History > 2007 > USA > Politics (II)

Jeff Koterba

Omaha World Herald, NE

3 July 2007

Presidential Candidates' Religions

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:30 a.m. ET
The New York Times

The Associated Press asked the 2008 presidential candidates what religion they practice, whether they are a member of a particular church, and how often they attend services.

Like the majority of Americans, all the candidates are Christians. Seven are Roman Catholic, four are Baptist, two are Methodist, one is Episcopalian, one is Presbyterian, one is Mormon, and one describes himself simply as Christian.

Their answers:

DEMOCRATS:

Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden: Roman Catholic New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Methodist

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd: Catholic

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: Methodist

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Catholic

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: Christian

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: Catholic

REPUBLICANS:

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback: Catholic

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Catholic

California Rep. Duncan Hunter: Baptist

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: Southern Baptist

Arizona Sen. John McCain: Episcopalian

Texas Rep. Ron Paul: Baptist

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: Mormon

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo: Presbyterian

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson: Southern Baptist

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson: Catholic

    Presidential Candidates' Religions, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Politics-Religion-Glance.html

Religion Looms Large Over 2008 Race

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When George Romney ran for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, his Mormon heritage was mostly a footnote. It was scarcely mentioned in news accounts of the day. But for son Mitt Romney, the family religion presents a formidable political hurdle.

The younger Romney repeatedly is called on to defend his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its teachings, encountering skepticism particularly from Christian conservatives, a key component of the GOP base.

''I believe that there are some pundits out there that are hoping I'll distance myself from my church so that'll help me politically. And that's not going to happen,'' Romney asserts.

Religion has not played so prominent a role in a U.S. national election since 1960, when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected president.

And it's not only Romney under scrutiny. All the Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls have been grilled on their religious beliefs. Most seem eager to talk publicly about their faith as they actively court religious voters.

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton emphasizes her Methodist upbringing and says her faith helped her repair her marriage.

Chief rival Sen. Barack Obama frequently uses the language of religion and proclaims a ''personal relationship'' with Jesus Christ. The Illinois Democrat -- whose middle name is ''Hussein'' -- scoffs at suggestions of Muslim leanings because he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. He is a member of the United Church of Christ.

In the most recent Democratic debate, a pastor in a YouTube video asked Democrat John Edwards to defend his use of religion to deny gay marriage. The former North Carolina senator -- a Methodist -- talked about his faith and his ''enormous conflict'' over the issue

Republican Sen. John McCain, an Episcopalian, says, ''I do believe that we are unique and that God loves us.'' Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, emphasizes his belief that ''God created the heavens and the earth. To me, it's pretty simple.''

Unlike the others, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a divorced Roman Catholic who favors abortion rights, sidesteps such questions, claiming one's relationship with God is a private matter. But he attended Catholic schools and at one point considered being a priest.

Clearly, the religious issue is the most problematic for Romney. Polls suggest he faces continued misgivings over his faith. An ABC News-Washington Post poll conducted July 18-21 showed that 32 percent of those who said they leaned Republican described themselves as ''uncomfortable'' with the idea of a Mormon president.

An earlier poll by the Pew Research Center said 30 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate that was Mormon. The negative sentiment rose to 46 percent for Muslim candidates and to 63 percent for a candidate who ''doesn't believe in God.''

Pollster Andrew Kohut, Pew's director, said that between the late 1960s, when Romney's father ran, and now there has been ''one of the great transformations of our era. There is more mixing of religion and politics than there was then. As a consequence, people scrutinize Mormonism -- or any other religion -- more closely than back then.''

He cites the growing influence of the Christian right, the political activism of tele-evangelists and a trend that has seen a steady migration of Christian conservatives into the GOP fold, particularly in the South.

''When the South changed, it brought the evangelicals with it,'' Kohut said.

The links between religion and governance intensified with the presidency of George W. Bush, said Joan Konner, former dean of the Columbia Journalism School. ''He brought it up when he ran for office and he said his favorite philosopher, in answer to a question in a debate, was Jesus.

''And then he followed up on that by faith-based public funding and various other actions that started to erode what Americans took for granted as the separation between church and state,'' said Konner, who has studied the interaction between religion and politics and is the author of ''The Atheist's Bible.''

George W. Romney was a politically moderate former governor of Michigan and auto-industry executive when he sought the 1968 GOP presidential nomination. Scant mention was made of his Mormonism in news accounts at the time and it appeared to be a non-issue in the race.

Polls showed him as the front-runner until he stumbled by complaining to an interviewer that when he had visited Vietnam, he had been ''brainwashed'' by military briefers there into supporting the war. That remark generated enough controversy to cost him the nomination.

Some historians suggest more attention might have been paid to Romney's Mormonism if he hadn't torpedoed his own candidacy so early. And in those days, many Christian conservatives were southern Democrats and less interested in GOP primary contests.

