by a variety of local laws, conflicting court rulings and technological choices.

“People might refer to it as a national election system but in truth there is no such thing,” Ms. Burt said.

Justin Levitt, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said that on election night his organization will be keeping particularly close watch on North Carolina, Florida and South Dakota, because of new voter registration databases there.

Under the federal Help America Vote Act passed in 2002, election officials were required to create computerized statewide voter registration rolls. These databases were intended to help streamline registration and decrease fraud, and they help political parties track potentially supportive voters. In some states, however, the databases have blocked large numbers of eligible voters from joining registration lists.

North Carolina, for example, requires that information provided by voters for registration forms match information in the motor vehicle or Social Security databases.

“If someone is listed with their maiden name in one list and their married name in another list, that voter will be blocked from the eligible voter roll,” said Mr. Levitt, adding that these voters may show up in large numbers and not realize that there is a problem.

“I certainly don’t see a disaster, but frankly I’m very concerned,” said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla., which includes Tallahassee. He said Florida has tried three times to create databases of eligible and ineligible voters but each system has had widespread inaccuracies.

“This is our fourth attempt and I’m worried that voters who have been voting for the last decade will show up at the polls and they won’t be listed anywhere,” Mr. Sancho said.

A report released last Thursday by the Century Foundation, Common Cause and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights cited concerns that most states have only vague, if any, standards for voting machine distribution.

There is no federal minimum for the ratio of voters to machines and there is wide variation in state standards.

In Wisconsin, the law requires at least one machine for every 200 registered voters. In Michigan, that ratio is 1:600, the report said. Election officials in Ohio, which had some of the longest lines in 2004, passed a law this year setting the ratio at 1:175, the report said. But the law does not take effect until 2013.

Keith A. Cunningham, director of the Allen County board of elections in Ohio and former president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said most counties were close to the ratio required by the law.

“I don’t believe it is going to be as bad as everyone is predicting,” Mr. Cunningham said.

Whether there are problems or not, post-election litigation is likely. A study released this year by the Washington and Lee Law Review found that the number of court cases challenging elections has risen in recent years. In 2004, the number was 361, up from 104 cases in 1998.

Jonah Goldman, a lawyer and elections expert with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said his organization is prepared for the worst. With the N.A.A.C.P. and the People for the American Way Foundation, the lawyers group will have about 500 people fielding calls to a national hot line (1-866-OUR-VOTE) about problems and providing information to voters and poll workers.

In 2004, a similar hot line fielded more than 200,000 calls and created a database of about 40,000 reported problems. The coalition is dispatching lawyers in a dozen states to address reports of voter intimidation or to see if litigation is needed to extend hours at polling stations.

“We’re not sure what we will be handling,” Mr. Goldman said. “But we’re pretty confident that there will be no shortage of work that night.”

    New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes, NYT, 19.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/us/politics/19voting.html

Tables Turned for the G.O.P. Over Iraq Issue

October 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — Four months ago, the White House offered a set of clear political directions to Republicans heading into the midterm elections: embrace the war in Iraq as critical to the antiterrorism fight and belittle Democrats as advocates of a “cut and run” policy of weakness.

With three weeks until Election Day, Republican candidates are barely mentioning Iraq on the campaign trail and in their television advertisements.

Even President Bush, continuing to attack Democrats for opposing the war, has largely dropped his call of “stay the course” and replaced it with a more nuanced promise of flexibility.

It is the Democrats who have seized on Iraq as a central issue. In debates and in speeches, candidates are pummeling Republicans with accusations of a failed war.

Rather than avoiding confrontation on Iraq as they did in 2002 and 2004, they are spotlighting their opposition in new television advertisements that feature mayhem and violence in Iraq, denounce Republicans for supporting Mr. Bush and, in at least one case, demand the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

“I support our troops and I voted for the war, but we shouldn’t stay the course, as Mr. Corker wants,” Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, says in one advertisement.

Mr. Ford’s Republican opponent, Bob Corker, is shown against a backdrop of wartime scenes, saying, “We should stay the course,” a phrase that Republicans once described as a rallying cry for the campaign.

Taken together, the discussion on the campaign trail suggests just how much of a problem the Iraq war has become for Republicans. It represents a startling contrast with the two national elections beginning in 2002 with the preparation for the Iraq invasion, in which Republicans used the issue to keep Democrats on the run on foreign policy and national security.

The development also suggests that what has been a classic strategy of Mr. Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove — to turn a weakness into a strength — is not working as well as the White House had hoped.

“As the Iraq war gets more unpopular, the environment for Republican candidates erodes,” said Mark Campbell, a Republican strategist who represents several Congressional candidates, including Representative Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, who is fighting for re-election in one of the toughest races.

“Only in an election year this complicated can Republicans be happy that Mark Foley knocked the Iraq war off the front page,” Mr. Campbell said.

A senior strategist familiar with Republican polling who insisted on anonymity to share internal data said that as of midsummer it was clear that “stay the course” was a self-defeating argument.

At that point, the strategist said, Republicans started trying to refine their oratory or refocus the debate back to discussing terrorism, where Republicans continue to say they wield the stronger hand and where candidates are running advertisements that Democrats describe as effective.

Democrats, seeing similar data in their polls, advised candidates to confront Republicans aggressively, in the view that accusations that Democrats would “cut and run” would not blunt Democrats’ efforts to mock Republicans as wanting to “stay the course.”

“For the first time in modern memory, Democrats are actually on the offensive when it comes to national security,” said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic organization that has been briefing Democrats on discussing the war and national security. “It is really stunning.”

As of this week, party officials said, Democratic candidates in at least 17 of roughly 35 closely contested Congressional seats and at least six of eight Senate races considered close are running television advertisements against the Iraq war, presenting viewpoints that extend to calling for a troop withdrawal.

More broadly, Democrats in all parts of the country, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Mexico are embracing the war issue.

“It’s not just the Northeast and the West Coast,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said. “It’s places like Virginia and Tennessee. Iraq and foreign policy are to a large extent albatrosses around the Republicans’ neck this year. And they don’t know what to do about it.”

Republicans and Democrats said the White House effort to turn the war into an affirmative Republican issue was undercut by the increasing violence there, along with more American deaths that have brought the war home in the form of mournful articles in local newspapers.

That complicated the White House effort to present the Iraq war as part of the antiterrorism effort, and it has contributed to support for the war reaching record or near-record lows.

In the New York Times/CBS News Poll taken from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8, two-thirds of respondents said they disapproved of Mr. Bush’s handling of the war and 66 percent said the war was going somewhat or very badly.

In the poll, 45 percent said Democrats were more likely to make the right decision on Iraq, compared with 34 percent of Republicans.

The White House counselor, Dan Bartlett, said Mr. Bush had always emphasized flexibility in tactics to achieve victory in Iraq. Mr. Bartlett said the president’s recent added emphasis on adaptability had been prompted by the violence in Iraq and reactions to it, not because Republicans were on the defensive.

“The public sees what’s happening in Iraq, they see the persistent violence, and they want to make sure that we’re adapting,” Mr. Bartlett said.

He said the White House and the Republican Party were not about to cede the traditional advantages on national security to Democrats. Mr. Bush, he added, would step up his attacks on their national security credentials at campaign appearances in Pennsylvania and Virginia on behalf of two of the most endangered candidates, Senator George Allen of Virginia and Representative Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Bartlett said Iraq remained a winning issue in the broader context of the war on terrorism, which the party would continue to hit hard.

Mr. Bush tried to do that on Wednesday in an interview on ABC News, telling George Stephanopoulos, the interviewer, that when voters go to the polls on Nov. 7 “they’re going to want to know what that person’s going to do, what is the plan for a candidate on Iraq, what do they believe?”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Mr. Bush whether the increasing violence in Iraq was similar to the Tet Offensive in 1968, the Vietnam War campaign that is often cited as turning American opinion against the war, Mr. Bush said such a comparison “could be right,” suggesting that terrorists were aiming for a similar result.

Mr. Bush’s aides said he would continue to criticize Democrats on the war even if his words were not echoed by Republican candidates the way they were in 2002 and 2004.

In this environment, several Republicans said they had given up on trying to win an advantage on the war and would be satisfied in at least wrestling Democrats to a draw on it.

“When you lay out arguments in a clear way, you can argue this thing to sort of neutral at worst and, possibly, a slight advantage,” said Russ Schriefer, a Republican strategist who is advising several candidates this year.

Mr. Schriefer said the best case that Republicans could make now was that “we can’t afford to leave until the job is finished.”

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which has polled extensively on attitudes toward the war, said Pew figures suggested that one hope for Republicans earlier in this campaign — that Democrats would be hurt if they were perceived as criticizing the war without offering a strategy for withdrawal — had not been borne out.

“They are not getting punished for not offering an opinion,” Mr. Kohut said. “The Democrats have an advantage on this issue, without having to say much about it.”

Republicans and Democrats said they could not name any examples of Republicans’ trying to use the war as a campaign issue.

But examples of the war being used by Democrats were abundant this week. In a debate in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican challenger to Senator Robert Menendez, was repeatedly asked — 27 times, according to a statement put out by Senate Democrats — whether he would have voted for the resolution authorizing the Iraq war.

Mr. Kean refused to answer.

In Florida on Wednesday, Ron Klein, the Democratic challenger to Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., an embattled Republican, attacked Mr. Shaw with an advertisement that said the congressman “even refuses to question Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq.”

And in Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat who is making a strong challenge to Senator Lincoln Chafee, one of the six most-endangered Republicans, began running an advertisement urging the dismissal of Mr. Rumsfeld.

“Chafee refuses to call for his firing,” the commercial said.

    Tables Turned for the G.O.P. Over Iraq Issue, NYT, 19.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/us/politics/19campaign.html

Press Secretary Raising Money, and Eyebrows

October 16, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

ST. CHARLES, Ill., Oct. 15 — Tony Snow draped his lanky frame across a wooden lectern, leaned forward and gazed out at 850 adoring Republicans who had paid $175 apiece to hear him speak. There was a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, as if he was about to reveal some deep inner secret from his new life as the White House press secretary.

“Yesterday,” Mr. Snow declared, “I was in the Oval Office with the president ——”

He cut himself off, took a perfectly calibrated three-second pause and switched into an aw-shucks voice for dramatic effect: “I just looove saying that! Yeaaah, I was in the Oval Office. Just meeee and the president. Nooooobody else.” The crowd lapped it up.

Live from the suburbs of Chicago — It’s the Tony Snow Outside-the-Beltway Hour! Memo to White House press corps: you can’t catch this show in the briefing room.

In the six months since Mr. Bush enlisted him to resuscitate a White House press operation that was barely breathing, Mr. Snow, a former Fox News television and radio host and a conservative commentator, has reinvented the job with his snappy sound bites and knack for deflecting tough questions with a smile.

Now, he is reinventing it yet again, by breaking away from the briefing room to raise money for Republicans, as he did here on Saturday night for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Mr. Snow, who will make 16 such appearances before Election Day, acknowledged he had entered “terra incognita”; to his knowledge, no other White House press secretary has raised money for political candidates while in the job. But with his star power from television and his conservative credentials, Mr. Snow, unlike his predecessors, is in hot demand.

His booking agent is the White House political shop, run by Karl Rove, the president’s chief strategist. The White House is not keeping track of how much money Mr. Snow raises.

His talks — Saturday night’s was a cross between a one-man show and a religious revival — have attracted little scrutiny so far, but they are giving a much-needed boost to a party whose midterm fortunes appear increasingly bleak.

Yet even as the Republican establishment revels in his celebrity — “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Mr. Rove said — Mr. Snow’s extracurricular activities are making some veteran Washington hands, including those with strong Republican ties, deeply uneasy.

“The principal job of the press secretary is to present information to reporters, not propaganda,” said David R. Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and also advised President Bill Clinton. “If he is seen as wearing two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: is he speaking to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a political partisan?”

Indeed, Mr. Snow, whose commentary was so sharply critical of Mr. Bush that six months before he was hired, he referred to Mr. Bush as “something of an embarrassment,” got the White House job in part because his independence gave him credibility with reporters. Kenneth J. Duberstein, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Snow must be careful not to damage that credibility.

“His profile should not be a political profile,” Mr. Duberstein said, “but a press profile on behalf of the president.”

But of course, press secretaries are naturally partisans; to think otherwise would be naïve. Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush’s first press secretary, said he saw nothing wrong with fund-raising appearances, “so long as you don’t make yourself into red meat.”

There was, for the record, not a shred of red meat in Mr. Snow’s whirlwind performance Saturday night. For 28 minutes, Mr. Snow paced the stage, hands gesticulating, eyebrows arching, voice rising and falling, as he held forth without notes on the greatness of his job, his president and the American people.

Here was Mr. Snow on working in the White House: “The most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

On the nature of the American soul after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11: “There is an ember of greatness burning in every heart.” On the intellectual acumen of his boss: “He reminds me of one of those guys at the gym who plays about 40 chessboards at once.”

There were no mean words about Democrats. Mr. Snow, aware of his delicate balancing act, has vowed to “stick to factual defenses and advocacy for the president.”

But as the keynote speaker, of course, he got to choose which facts to defend. There was no mention of Mark Foley, the Florida congressman who resigned in late September amid revelations he had sent sexually explicit e-mail to teenage pages, or Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist, or anybody else who makes Republicans cringe.

That did not sit well with the local news media, which have been following accusations that Mr. Hastert’s aides knew of the Foley scandal several years ago. Just two days earlier, Mr. Bush had been in Chicago to give the speaker his support.

After his talk, Mr. Snow gave a mini news conference, and was asked why he failed to raise the Foley issue, “to reassure the people who are paying 175 bucks a plate here tonight.”

“Because,” Mr. Snow shot back tartly, “last time I checked Mark Foley didn’t represent the people of this district.”

Back in Washington, Mr. Snow has gained a reputation for such witty, if biting, repartee. Sound bites seem to flow from his tongue like water tumbling downstream.