Mitt Romney supporters point to Kennedy, who overcame questions about his religion to become the first Catholic elected president. He did that, in part, by speaking before Protestant clergymen in Houston in 1960 to dispel fears that, as a Catholic president, he would be subject to direction from the pope.

Can Romney neutralize the religion issue the same way Kennedy did -- by giving a major speech explaining the role his Mormon faith plays in his political life?

In an interview in Iowa with The Associated Press, Romney said he's considering dealing with the issue in a comprehensive manner, although ''it's probably too early for something like that.''

''At some point it's more likely than not, but we'll see how things develop,'' Romney said.

Kennedy had one advantage that Romney doesn't. When he ran, Catholics made up roughly 28 percent of the U.S. population. Although one of the fastest growing faiths in the world, Mormons represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population with 5.5 million members across the country.

''The differences between Kennedy and Romney are in the nose count,'' said political historian Stephen Hess. ''The religion issue may have hurt Kennedy, but it sure helped him at the same time'' as Catholics threw their support behind him.

''There is no way that capturing the Mormon vote is going to win Romney anything,'' Hess said.

    Religion Looms Large Over 2008 Race, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Politics-and-Religion.html

In the ’60s,

a Future Candidate

Poured Her Heart Out in Letters

July 29, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON, July 28 — They were high school friends from Park Ridge, Ill., both high achievers headed East to college. John Peavoy was a bookish film buff bound for Princeton, Hillary Rodham a driven, civic-minded Republican going off to Wellesley. They were not especially close, but they found each other smart and interesting and said they would try to keep in touch.

Which they did, prodigiously, exchanging dozens of letters between the late summer of 1965 and the spring of 1969. Ms. Rodham’s 30 dispatches are by turns angst-ridden and prosaic, glib and brooding, anguished and ebullient — a rare unfiltered look into the head and heart of a future first lady and senator and would-be president. Their private expressiveness stands in sharp contrast to the ever-disciplined political persona she presents to the public now.

“Since Xmas vacation, I’ve gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me,” Ms. Rodham wrote to Mr. Peavoy in April 1967. “So far, I’ve used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity.”

Befitting college students of any era, the letters are also self-absorbed and revelatory, missives from an unformed and vulnerable striver who had, in her own words, “not yet reconciled myself to the fate of not being the star.”

“Sunday was lethargic from the beginning as I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially,” Ms. Rodham reported in a letter postmarked Oct. 3, 1967.

In other letters, she would convey a mounting exasperation with her rigid conservative father and disdain for both “debutante” dormmates and an acid-dropping friend. She would issue a blanket condemnation of the “boys” she had met (“who know a lot about ‘self’ and nothing about ‘man’ ”) and also tell of an encounter she had with “a Dartmouth boy” the previous weekend.

“It always seems as though I write you when I’ve been thinking too much again,” Ms. Rodham wrote in one of her first notes to Mr. Peavoy, postmarked Nov. 15, 1965. She later joked that she planned to keep his letters and “make a million” when he became famous. “Don’t begrudge me my mercenary interest,” she wrote.

Of course, it was Hillary Rodham Clinton who became famous while Mr. Peavoy has lived out his life in contented obscurity as an English professor at Scripps College, a small women’s school in Southern California where he has taught since 1977. Every bit the wild-haired academic, with big silver glasses tucked behind bushy gray sideburns, he lives with his wife, Frances McConnel, and their cat, Lulu, in a one-story house cluttered with movies, books and boxes — one of which contains a trove of letters from an old friend who has since become one of the most cautious and analyzed politicians in America.

When contacted about the letters, Mr. Peavoy allowed The New York Times to read and copy them.

The Clinton campaign declined to comment.

The letters were written during a period when the future Mrs. Clinton was undergoing a period of profound political transformation, from the “Goldwater girl” who shared her father’s conservative outlook to a liberal antiwar activist.

In her early letters, Ms. Rodham refers to her involvement with the Young Republicans, a legacy of her upbringing. In October of her freshman year, she dismisses the local chapter as “so inept,” which she says she might be able to leverage to her own benefit. “I figure that I may be able to work things my own way by the time I’m a junior so I’m going to stick to it,” she writes.

Still, the letters reveal a fast-eroding allegiance to the party of her childhood. She ridicules a trip she had taken to a Young Republicans convention as “a farce that would have done Oscar Wilde credit.” By the summer of 1967, Ms. Rodham — writing from her parents’ vacation home in Lake Winola, Pa. — begins referring to Republicans as “they” rather than “we.”

“That’s no Freudian slip,” she adds. A few months later, she would be volunteering on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar presidential campaign in New Hampshire. By the time she delivered her commencement address at Wellesley in 1969, she was citing her generation’s “indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest.”

But in many ways her letters are more revealing about her search for her own sense of self.

“Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?” Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter. “How about a compassionate misanthrope?”

Mr. Peavoy’s letters to Ms. Rodham are lost to posterity, unless she happened to keep them, which he doubts. He said he wished he had kept copies himself. “They are windows into a time and a place and a journey of self-discovery,” he said in an interview. “This was what college students did before Facebook.”

The letters are Mr. Peavoy’s only link to his former pen pal. They never visited or exchanged a single phone call during their four years of college. They lost touch entirely after graduation, except for the 30-year reunion of the Maine South High School class of 1965, held in Washington to accommodate the class’s most famous graduate, whose husband was then serving his first term in the White House.

“I was on the White House Christmas card list for a while,” Mr. Peavoy said. Besides a quick receiving-line greeting from Mrs. Clinton at the reunion, Mr. Peavoy has had just one direct contact with her in 38 years. It was, fittingly, by letter, only this time her words were more businesslike.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Peavoy was contacted by the author Gail Sheehy, who was researching a book on the first lady. He agreed to let Ms. Sheehy see the letters, from which she would quote snippets in her 1999 biography, “Hillary’s Choice.” When Mrs. Clinton heard that Mr. Peavoy had kept her old letters, she wrote him asking for copies, which he obliged. He has not heard from her since.

“For all I know she’s mad at me for keeping the letters,” said Mr. Peavoy, a pack rat who says he has kept volumes of letters from friends over the years. A Democrat, he said he was undecided between supporting Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.

Ms. Rodham’s letters are written in a tight, flowing script with near-impeccable spelling and punctuation. Ever the pleaser, she frequently begins them with an apology that it had taken her so long to respond. She praises Mr. Peavoy’s missives while disparaging her own (“my usual drivel”) and signs off with a simple “Hillary,” except for the occasional “H” or “Me.”

As one would expect of letters written during college, Ms. Rodham’s letters display an evolution in sophistication, viewpoint and intellectual focus. One existential theme that recurs throughout is that Ms. Rodham views herself as an “actor,” meaning a student activist committed to a life of civic action, which she contrasts with Mr. Peavoy, who, in her view, is more of an outside critic, or “reactor.”

“Are you satisfied with the part you have cast yourself in?” she asks Mr. Peavoy in April 1966. “It seems that you have decided to become a reactor rather than actor — everything around will determine your life.”

She is mildly patronizing if not scornful, as she encourages her friend to “try-out” for life. She quotes from “Doctor Zhivago,” “Man is born to live, not prepare for life,” and signs the letter “Me” (“the world’s saddest word,” she adds parenthetically).

Ms. Rodham becomes expansive and wistful when discussing the nature of leadership and public service, and how the validation of serving others can be a substitute for self-directed wisdom. “If people react to you in the role of answer bestower then quite possibly you are,” she writes in a letter postmarked Nov. 15, 1967, and continues in this vein for another page before changing the subject to what Mr. Peavoy plans to do the following weekend.

Ms. Rodham’s dispatches indicate a steady separation from Park Ridge, her old friends and her family, notably her strict father. She seethes at her parents’ refusal to let her spend a weekend in New York (“Their reasons — money, fear of the city, they think I’ve been running around too much, etc. — are ridiculous”) and fantasizes about spending the summer between her sophomore and junior years in Africa, only to dismiss the notion, envisioning “the scene with my father.”

While home on a break in February of her junior year, Ms. Rodham bemoans “the communication chasm” that has opened within her family. “I feel like I’m losing the top of my head,” she complains, describing an argument raging in the next room between — “for a change” — her father and one of her brothers.

“God, I feel so divorced from Park Ridge, parents, home, the entire unreality of middle class America,” she says. “This all sounds so predictable, but it’s true.”

Ms. Rodham has been described by people who knew her growing up as precocious, and in the letters she is scathingly judgmental at times. She spent the bulk of one letter on a withering assessment of dormmates.

“Next me,” Ms. Rodham says wryly. “Of course, I’m normal, if that is a permissible adjective for a Wellesley girl.”

In other notes, she speaks of her own despair; in one, written in the winter of her sophomore year, she describes a “February depression.” She catalogs a long, paralyzed morning spent in bed, skipping classes, hating herself. “Random thinking usually becomes a process of self-analysis with my ego coming out on the short end,” she writes.

Another recurring theme of Ms. Rodham’s musings is the familiar late-adolescent impulse not to grow up. “Such a drag,” she says, invoking the Rolling Stones, a rare instance of her referring to pop culture.

Her letters at times betray a kind of innocent narcissism over “my lost youth,” as she described it in a letter shortly after her 19th birthday. She wrote of being a little girl and believing that she was the only person in the universe. She had a sense that if she turned around quickly, “everyone else would disappear.