Once, he accused the veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who is 86 and has been covering presidents since Mr. Snow, 51, was in grade school, of “pestering the teacher.” And when Bob Woodward painted a portrait of a dysfunctional Bush White House in his new book, “State of Denial,” Mr. Snow dismissed it out of hand. “Sort of like cotton candy — it melts on contact,” he said.

Jim Axelrod, chief White House correspondent for CBS News, said of Mr. Snow, “He’s velvet glove and iron fist.”

But when Mr. Snow missed a day of work to attend a fund-raiser after a leading Republican senator raised questions about the president’s Iraq policy, Mr. Axelrod was critical. “This is the kind of thing you would expect the press secretary to be handling square on,” he said.

Mr. Snow said his deputy handled the questions just fine.

It is often said that the White House press secretary serves two masters: the president and the press, which relies on the press secretary to advocate for the release of information. Mr. Snow believes that is true — to a point.

“The press secretary serves two masters,” he said, “but not all masters are equal.”

That gets back to his decision to headline fund-raisers, a decision he says he made only after soliciting the advice of colleagues, including the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers. Mr. Snow said he set his own ground rules and would quit raising money if it interfered with his day job.

How will he know? “I have the feeling that all of us will know,” he said. “You kind of know it when you see it.”

Mr. Gergen sees this as the final “blurring of the lines between politics and news and entertainment.” Mr. Fleischer says those lines blurred long ago.

“The modern-day briefing is not a briefing but a TV show,” he said, “and Tony is the star.”

Mr. Snow said his stardom was only “the reflected glory of the president.” But on Saturday night, as he basked in the spotlight, his face beaming out at the crowd from six oversize screens, he looked awfully happy when he said, “Let me bring you greetings from the president of the United States.”

    Press Secretary Raising Money, and Eyebrows, NYT, 16.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/us/politics/16snow.html

Gay Marriage Losing Punch as Ballot Issue

October 14, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER, Oct. 13 — The debate over same-sex marriage was a black-or-white proposition two years ago when voters in 11 states barred gay couples from marrying.

But this year shades of gray are everywhere, as eight more states consider similar ballot measures. Some of the proposed bans are struggling in the polls, and the issue of same-sex marriage itself has largely failed to rouse conservative voters.

In some cases, other issues, like the war in Iraq and ethics in Washington, have seized voters’ attention. But the biggest change, people on both sides of the issue say, is that supporters of same-sex marriage this year are likely to be as mobilized as the opponents.

The social conservatives, who focused on marriage in 2004 and helped President Bush gain re-election in some hard-fought states in the Midwest, have been offset by equally committed and organized opposition. Slick advertising, paid staff and get-out-the-vote drives have become a two-way street.

“The opponents of these measures have had a lot more time to organize and fund their efforts; that has made for a bit of a different complexion,” said Julaine K. Appling, the executive director of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, which supports a constitutional amendment in that state defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Proposals like Wisconsin’s are also on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia. And while most of the measures are expected to pass, their emotional force in drawing committed, conservative voters to the polls, many political experts say, has been muted or spent.

Recent polls in Arizona, Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin, for example, have suggested only narrow majorities in support, in contrast to the 60 to 70 percent or more majorities in most states that voted on the issue in 2004. Two recent polls in South Dakota suggested that the same-sex marriage amendment might actually lose, while a third said it seemed likely to pass.

“As it stands right now, conservative turnout is not going to be as strong as it has traditionally been,” said Jon Paul, the executive director of Coloradans for Marriage, which is supporting a ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage.

Some pollsters say people might just be burned out on the subject of marriage and its boundaries.

“It doesn’t seem to be salient to what most Tennesseans are concerned about right now,” said Robert Wyatt, the associate director of the Middle Tennessee State University poll. The ballot proposal there will almost certainly pass, Dr. Wyatt said, but few people think it will drive turnout or swing the tight race for the Senate between Bob Corker, a Republican, and Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Democrat. Both candidates support a ban on same-sex marriage.

Dr. Wyatt said efforts to stir enthusiasm among conservatives have mostly fallen flat.

“It’s one of those things that’s like preaching to the choir,” he said.

The momentum against same-sex marriage at the ballot box has also been hurt by court cases that have upheld bans on same-sex marriage — notably rulings by the highest courts in New York and Washington this summer — by removing some of the urgency for constitutional amendments.

Here in Colorado, the debate has been complicated by the presence of two ballot measures on the subject that in essence work in opposite directions. One measure would add a ban on same-sex marriage to the Constitution, and the other would create a framework of legal rights for same-sex couples in civil unions.

Scholars who track gender-law issues say that gay rights groups and their allies have worked hard since the last election to create a middle-ground position on the question of partnership rights that could appeal to voters who might not vote for same-sex marriage.

The position, which has been repeated like a mantra across Colorado this year by advocates for the civil union proposal, holds that civil unions are not marriage and that if voters want to hold marriage apart as a separate institution for heterosexuals, that would be fine. But it is only fair and just, they say, that couples in other types of relationships have legal protections, too.

Opponents of the civil union bill say that the moderation line is a smokescreen and that same-sex marriage in Colorado will become a reality in fact, if not in name, if the civil union proposition is approved.

“It is nothing short of Orwellian doublespeak to say it is not marriage,” State Representative Kevin Lundberg, a Republican from eastern Colorado, said at a recent forum in Denver on the ballot proposals.

Political analysts suggest that just like patrons perusing an old-fashioned Chinese restaurant menu, voters in Colorado considering the two measures might take one from Column A and one from Column B. Some people say they plan to do just that.

Joel Sidell and Dona Maloy — longtime unmarried partners who live in the Denver area — show how the lines have fractured. Mr. Sidell, 62, a retired police officer and a Republican, said he would probably vote for the ban on same-sex marriage and against civil unions.

“To me, it still does not seem right for a woman to be able to marry a woman and a male to marry a male,” Mr. Sidell said. “I don’t think it’s the sanctity of the term. It just doesn’t seem proper.”

Ms. Maloy, 61, is a Democrat who said she planned to vote the opposite of her partner — no on the marriage amendment and yes to benefits for same-sex partners.

“I think that marriage is a personal thing; at least it is for me,” she said. “Legally, I don’t see why people can’t all have the same rights.”

The two major party candidates for governor in Colorado have also taken opposite sides on the marriage-civil union debate. The Democrat, Bill Ritter, has said he will vote for civil unions and against the constitutional amendment, while the Republican, Representative Bob Beauprez, has said he plans to vote against civil unions and for the same-sex marriage ban. Pollsters say those positions do not appear to be swaying the race, which Mr. Ritter has led by 10 to 15 percentage points in recent polls.

Tangled legal questions over parental rights, health care decisions and employer benefits have emerged in some states where efforts to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions were successful in the past, complicating calculations about how the bans play out in real life. The case of Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins is one example.

Ms. Miller and Ms. Jenkins were joined in a civil ceremony in 2000 in Vermont, which allows same-sex contracts. Ms. Miller had a baby in 2002 through artificial insemination, and they raised the child together. Now they have separated, and both Vermont and Virginia, which does not recognize the validity of Vermont’s civil union system, have claimed jurisdiction over the question of child custody.

Legal experts say the case is probably headed for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, Virginia’s same-sex marriage ballot proposal would define marriage as between a man and a woman and also put into the Constitution the legal language at the heart of the custody battle: that civil unions formed in other states are invalid in Virginia.

That prohibition on civil unions is even too far-reaching for some opponents of same-sex marriage, said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“It’s so sweeping, it’s giving some people pause,” Mr. Sabato said.

Meanwhile, gay men and lesbians continue to come out in ever greater numbers, especially in some of the states that will be voting on the marriage issue next month.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of people identifying themselves in Census surveys as being in a same-sex couple grew by 30 percent, to about 770,000, according to a study released this week by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, which tracks and researches gay legal issues.

Of the eight states with ballot measures, the study found that six had growth rates higher than the national average, led by Wisconsin, up 81 percent; Colorado, up 58 percent; Virginia, up 43 percent; and South Carolina, up 39 percent.

Conservatives like Mr. Paul of the Colorado marriage group say the low-key tenor of the same-sex marriage debate could change in a thunderclap if a court decision that appears to undermine traditional marriage boundaries is handed down before the election. The New Jersey Supreme Court has a case pending and could issue a decision before Election Day.

Katie Kelley contributed reporting.

    Gay Marriage Losing Punch as Ballot Issue, NYT, 14.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/us/politics/14marriage.html

Bush Joins Hastert at Rally, and Lavishes the Praise

October 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

CHICAGO, Oct. 12 — President Bush came to the home turf of the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, on Thursday to give him a resounding pledge of support before a revved-up group of Republican donors, activists and leaders who were clearly glad to witness a presidential lift for the buffeted dean of their state party.

Appearing at a fund-raising event for two local Republican House candidates facing competitive races, David McSweeney and Peter Roskam, Mr. Bush bounded onto the stage alongside Mr. Hastert, whose Congressional district is several miles outside Chicago. Standing beside the speaker, Mr. Bush, wearing a smile that lasted for minutes, gave him a hearty handshake as Mr. Hastert, beaming, patted him on the back.

Mr. Bush came here with a far larger retinue of photographers and reporters than usual for such campaign trips. It was evidence of the anticipation surrounding his visit as questions continued to swirl about what Mr. Hastert’s office knew, and when, about former Representative Mark Foley’s e-mail to male pages.

Mr. Bush seemed more than happy to oblige, after Mr. Hastert introduced the president as “our friend” and “our leader.”

“Before I liberate the speaker so he doesn’t have to stand up here for that long, Speaker, I want to say this to you,” Mr. Bush said. “I am proud to be standing with the current speaker of the House who is going to be the future speaker of the House.”

“He’s not one of these Washington politicians who spews a lot of hot air — he just gets the job done,” Mr. Bush said as the room erupted. “This country is better off with Denny Hastert as the speaker.”

Mr. Bush’s appearance completed what has appeared to be a gradual but now unmistakable White House embrace of Mr. Hastert since news first surfaced that Mr. Foley had sent risqué e-mail to Congressional pages. The visit reflected in part a calculation by the White House and party leaders that providing a protective phalanx for the speaker would help cool some of the heat from the controversy and press ahead on the party’s election-year message on terrorism and taxes.

Mr. Bush seemed to provide an object lesson to his party on that strategy here, weaving praise for Mr. Hastert into his standard stump speech that takes Democrats to task as trying to block his terrorism initiatives and threatening to end his tax cuts.

Speaking about Democratic resistance to the USA Patriot Act, a regular part of his campaign speeches, Mr. Bush broke off and said, “By the way, the speaker led the charge in making sure the House passed the Patriot Act the first time and then reauthorized it.”

Accusing Democrats of failing to understand the true threat of terrorists, Mr. Bush said at another point, “I see the threat; the speaker sees the threat.”

Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said his boss appreciated the gesture.

“It’s the pick-me-up that everyone really needed to help us focus toward November,” Mr. Bonjean said.

The event raised $1.1 million.

    Bush Joins Hastert at Rally, and Lavishes the Praise, NYT, 13.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/us/politics/13bush.html

States Are Growing More Lenient in Allowing Felons to Vote

October 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

Legislatures in 16 states have loosened voting restrictions on felons over the last decade, according to a new report, a trend hailed by some rights advocates as a step toward democratic principles and fairness, especially for black Americans.

Because of their high incarceration rate, blacks are most affected by the voting bans that vary widely among the states, with many barring current inmates and parolees from voting until they have fulfilled their sentences, and some barring felons for life.

In recent years, Iowa, Nebraska and New Mexico have repealed their lifetime bans on voting by people who have been convicted of felonies, and several other states made it easier for freed prisoners or those on probation to vote, according to the report, issued yesterday by the Sentencing Project, a liberal advocacy group in Washington.

The recent changes have restored voting rights to more than 600,000 individuals, the report said. But because the country’s prison population has continued to rise, a record number of Americans, 5.3 million, are still denied the vote because of criminal records, it concluded.

“It’s good news that many people who’d been disqualified from voting are being re-engaged as citizens,” said Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a leader of the movement to smooth the re-entry of prisoners to society.

“I think people are realizing that the country had gone too far in marginalizing a large group of people who have been convicted of felonies,” Mr. Travis said. “This has had profound consequences for our democracy and the participation of minorities.”

But some conservatives remain philosophically opposed to any wholesale loosening of voting restrictions. “If you’re not willing to follow the law, then you shouldn’t claim the right to make the law for someone else,” said Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative advocacy group in Washington.

Mr. Clegg, who was a senior Justice Department official in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said that those convicted of felonies should be given the vote only case by case, when they have proved to be constructive members of society.

Some restrictions on voting date to the early years of the country or to the post-Civil-War period, while others were tightened during the “get tough on crime” era of the 1980’s.

By federal law, voter rules are mainly set by the states. As a result, even in presidential elections, former prisoners can vote in some states but not others.

Only two states, Maine and Vermont, have no restrictions, even permitting inmates to vote. At the other extreme, three states, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia, still have lifetime bans on voting by felons. Nine others bar selected groups of offenders for life.

New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, like most states, do not allow current inmates or parolees to vote.

In a ballot initiative in Rhode Island this November, voters will decide whether to restore voting rights to prisoners on parole or probation, who far outnumber inmates. Early polls show public support for the measure.

Advocates of change emphasize broad arguments about democratic process, but the racial disparities give the issue a special resonance and raise questions about the representation of minorities in politics.

In 2004, one in eight black men were unable to vote because of a felony conviction, the report said, a rate many times higher than that for other groups.

Felony convictions have left one in four black men barred from voting in five states: Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Virginia and Wyoming, said Ryan S. King, author of the report and a policy analyst at the Sentencing Project.

But Mr. Clegg argued that the voting restrictions were applied evenhandedly, and that just because they had a disproportionate impact on one group, that did not make them racially discriminatory.

Though data on felon voting patterns are murky, a large majority of former prisoners are believed to lean Democratic. Even with a low turnout rate, their participation could make a difference in close races, experts say. Florida’s rules, for example, might have been a factor in the 2000 presidential election.

In Texas in 1997, Gov. George W. Bush signed a law eliminating a two-year wait before prisoners ending their parole could vote.