“I’d play out in the patch of sunlight that broke the density of the elms in front of our house and pretend there were heavenly movie cameras watching my every move,” she says. She yearns for all the excitement and discoveries of life without losing “the little girl in the sunlight.”

At which point, Ms. Rodham declares that she has spent too much time wandering “aimlessly through a verbal morass” and writes that she is going to bed.

“You’ll probably think I’m retreating from the world back to the sunlight in an attempt to dream my child’s movie,” she says.

The letters contain no possibly damaging revelations of the proverbial “youthful indiscretions,” and mention nothing glaringly outlandish or irresponsible. Indeed, she tends toward the self-scolding: “I have been enjoying myself too much, and spring and letter-writing are — to the bourgeois mind — no excuses!”

She reports in one letter from October of her sophomore year that she spent a “miserable weekend” arguing with a friend who believed that “acid is the way and what did I have against expanding my conscience.”

In a previous letter from her freshman year, she divulges that a junior in her dorm had been caught at her boyfriend’s apartment in Cambridge at 3:15 a.m. “I don’t condone her actions,” Ms. Rodham declares, “but I’ll defend to expulsion her right to do as she pleases — an improvement on Voltaire.”

Ms. Rodham’s notes to Mr. Peavoy are revelatory, even intimate at times, but if there is any romantic energy between the friends, they are not evident in Ms. Rodham’s side of the conversation. “P.S. thanks for the Valentine’s card,” she says at the end of one letter. “Good night.”

Her letters contain no mention of any romantic interest, except for one from February 1967 in which Ms. Rodham divulges that she “met a boy from Dartmouth and spent a Saturday night in Hanover.”

Ms. Rodham skates earnestly on the surface of life, raising more questions than answers. “Last week I decided that even if life is absurd why couldn’t I spend it absurdly happy?” she wrote in November of her junior year. She then challenges herself to “define ‘happiness’ Hillary Rodham, acknowledged agnostic intellectual liberal, emotional conservative.”

From there, she deems the process of self-definition to be “too depressing” and asserts that “the easiest way out is to stop any thought approaching introspection and to advise others whenever possible.”

The letters to Mr. Peavoy taper off considerably after the first half of Ms. Rodham’s junior year; there are just two from 1968 and one from 1969.

“I’m sitting here at a stolen table in a pair of dirty denim bell-bottoms, a never-ironed work shirt and a beautiful purple felt hat with a purple polka-dotted scarf streaming off it,” she writes in her final correspondence, March 25, 1969. A senior bound for law school, she betrays exhaustion with the times, a country at war and a culture in tumult. “I’m really tired of people slamming doors and screaming obscenities at poor old life,” she says, and describes the sound of chirping birds amid the “soulless academia” that she will inhabit for just a few more weeks as an undergraduate.

    In the ’60s, a Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out in Letters, NYT, 29.30.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/us/politics/29letter.html






 

Where Campaign Money Goes

July 18, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER and MICHAEL LUO

What does it take to run a national presidential campaign more than half a year before the Iowa caucuses? New finance reports show that the candidates are already building up their operations in several states whose early primaries have forced a burst of spending that is severely taxing the campaigns.

The candidates are opening offices in states like California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and others that now expect to hold nominating contests by early February, according to the reports, which were filed last weekend. In past elections, candidates focused their early resources largely on Iowa and New Hampshire.

The filings paint a portrait of what the campaigns think it takes to become president, including the 508 people who appeared on the Barack Obama campaign payroll, the $4.6 million that Senator John McCain paid his consultants and the $300 Mitt Romney spent on makeup around the time of his first debate.

They also provided glimpses of the tastes and sounds of the race. Staff members for Rudolph W. Giuliani seem to like Lisa’s Pizza in Lower Manhattan, while the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign appears partial to Papa John’s. Mr. Obama paid $1,700 for a band called Double Funk Crunch to play in California, while Mr. McCain paid $1,600 for the Mad Bavarian Brass Band to play in New Hampshire.

    Where Campaign Money Goes, NYT, 18.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/us/politics/18spending.html?hp

Presidential Hopefuls Increase Spending

July 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:06 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It didn't matter whether they raised more money or not, most presidential candidates certainly boosted their spending in the second quarter of the year.

More on staff. More on travel. More on consultants.

Democrats outraised Republicans about $80 million to $50 million from April through June. But Republicans kept pace with Democrats on spending -- nearly $50 million spent on both sides.

The Democrats' money advantage was helped in large part by the extraordinary fundraising of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He raised $32 million for the primary; she raised $21.5 million.

But even as they raised more money, the better financed Democrats were chary about spending it all.

Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, spent half of what he raised in the second quarter. Clinton spent 60 cents for every primary dollar raised. John Edwards raised $9 million and spent $6.4 million.