    States Are Growing More Lenient in Allowing Felons to Vote, NYT, 12.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/us/12felons.html

Evangelicals Blame Foley, Not the G.O.P.

October 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

VIRGINIA BEACH, Oct. 7 — As word of Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit e-mail messages to former pages spread last week, Republican strategists worried — and Democrats hoped — that the sordid nature of the scandal would discourage conservative Christians from going to the polls.

But in dozens of interviews here in southeastern Virginia, a conservative Christian stronghold that is a battleground in races for the House and Senate, many said the episode only reinforced their reasons to vote for their two Republican incumbents in neck-and-neck re-election fights, Representative Thelma Drake and Senator George Allen.

“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”

The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.

Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

It is too soon to tell if the scandal will affect the turnout of evangelical Christians, who make up about a quarter of the electorate and more than a third of Republican voters. Some of President Bush’s political advisers have said that pre-election reports in 2000 that Mr. Bush was once arrested for drunken driving depressed turnout among conservative Christians, nearly costing him the White House.

Pollsters and conservative leaders have said for months that grass-roots evangelicals were demoralized by what they felt was the Republicans’ failure to live up to their talk about social issues — to say nothing of the economy, the Iraq war and other issues that weigh more broadly across the electorate. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed a steep drop in conservative Christian support for Republicans, albeit without a corresponding gain for the Democrats.

Some in the crowd waiting outside the concert, by the evangelical group MercyMe, said the revelations about Mr. Foley, Republican of Florida, had redoubled their previous concerns about the Republican Party.

“The Republicans need to tighten up their ship,” said Wade Crane, a sign maker from Virginia Beach who said he usually voted Republican but had soured on the party in the last several months. “They need to stop covering themselves, using their power to protect themselves.”

Charles W. Dunn, dean of the school of government at Regent University, founded here by the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, said that so many conservative Christians were already in a funk about the party that “the Foley issue just opens up the potential floodgate for losses.” The tawdry accusations, Mr. Dunn said, “give life” to the charges of Republican corruption that had been merely “latent” in the minds of many voters.

But as far as culpability in the Foley case, Mr. Dunn said, House Republicans may benefit from the evangelical conception of sin. Where liberals tend to think of collective responsibility, conservative Christians focus on personal morality. “The conservative Christian audience or base has this acute moral lens through which they look at this, and it is very personal,” Mr. Dunn said. “This is Foley’s personal sin.”

To a person, those interviewed said that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois should resign if he knew of the most serious claims against Mr. Foley and failed to stop him. They said the degree of Mr. Hastert’s responsibility remained to be seen. Many said the issue had not changed their view of Congress because, in their opinion, it could not sink any lower.

But all also noted that the swift Democratic efforts to broaden the scandal to Mr. Hastert and other Republicans had added more than a whiff of partisanship to the stink of the scandal.

As the details were emerging last Tuesday, for example, Phil Kellam, the Democrat challenging Ms. Drake, called on her to demand Mr. Hastert’s immediate resignation. In a statement, Mr. Kellam said the House Republican leaders’ “lack of attention” was “perhaps more shocking” than what Mr. Foley had done.

Drew Lankford, a spokesman for Mr. Kellam, said the attacks on Ms. Drake had “painted her into a corner” because she was unwilling to denounce Mr. Hastert. Ms. Drake has said she will wait for a thorough investigation into what Mr. Hastert knew. (The matter has come up less in the Senate race between Mr. Allen and Jim Webb, the Democrat.)

Brian Courtney, a Republican-leaning sales manager attending the concert, said the Foley affair had led to “the kind of mudslinging one would expect to see at an election time like this.” He added that he was paying closer attention to the “values and character” of the candidates, and that he would probably vote Republican again.

Republicans have put up a vigorous defense, mainly through conservative allies and on talk radio. An e-mail message to talk-radio hosts from the Republican Party last week asked, “How would Democrats react if one of their own had a sexual relationship with an intern, was found out, then lied to a grand jury in an attempt to cover it up?”

Rush Limbaugh devoted much of his airtime to the Democrats’ defense of President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Sean Hannity focused on former Representative Gerry Studds, a Massachusetts Democrat who in 1983 admitted having sex with a teenage male page, won re-election and served several more terms with the support of his colleagues.

Still, many conservative churchgoers said that what stood out for them was not the politics but the individual sin. “It is not going to affect my vote because I don’t live in Florida,” said Scott O’Connell, a mechanical engineer who described himself as a fundamentalist. “But there is a bigger moral issue which I would say is the prism I view this through: I do not believe in homosexuality.”

David Thomas, a father taking his family to the concert, said that he, too, was leaning toward voting Republican and that the scandal only reinforced his conservative Christian convictions. “That is the problem we have in society,” Mr. Thomas said. “Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a ‘right’ to do whatever.”

In an interview on Friday, Pastor Anne Gimenez of the 15,000-member Rock Church here said the scandal “doesn’t change the issues we are voting on,” like abortion, public expression of religion and same-sex marriage.

The church has been actively registering parishioners and reminding them to vote.

“Every Sunday already,” Ms. Gimenez said.

    Evangelicals Blame Foley, Not the G.O.P., NYT, 9.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/us/politics/09conservatives.html

Republicans hit by wave of political bad news

Sun Oct 8, 2006 12:33 PM ET
Reuters
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A seamy Capitol Hill sex scandal is the latest bad news to deflate Republicans and leave them scrambling for political survival four weeks before elections that will decide whether they keep control of the U.S. Congress.

While Republicans tried to contain the fallout from Florida Rep. Mark Foley's lewd messages to teenage congressional assistants, they also have been forced to fight off new political firestorms over the Iraq war and a lingering influence-peddling scandal.

The wave of bad news broke just as President Bush and Republicans were enjoying slight upturns in their approval ratings and prospects in the November 7 midterm congressional elections.

"We were on a bump up and then a whole bunch of things hit," said Republican pollster David Winston.

A survey Winston took last week found the sex scandal had not yet changed voter intentions or attitudes toward Republicans, but a Newsweek poll released on Saturday said Democrats had overtaken a long-held Republican advantage on the "moral values" issue.

Democrats are on a roll in the battle to control the public debate ahead of the election, when they must pick up 15 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives and six seats in the 100-member Senate to seize power.

When the Foley scandal broke, Bush and Republicans already were on the defensive over a National Intelligence Estimate that said the Iraq war had actually fueled Islamic extremism.

A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post said the White House bungled the Iraq war and Bush misled Americans about the extent of violence.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, added to the fire on Thursday after a trip to Iraq. He said the country had taken a step back and the United States might soon need to consider "a change of course" there.

A new Time magazine poll found a majority of Americans, 54 percent, thought Bush misled the country in making his case for the Iraq war, and a new AP/Ipsos poll gave Democrats an edge over Republicans in fighting terrorism -- usually a Republican strength.

'MAGIC RABBIT'

"It's now clear that Republicans can't count on security to be the magic rabbit they pull out of their hats this fall," said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic committee in charge of Senate campaigns.

The influence-peddling scandal involving convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff also resurfaced, with a congressional committee report showing many White House contacts with Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud and is cooperating with a federal corruption probe.

An aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove resigned on Friday after the report said she passed inside information to Abramoff while accepting tickets to sporting events from him.

The string of events appeared to send Bush's approval rating sliding again into the mid to high 30s in several polls, after inching above 40 percent.

"This has been an absolutely miserable week for Republicans," pollster John Zogby said.

The Time poll showed almost 80 percent of those surveyed were aware of the sex scandal and only 16 percent approved of the way it was handled by Republicans.

The big Republican concern was that core conservative supporters would become disheartened after the scandal and stay home. Democrats, hoping the scandal would fire up their base, were already raising money off the latest Republican troubles.

"Republicans are on the run and we can put them down for the count by hitting them with everything we've got immediately," Democratic strategist James Carville said in a fund-raising pitch for the Democratic Senate campaign committee.

Doug Schoen, former pollster to Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the sex scandal would highlight the party's arguments about Republican abuses of power and corruption. But Democrats still need to focus on broader issues and the need for change in Washington, he said.

"The point has been made. The American people have gotten it," Schoen said. "What Democrats need to do is stress the need for fresh faces and a new approach."

    Republicans hit by wave of political bad news, R, 8.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-10-08T163335Z_01_N06365010_RTRUKOC_0_US-ELECTION.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C1-TopStories-newsOne-2

Bush’s Megaphone Unable to Reach Above the Din

October 5, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Oct. 4 — Through disappointing polls and bad news in Iraq, intraparty squabbling over immigration and bipartisan broadsides on port security, President Bush has been able to use the megaphone of his office to shout above the din and shape the national debate.

But the Mark Foley scandal is rendering that megaphone practically useless, just as the president is trying to turn up the volume to help his party beat back Democratic efforts to take control of Congress this November.

During his three-day campaign swing out West this week, Mr. Bush’s carefully honed attacks on Democrats as soft on terrorism have been drowned out by the Foley case and its political repercussions.

In interviews this week, White House officials expressed a sense of resignation, saying they were left with few options to help their party emerge intact from a scandal that appears to further threaten the Republicans’ hold on Congress.

For now, they said, they have little choice but to sit on the sidelines, watch it play out and hope that the House Republican leadership, starting with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, finds an adroit way to extricate itself from the matter.

More than anything else, officials said, they are hemmed in by the unknown, girding for still more unwelcome developments in the Foley saga that could make any sort of full-throated defense or criticism of the House leadership now seem ill considered later. Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned his House seat on Friday after being confronted by ABC News with sexually explicit text messages he had sent to teenage Congressional pages.

“We’re not the keepers of the facts,” said a senior official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations on the Foley scandal.

Referring to the president’s decision to express dismay at the reports about Mr. Foley, and calibrated support for Mr. Hastert as a father, teacher and coach, this official said, “We felt that it was important that the president speak out on this issue — it’s a shocking revelation and warrants his comments.”

But, the official added, “That can help mitigate an aspect of the story, but the story itself still has legs, because the story itself hasn’t been fully reported yet.” And, he indicated the president would not have much more to say on the matter any time soon.

White House strategists said they were hoping that the president’s statement of dismay on Tuesday had at least sent a signal to voters that the titular head of the party was just as concerned about the reports as they were.

But allies said that what the president said or did would have little effect as new details trickled out. All he can really do, they said, is try to keep hammering home his case against the Democrats, calling on the Republican faithful to vote against what he termed “the party of cut and run.”

Charles Black, a longtime Republican strategist with close ties to the White House who has been in contact with the president’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, said that at this point he did not think the White House would intervene by getting involved in the debate over Mr. Hastert’s future.

“Every time the White House gets involved in internal party stuff on the Hill it has a bad result,” Mr. Black said, referring to the White House’s involvement in the ouster of Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi from the majority leader’s post in 2002, which bred resentment within the party.

Mr. Bush pressed ahead this week on a fund-raising and campaign trip through the West. He joined on Wednesday with Senator Jon Kyl, Representatives J. D. Hayworth and Rick Renzi, and Gov. Janet Napolitano, all of Arizona, to sign a homeland security appropriations bill that will help pay for new border security initiatives. Still, the prickliness of the immigration issue within the party was on display: Mr. Bush renewed his calls for a guest worker program; Mr. Hayworth told reporters afterward that instituting such a program before the border was secured would be putting “the cart before the horse.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks in the afternoon at a reception for Representative Bob Beauprez, who is running for governor of Colorado, were not carried for very long on Fox News Channel. Fox switched away from them before the president got into his attacks against Democrats as good people who “just happen to be wrong people” when it comes to terrorism.

Soon after Mr. Bush’s remarks concluded, Fox News Channel was back to the Foley scandal, featuring a discussion about how much it was hurting the party’s prospects this fall.

Adam Nagourney contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bush’s Megaphone Unable to Reach Above the Din, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/politics/05bush.html

Bush Raises Volume on Campaign Charge

October 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:08 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday claimed Democrats can't be trusted to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. ''Vote Republican for the safety of the United States,'' he said.

In an echo of the election-year charges the GOP used in 2002 and 2004, Bush accused the Democrats of being soft on terrorism and argued the nation's security is a key issue in the midterm elections.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in 2004, had said a vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry would risk another terror attack.

On his three-day, $3.6 million fundraising swing through Nevada, California, Arizona and Colorado, Bush is trying to keep the election framed around the economy and the war on terror,

But back in Washington, the partisan sniping continues over when Republican leaders in the House first learned about the conduct of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who sent sexually explicit messages to teenage boys who had worked as pages at the Capitol.

Republican strategists worry that the Foley scandal could keep conservatives away from the polls, but the White House said Bush is focused on getting his message out to voters.

Bush interrupted his fundraising swing in California on Tuesday to denounce Foley's conduct and support House Speaker Dennis Hastert amid calls from some conservatives for the Illinois Republican's resignation as speaker.

At a $450,000 breakfast fundraiser for Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, Bush criticized Democrats who voted against legislation allowing tough interrogation of terror suspects by CIA agents and a bill authorizing warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails to detect terror plots.

''If the people of Arizona and the people the United States don't think we ought to be listening in on the conversations of people who can do harm to the United States, then go ahead and vote for the Democrats,'' Bush said.

''If you want to make sure that those on the front line protecting you have the tools necessary to do so, you vote Republican for the safety of the United States.''

Democrats argue that Republicans have put national security at risk by their policies in Iraq and no longer have credibility with the American people.

''Time and time again, the president says he's running smart successful policies, but everyday the facts show that is not happening,'' Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Campaign committee, said in a statement. ''Instead of making baseless claims, the president should focus on the facts and discuss what he's doing to improve the situation on the ground in Iraq.''

After the morning fundraiser for Renzi, who is seeking a third term, Bush signed a bill that could bring hundreds of miles of fencing to the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border.

On his way back to Washington, Bush is stopping in Englewood, Colo., to speak at a $550,000 fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez.

At the Renzi fundraiser, Bush also said his pro-growth economic policies have helped working Americans, and called on Congress to make his administration's tax cuts permanent. ''If the other bunch gets elected,'' he said of Democrats, ''they're going to raise your taxes.''

Democrats argue that Republicans essentially are raising taxes by failing to revive popular middle-class tax breaks. A list of widely popular tax cuts expired more than nine months ago and have not yet been renewed. Among the expired provisions: Deductions for student tuition and expenses and for state and local sales taxes, intended to help residents in states that don't have an income tax.

But the loudest applause from the Republican crowd came from his remarks criticizing the Democrats on national security.

''We believe strongly that we must take action to prevent attacks from happening in the first place,'' Bush said ''They view the threats we face like law enforcement, and that is, we respond after we're attacked. And it's a fundamental difference, and I will travel this country the next five weeks making it clear the difference.''

    Bush Raises Volume on Campaign Charge, NYT, 4.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

GOP forced off issues it wants to run on

Posted 10/4/2006 11:53 PM ET
USA Today
By Judy Keen

ROCHESTER, Ind. — Republican House members, scattered across the USA for their first week of full-time campaigning, want to talk to voters about the reasons they believe they should be re-elected.

Instead, they are dealing with issues they would prefer to avoid: Florida congressman Mark Foley's alleged sexual Internet messages to teenage male pages and their own party's handling of the matter. The messages, first reported by ABC, have not been independently authenticated.

Audiences at debates are buzzing about the controversy. Democratic challengers are trying to put GOP incumbents on the defensive. Interviewers press them to take a stand on Foley's actions and whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois waited too long to do something about them.

Hastert maintains that he does not remember being told about a complaint from the parents of a 16-year-old former page about Foley's e-mails to their son, which were described as of a non-sexual nature. Hastert says he knew nothing of subsequent ABC allegations that Foley had sent salacious instant messages to male pages.

The first campaign ad focusing on the Foley episode is airing in Minnesota. "It shocks the conscience," an announcer says as images of Foley headlines fill the screen in an ad for Patty Wetterling, a Democrat running for an open House seat.

The ad says GOP leaders "have admitted covering up the predatory behavior of a congressman who used the Internet to molest children." Foley's lawyer says the congressman never had inappropriate sexual contact with a page.

Wetterling, whose son Jacob was abducted in 1989 and has not been found, will focus on child safety when she delivers the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address on Saturday.

Other Democrats also are keeping the issue in the headlines. The campaign website for Mary Jo Kilroy, a Democrat challenging Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, notes that Pryce recently said that Foley was "one of her five friends in Washington" and this year gave her "more money than ANY other House Republican." Pryce, a member of the House GOP leadership, has said she'll return the donations.

In Tennessee, Republicans are running an ad that says Democratic Rep. Harold Ford, who's running for the Senate, attended a party with Playboy bunnies. "I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator," he said in Memphis.

Foley "engaged in reprehensible conduct," Rep. Chris Chocola, R-Ind., said at a debate here Tuesday night after Joe Donnelly, his Democratic opponent, said in his opening remarks that people were "horrified" to learn about the Foley scandal. Corruption is endemic in the Republican-controlled Congress, Donnelly said later: "It's time to clean out the barn."

"This shouldn't be a political issue," Chocola said. "This should be an issue of right and wrong."

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the House leadership, said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., that he's "disappointed, disgusted and outraged at Mark Foley's conduct."

The issue won't go away, predicted Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and it could hurt Republicans in close races. "It's election season, and things this big don't tend to blow over easily," he said in an interview. His constituents, Flake said, are asking, "How could this happen? Why didn't you guys do anything?"

Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned Friday. He is in an alcohol treatment program.

Laura Bush appeared Wednesday at a fundraiser in Amherst, N.Y., for Rep. Tom Reynolds, House GOP campaign chief, who says he told Hastert months ago about Foley. She called Reynolds "a wonderful leader."

Voters are paying close attention to the controversy. At the Chocola-Donnelly debate, Ed Smoker, 63, said it might prompt some voters in this evenly divided district to vote for Democrats. "Some people think the top Republican leaders knew about it and didn't do anything," he said.

Barbara Niester, 81, questioned whether the disclosure of Foley's conduct was timed to affect the election. "Why is it coming out now?" she asked.

Cal Wadsworth, 82, a retired researcher attended a debate Tuesday in Davenport, Iowa, between Democratic congressional candidate Bruce Braley and Republican Mike Whalen. Wadsworth said Hastert "ought to know better" than to have delayed action on Foley's inappropriate messages.

Rep. Ron Lewis, R-Ky., on Wednesday canceled a fundraiser with Hastert. "Until this is cleared up, I want to know the facts," Lewis told the Associated Press.

Some Republicans warned that disputes within the party over how the matter was handled by Hastert and other leaders could make it more difficult to retain control of the House. Democrats need to add 15 House seats to gain control.

Blunt said he would have handled things differently. Flake said calls for Hastert's resignation are premature, but "obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, it should have been investigated further."

Contributing: Jill Lawrence in Memphis; Dennis Wagner, The Arizona Republic; Mike Madden, Gannett News Service; and wire reports.

    GOP forced off issues it wants to run on, UT, 4.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-04-gop-issues_x.htm

Pressure builds on Republicans in sex scandal

Tue Oct 3, 2006 12:31 PM ET
Reuters
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. House leaders faced mounting pressure over a congressional sex scandal on Tuesday, with Speaker Dennis Hastert rejecting calls to step down for his handling of sexual messages sent to teen-age boys by Rep. Mark Foley.

The Washington Times, a leading conservative newspaper and usually a supporter of Republicans, accused Hastert of barely pursuing warnings about Foley's messages and said in an editorial he "must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once."

Hastert has denied any knowledge of Foley's overtly sexual Internet messages to male congressional pages until they were made public on Friday, and his spokesman rejected the calls for his resignation.

"The speaker has and will lead the Republican conference to another majority in the 110th Congress," said spokesman Ron Bonjean. The disclosures were a blow to Republicans as they fight to retain control of Congress in elections on November 7.

"Mark Foley has resigned his seat in dishonor and the criminal investigation of this matter will continue. The speaker is working every day on ensuring the House is a safe productive environment for members, staff and all those who are employed by the institution."

Members of both parties, including some leading conservatives, said any congressional leader who had known the content of the messages and had failed to take action should step down.

Conservative activist Richard Viguerie told CNN Hastert should go. "We are not going to get to the political promised land until we have new leaders, and it's time for pretty much all of the leaders to leave," Viguerie said.

The scandal put Republicans on the defensive in the final month of a tight election campaign, giving Democrats new ammunition in the fight to pick up the 15 House seats and six Senate seats needed to claim majorities in each chamber.

TAKING THE FALL

House Republicans held a conference call on Monday to discuss the scandal and its fallout, with a top Republican party aide calling the next few days crucial.

"There isn't much time to right the ship," the aide said. "Somebody has to take the fall."

Some House Republicans looked into e-mail traffic between Foley and a 16-year-old boy last spring that was described to them as "over-friendly," but House leaders said they were not made aware of the explicit messages sent to other pages.

Conservative and religious leaders expressed unhappiness about the unfolding scandal and Republican strategists worried some conservative voters would wind up sitting home on November 7 out of disgust.