That was not the Republican model. John McCain raised $11.3 million and spent $13 million. Mitt Romney had to lend his campaign $6 million to stay even with his spending for the quarter. The pattern was similar among GOP candidates with lesser finances. Only Rudy Giuliani, the Republican with the most cash on hand, kept his spending below his fundraising.

Obama and Clinton ended the quarter with $34 million and $33 million in the bank, respectively -- formidable figures for two of the leading Democratic White House contenders.

The Republicans' penchant for spending beyond their fundraising was especially apparent with McCain, the senator from Arizona. The McCain camp ended up spending more in the second quarter and raising less, even though their first quarter fundraising had left them with less cash on hand than Romney or Giuliani,

McCain's payroll alone was the highest of all presidential candidates except for Obama's for the first six months of the year. He ended the quarter with $3.2 million cash on hand and nearly $1.8 million in debts. McCain's biggest debt was $750,000 owed to an Internet consulting firm connected to his new campaign manager, Rick Davis.

Payroll was by far the single largest expense -- about $16 million total for all candidates in the second quarter. Romney spent the most of all on advertising -- about $5 million. Consultants of all stripes were popular, particularly financial consultants, who earned a total of more than $3 million from various candidates.

Travel took its toll on budgets. Candidates altogether spent more than $8 million to get around the country. Some got better deals than others. John Edwards paid $230,660 to fly on a private jet owned by Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, Edwards' national finance chairman.

Obama's campaign paid nearly $3 million for travel during the quarter and spent about $1.3 million in telemarketing, one of its top single expenses. Clinton listed $1.1 million in travel expenses and $380,000 owed to an air charter company. She also listed a $421,873 debt to the firm owned by her pollster, Mark Penn, and $132,000 owed to the firm of her media adviser, Mandy Grunwald.

In fundraising, Obama and Clinton saw a virtual reversal of donors. While she relied heavily on Wall Street and high-finance money in the first quarter, it was Obama who tapped the banking and hedge fund crowd in the second quarter. Employees at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase gave heavily to Obama, while employees at two major law firms, DLA Piper and Kirkland & Ellis, were among Clinton's top donors.

Obama, however, retained an advantage over Clinton in the number of donors who could still give to his campaign. About $3 our of every $7 raised by Obama's campaign for the primary came from donors who have given the maximum $2,300 donation permitted by law. For Clinton, about three-fifths of her primary donations come from maxed-out donors.

Overall, attorneys topped the list of donor occupations for most Democrats, with homemakers not far behind. For Republicans, homemakers led the list, with attorneys not far behind. Homemakers are a common occupation in political fundraising because donors usually team up with their spouses to maximize contributions.

-----

On the Net:

FEC: www.fec.gov

    Presidential Hopefuls Increase Spending, NYT, 16.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Campaign-Money.html

Presidential Fundraising at a Glance

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

Highlights of the latest campaign finance reports that presidential candidates filed with the Federal Election Commission. The reports cover April through June.

HUCKABEE

Total receipts to date: (includes contributions for primary and general elections, loans and transfers) $1.3 million

Total contributions to date: $1.3 million

Total spending to date: $873,584

Second quarter contributions: $763,617

Second quarter spending: $702,622

Second quarter transfers or loans: none

Cash on hand: $437,169

Debt: none

Top donor states: Arkansas, $293,582; Texas, $117,599; North Carolina, $36,159.

Top employers: Challenger Inc., whose employees gave $6,900; The Stephens Group, whose employees gave $6,900; Wal-Mart Stores Inc., whose employees gave $5,800.

Of note: It wasn't much, but Huckabee's long-shot bid for the Republican nomination got a bit of help from Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. Employees of the Bentonville, Ark.-based company gave the former governor $5,800.

------

GIULIANI

Total receipts to date: (includes contributions for primary and general elections, loans and transfers) $35.6 million ($3.7 million for general election)

Total contributions to date: $33.5 million ($3.7 million for general election)

Total spending to date: $17 million

Second quarter contributions: $17.5 million

Second quarter spending: $11 million

Second quarter transfers or loans: none

Cash on hand: $18.3 million ($3.7 million for general election)

Debt: none

Top donor states: New York, $4.2 million; Florida $1.7 million; California, $1.7 million.

Top employers: Ernst & Young, where employees gave $143,000; Highland Capital Management, whose employees gave $70,000; New Breed Inc., a Greensboro, N.C., logistics and distribution company whose employees gave $66,000.

Of note: Giuliani raised twice as much money in Florida in the second quarter than he did in the first quarter, making the state his second largest benefactor, behind New York. Giuliani has spent considerable time in Florida, a state that moved up its primary to Jan. 29, increasing its significance politically as well as financially for candidates.

------

ROMNEY

Total receipts to date: (includes contributions, loans and transfers: $44.4 million

Total contributions to date: $35 million

Total spending to date: $31.8 million

Second quarter contributions: $14 million

Second quarter spending: $20.5 million

Second quarter transfers or loans: $6.5 million personal loan from candidate

Cash on hand: $12.1 million

Debt: $8.94 million

Top donor states: California, $1.96 million; Utah, $1.14 million; Florida, $966,000.