"The big danger for Republicans is they are going to reach a tipping point with the conservative base and they are going to stay home," said Republican consultant Rich Galen.

"It's a very uncomfortable situation right now, and the most uncomfortable person of all is the speaker."

The FBI, Florida state investigators and House ethics investigators are all looking into Foley's communications with pages, who are teenagers assigned to answer telephones, deliver documents and run other errands for members of Congress.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, in an interview with an Ohio radio station, said Hastert had told him the situation "had been taken care of" and "my position is it's in his corner, it's his responsibility."

At least one Republicans rallied to Hastert's defense.

"The speaker has led the Congress through dangerous and important times. His leadership has been steady and consistent, and he has the strong support of the conference," said Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the third-ranking House Republican.

The scandal created a ripe takeover target in Foley's previously safe district for Democrats, and gave them renewed ammunition for charges Republicans have abused their power. Democrats gleefully questioned traditional Republican claims to be protectors of family values as candidates around the country pointed to the scandal as evidence it was time for a change.

The scandal erupted as Bush's approval ratings, hit by opposition to his policies on Iraq and doubts about his leadership, had started to climb slightly and Republicans felt more hopeful about retaining congressional majorities.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ferraro, Susan Cornwell, Rick Cowan and Andy Sullivan)

    Pressure builds on Republicans in sex scandal, R, 3.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-10-03T163057Z_01_N01292632_RTRUKOC_0_US-FOLEY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-2

Bush, Fund-Raiser in Chief,

Hits the Trail in Earnest

October 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY

STOCKTON, Calif., Oct. 2 — President Bush’s job approval ratings are sagging, nervous members of his own party are running advertisements highlighting their differences with him, and the White House is besieged with new questions about the war in Iraq.

But Mr. Bush is hardly going to be sitting out the final stage of this year’s campaign. Even if many Republicans in tough races across the country do not want to be seen with him, Mr. Bush and his aides have developed a comprehensive plan to get him on the road for much of the next 40 days and put the power of the presidency into a midterm election that could shape his final two years in the White House.

Mr. Bush intends to concentrate first and foremost on raising money. His strength on that front is undiminished by his political problems and is vital to giving his party an advantage in outspending the Democrats on advertising down the homestretch.

To date, at a series of mostly private events, Mr. Bush has raised $180 million for his party and individual candidates, according to the Republican National Committee, outpacing the record Mr. Bush set in 2002, when it was easier to raise money because of less restrictive campaign finance laws. Together with Laura Bush, the first lady, and Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House has raised nearly $250 million for the election cycle.

But after a period in which most of his political appearances have been behind closed doors — he did five fund-raisers in the past week that were closed to the press — he will also step out more publicly.

While not yet conducting full-scale campaign rallies, Mr. Bush will be appearing more frequently with candidates, often in heavily Republican areas where Democrats are nonetheless competitive this year. And he will give speeches driving home the twin themes of national security and tax cuts while trying to rally a dispirited Republican base.

White House and party officials said there was never any internal debate about putting Mr. Bush out into the public eye, for all the risks that might entail. With a new burst of bad news for the party — including repercussions from the forced resignation of Representative Mark Foley of Florida over sexually explicit e-mail and instant messages sent to teenage pages — the officials said that employing Mr. Bush’s power to use the White House platform to emphasize the Republican campaign message was more necessary than ever.

Mr. Bush will avoid districts and states where party officials determine his appearance may be particularly damaging for Republicans. But his aides, discussing the White House strategy for the president, said they had concluded for the most part that putting Mr. Bush out in public would do his party and its candidates more good than harm, a position that is clearly a big gamble for Republicans and a test of how much political clout he has left after two years of setbacks and missteps.

In the first three days of this week alone, he will make five public fund-raising appearances with Republican candidates, and his schedule suggests that the White House strategy is to try to close off the possibility of Democratic gains not in the most hotly contested and visible races, but in a second tier that could decide whether the House remains in Republican hands.

Two of those appearances will be on behalf of Republican House members in California, John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo, who is to join Mr. Bush for an open fund-raiser here in central California on Tuesday. Both Mr. Pombo and Mr. Doolittle are viewed as potentially vulnerable because they have been touched by the fallout from the corruption scandals in Washington. In both cases, the White House believes Mr. Bush’s ability to turn out Republican base voters will help to keep the seats safe.

Similarly, he went to Reno, Nev., on Monday to raise money for Dean Heller, the Republican candidate for a House seat in a district that should be safely Republican but that analysts say could be in play.

“You’ll be seeing more public speeches in the weeks ahead,” said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior political strategist. “The president is enormously important with a significant part of the electorate that they need to win.”

Mr. Bush alluded to this in an interview with conservative columnists in the Oval Office last month, saying he could set the stage for the Republican message. “There are a lot of people out there that hopefully I’ll be able to inspire to turn out,” he said.

But some of what Mr. Bush is doing will largely remain out of public sight. He plans to record messages for automated calls to voters in crucial districts, taking advantage of the sophisticated Republican operation to identify likely supporters and the issues that motivate them.

Mr. Bush, who has always relished campaigning, was described by associates as hungry to return to the road and is enjoying spending time with candidates and offering them advice.

The advice, it seems, goes to matters large and small. Michele Bachmann, a Republican running for an open House seat in Minnesota, said Mr. Bush needled her for wearing scalloped pink gloves for a recent presidential visit to her state. “What are those for?” Mr. Bush said, pointing to the gloves, according to Ms. Bachmann. “When you campaign, take off the gloves.”

The White House sought, sometimes in awkward ways, to balance Mr. Bush’s strengths and liabilities. He was the star attraction last week at an event that raised money for Republicans in three states, including Iowa — a closed-door fund-raiser in an Embassy Row mansion 10 minutes from the White House and 1,000 miles from Iowa, where it escaped mention the next day in the influential Des Moines Register.

And last Thursday, he was at a closed-door fund-raiser for Representative Deborah Pryce, an embattled Republican in Ohio — who used the money to finance a campaign that has included advertisements disputing Mr. Bush’s position on stem-cell research.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, leading the Democrats’ effort to win the Senate, said his main concern as he surveyed an otherwise favorable political environment was that Mr. Bush’s fund-raising power would overcome any drag he might have on his party. “That’s the No. 1 question that will determine the election,” Mr. Schumer said. “And I don’t know the answer.”

Democrats said Mr. Bush’s presence on the campaign trail would only help them as they tried to turn the election into a referendum on the president. And their professed delight was echoed by signs of apprehension in states where Republicans are facing their toughest battles.

In Rhode Island, Ian Lang, the campaign manager for Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who is in a tough re-election battle, said a visit by Mr. Bush “is not something we’re looking for or asking for.”

John Brabender, a strategist for Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who is facing a stiff Democratic challenge, said of Mr. Bush: “He would be a distraction right now. It’s very important that we turn this race into Bob Casey versus Rick Santorum.”

Sara Taylor, the White House political director, said Mr. Bush could prove pivotal with party faithful who have been less than enthused this year.

“He is loved by his base,” she said, “and they support him.”

    Bush, Fund-Raiser in Chief, Hits the Trail in Earnest, NYT, 3.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/politics/03bush.html