Top employers: Merrill Lynch, whose employees gave $62,000; E-Trade Financial, whose employees gave $51,000; Energy Solutions, a Utah-based nuclear services company whose employees gave $36,400.

Of note: Romney spent virtually all of his second-quarter revenues, including his contributions and his personal loan. His biggest expense was $4.9 million on media for television advertising, more than twice what he spent in the first three months of the year.

------

RICHARDSON

Total receipts to date: (includes contributions, loans and transfers): $13.3 million

Total contributions to date: $13.3 million ($153,000 for the general election)

Total spending to date: $6.2 million

Second quarter contributions: $7 million

Second quarter spending:$5 million

Second quarter transfers or loans: none

Cash on hand: $7.1 million ($153,000 for the general election)

Debt: $61,000

Top donor states: New Mexico, $1.38 million; California, $850,000; New York, $606,000; Texas, $560,000.

Top employers: State of New Mexico government, whose employees contributed $68,600; American Income Life Insurance, whose employees donated $37,600; BGK Group, a real estate company based in New Mexico whose employees gave $27,500.

Of note: Richardson slightly improved his fundraising in the second quarter. He raised $6.3 million in the first three months when he spent a limited time fundraising because the New Mexico state legislature was in session and he had to attend to state business. Aides had initially predicted he would well exceed his first quarter performance in the spring.

    Presidential Fundraising at a Glance, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Campaign-Money-Glance.html

Barack Obama Raises Record $32.5 Million

July 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Barack Obama outraised Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton by $10 million in second-quarter contributions that can be spent on the Democratic presidential primary contest, aided by the contributions of 154,000 individual donors.

Obama's campaign on Sunday reported raising at least $31 million for the primary contest and an extra $1.5 million for the general election from April through June, a record for a Democratic candidate.

Clinton's campaign announced late Sunday that she had raised $21 million for the primary. With general election contributions added, aides said her total sum would be ''in the range'' of $27 million. Candidates can only use general election money if they win their party's nomination.

Obama's whopping amount ensures his place as a top contender for the Democratic nomination. It steals the spotlight from Clinton, his main rival. And it establishes the two of them as the fundraising juggernauts of the entire presidential field.

Counting this quarter's surge of donors, the first-term senator from Illinois has received donations from more than 258,000 donors through the first half of the year, an extraordinary figure at this stage of the campaign. Obama raised $25.7 million in the first three months of the year.

''Together, we have built the largest grass-roots campaign in history for this stage of a presidential race,'' Obama said in a statement Sunday. ''That's the kind of movement that can change the special interest-driven politics in Washington and transform our country. And it's just the beginning.''

The Clinton campaign would not divulge its number of donors.

Meanwhile, Democrat John Edwards raised more than $9 million from April through June and relied on nearly 100,000 donors during the first half of the year.

The fundraising total met the campaign's stated goal but was about $5 million less than what he took in during the first three months of the year. The campaign has said it is on track to raise $40 million by the Iowa caucuses in January.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was at Edward's heels, with his campaign reporting more than $7 million raised. But Edwards' six-month total was $23 million, compared with more than $13 million for Richardson.

''Democrats are clearly engaging the public and expanding the donor base,'' Edwards deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince said Sunday in reaction to Obama's fundraising.

He said the aim of the Edwards campaign was to attract more contributors by holding more small donor events to build a grass-roots network. ''We feel we are exactly where we need to be,'' Edwards adviser Joe Trippi said. ''This is not a money race, it's a race to win the nomination.''

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., on Sunday reported raising $3.25 million in the quarter for his presidential campaign, bringing his total raised this year to $7.3 million. Dodd last quarter also transferred $4.7 million from his Senate campaign account. His campaign said he had $6.5 million cash on hand at the end of the quarter.

The figures that some campaigns released Sunday are estimates. Details of how much the campaigns raised and spent in the latest period will not be available until the candidates file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission by July 15.

While several Democrats revealed their total sums, Republicans were not expected to announce their figures until Monday or later in the week.

For Obama, vaulting ahead of Clinton in the money race is an important achievement. Despite broad public interest in Obama's candidacy, he trails the New York senator and former first lady in national polls. Polls show the contest to be closer in some key early states and Obama is leading in South Carolina.

Obama aides on Sunday downplayed the polls, but the campaign has begun running biographical ads in Iowa to better acquaint voters with the candidate.

''While voters have a distinctly positive feeling about Barack, they don't have a great depth of knowledge about his life and history of leadership in Illinois and Washington,'' campaign manager David Plouffe wrote Sunday in an e-mail to supporters. ''As we educate voters about Barack, we have strong reason to believe that our already impressive support in the early states will solidify and slowly build later in the year.''

In announcing their fundraising totals on Sunday, the Obama campaign moved to ensure that his success would dominate the political news cycle as Clinton embarked on a three-day tour of Iowa with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The campaign trip is the first time the Clintons have campaigned together in the state.

''Hillary has had a couple of good weeks, but there's nothing like killing momentum for Obama to come in with these unbelievably high fundraising numbers,'' said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant who is not aligned in the presidential contests.

At this point in the campaign, fundraising figures can act as an easy measure of candidate strength and create tiers of contenders based on their ability to amass money.

Other financial tallies can be as telling. That includes a campaign's spending rate, the size of the average donations and how much money can be used in the primary races and how much could only be tapped for the general election.

Several leading candidates in both parties have raised money for both the primary and general elections. The total numbers are misleading, however, because general election money cannot be used unless the candidate becomes the nominee. Early in the year, Obama raised more than Clinton in primary dollars.

Clinton aides have said she would raise ''in the range'' of $27 million in the April-through-June period in both general and primary election dollars.

Only Republican George W. Bush, in each presidential campaign, raised comparable amounts in the second quarter of the year before the general election. The single-quarter record is $35.1 million, by Bush from April through June in 2003. Clinton captured the first quarter Democratic record with $26 million, covering the first three months of this year. Clinton also transferred $10 million from her Senate campaign account in the first quarter.

Among Republicans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign has said he will fall short of the $20.7 million raised in earlier in the year.

Rudy Giuliani was expected to exceed his first quarter total of $16 million. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was struggling to match the $13.8 million he took in during the first quarter.

    Barack Obama Raises Record $32.5 Million, NYT, 2.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Campaign-Money.html

Giuliani May See a Rival in Successor

June 21, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL POWELL

Seven weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, Rudolph W. Giuliani gave a last-minute electoral nod to a billionaire media mogul running for mayor.

Michael R. Bloomberg, his beneficiary, prevailed, Mr. Giuliani was a kingmaker, and their smiles lasted about 18 minutes. Aides to both men have sniped for years, and Mr. Bloomberg has carefully distanced himself from Mr. Giuliani, suggesting of late that the former mayor left him with a huge budget deficit.

Now Mr. Bloomberg has stuck a gilded toe in the presidential waters, creating a most unwelcome sensation for every candidate: the uncertainty that comes with knowing a newcomer might shower a half-billion dollars on his own campaign.

But, as Mr. Bloomberg is his former supporter and would also campaign as a bold steward of America’s largest and safest major city, the sting goes perhaps deepest for Mr. Giuliani. And, frozen smiles aside, the former mayor’s camp is not much amused.

“Bloomberg’s biggest accomplishments are not to screw up Giuliani’s legacy,” said Fred Siegel, a Cooper Union professor who served on Mr. Giuliani’s transition committee in 1993 and later wrote “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.” “His accomplishments are modest.”

Mr. Giuliani himself did not go there. “I like Mike a lot,” he said. “I have nothing bad to say about Mike, except I am disappointed that he left the Republican Party.”

Those close to Mr. Bloomberg were as carefully noncommittal as the mayor himself, who once again played the coquette yesterday, saying he was not a candidate.

“Mike is not a wiseguy, and he doesn’t carry a rapier,” said David Garth, the veteran media adviser who works with Mr. Bloomberg and advised Mr. Giuliani in his successful 1993 campaign. “He doesn’t go for the cut.”

Mr. Garth paused and added, “My suggestion would be not to mistake this for any lack of toughness.”

No one doubts that a Bloomberg candidacy would be a long shot. Still, sitting on his piles of money — his net worth is estimated at $5 billion, give or take a couple of billion — Mr. Bloomberg could create many headaches, say consultants of both parties. He grew up middle-class and built a globe-spanning business, which potentially enamors him to the same people wooed by Mitt Romney, a child of privilege.

He has a “so why should I care” style — he has acknowledged smoking marijuana, and enjoying it — and is not afraid to trot out a dry, even caustic wit, not unlike Senator John McCain. And his social liberalism — his advocacy of gun control, abortion rights and gay rights — could prove attractive to Democratic voters considering Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

“He could take votes from all sides, and he’s got lots of moola,” noted former Mayor Edward I. Koch. “I can’t tell you how demeaning it is to raise money and how discouraging it is, if you’re a candidate, to see someone come in with his money.”

The presidential candidates found it wise yesterday to smile a lot at the mention of Mr. Bloomberg’s name, crack jokes (“I wouldn’t be surprised by anybody leaving the Republican Party today,” Mrs. Clinton said) and praise his stewardship of the city.

“He’s done a very efficient job as mayor of New York City,” Senator McCain said yesterday. “And obviously, he would probably have the resource of spending his own money.”

Mrs. Clinton’s senior fund-raising staff discussed the news yesterday. It did not escape their notice that several of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent money people — notably the venture capitalists Steven Rattner and Alan Patricof — helped re-elect Mr. Bloomberg as mayor. But no one claimed to detect anyone heading for the doors just yet.

“The men and women in that room were very focused and don’t intimidate,” said Robert Zimmerman, a New York publicist who was at the campaign fund-raising meeting yesterday. “They’re successful because they don’t flinch.”

Perhaps, although Mr. Bloomberg, who was a lifelong Democrat until he jumped political horses in preparation for his mayoral run, could compete for Mrs. Clinton’s base in states like New York and California. The mayor’s campaigning of late for congestion pricing and “green” city buildings could appeal to independent and traditional Democratic voters, and has even drawn praise from former Vice President Al Gore.

Then there are those like Mr. Koch, a Democrat, who noted that his endorsements tended to come with a short half-life. “My position is that I’m being very careful,” he said. “My endorsement of Hillary, who I like, is for her in the Democratic primary. My options are open in the presidential campaign.”

Mainly, one heard the notion — repeated privately by several campaigns — that no one sees much percentage in saying anything that might annoy a billionaire who is trying to make up his mind.

“A billionaire is like a mastodon: He gets everyone’s attention,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic Party consultant. “The thing that people hate most in politics is a wild card. Well, he’s a really big one.”

That said, Mr. Bloomberg poses perhaps the most intriguing challenge for his predecessor. Their messages of fiscal discipline, crime-fighting and social liberalism are as similar as their personal styles — the phlegmatic self-described liberal technocrat versus the temple-throbbing lawman — are dissimilar.

Mr. Bloomberg danced carefully around his predecessor from the start, sprinkling him with praise — even presiding over Mr. Giuliani’s marriage to Judith Nathan — even as he sank some of the former mayor’s favorite projects, not least a last-minute deal to build new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets. (He later approved a less expensive stadium project.) Of late, Mr. Bloomberg has raised the temperature, suggesting that Mr. Giuliani left him with a pile of money problems.

“I’m determined,” Mr. Bloomberg said recently, “that when I leave the city, my successor, the first year in office, won’t have enormous deficits to deal with.”

For their part, Mr. Giuliani’s aides have been assiduous in emphasizing that Mayor Bloomberg has done a good job — at continuing the legacy of Mr. Giuliani. It was a point that Mr. Giuliani underlined yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa, in terms suggesting a man praising an acolyte.

“I think when you work as hard as I did at being mayor, you want those things preserved, and he has done a lot of that, and he has done a good job,” Mr. Giuliani said.

In fact, while Giuliani loyalists suggest Mr. Bloomberg’s wooing of Mr. Giuliani six years ago was mere political expediency, the former mayor has not hesitated to end his own political romances when necessary. He disposed of a schools chancellor, Rudy Crew, with whom he was once quite close, and his aides sometimes leaked damaging gossip about those who ran afoul of the administration. By midday yesterday, a few Giuliani aides wondered if those close to Mr. Bloomberg might be tempted to let out a few Giuliani-era secrets.

As one former adviser to Mr. Giuliani noted, without any suggestion of a whine: “I don’t know that gratitude is an emotion that has much sway in politics.”

Michael Cooper, Patrick Healy and Marc Santora contributed reporting.

    Giuliani May See a Rival in Successor, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/us/politics/21damage.html?hp

For 2 Years, Bloomberg Aides Prepared for Bid

June 21, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 20 — The announcement by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent was made after nearly two years in which his aides had laid the groundwork for a potential independent run for president.

They collected technical data on the requirements to put Mr. Bloomberg on the ballot in 50 states either as a third party or an independent candidate. Mr. Bloomberg went to Washington for a round of meetings with opinion leaders and traveled the country giving political speeches, including two this week in California.

And Mr. Bloomberg told associates that he was closely studying the 1992 presidential campaign of H. Ross Perot, the wealthy Texan and friend who drew 19 percent of the vote as an independent, to figure out how much a race in 2008 would cost.

For all that, Mr. Bloomberg told a packed news conference on Wednesday that he did not plan to run for president and intended to serve out his second term as mayor.

“My intention is to be mayor for the next 925 days and 10 or 11 hours,” he said. “I’ve got the greatest job in the world, and I’m going to keep doing it.”

Still, Mr. Bloomberg proceeded to use a news conference to give a critique on national politics. It was the fitting end of a week when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine and gave two speeches in California offering a pointed indictment of partisan politics in Washington, contrasting it with how he runs New York City.

Indeed, his aides said that he had not intended for the news of his registration switch, which he initiated last Wednesday by signing a document with the New York City Board of Elections, to become public until he had returned from California, but he was hardly upset at the swell of attention it drew him.

The aides said there was division in his camp about whether he should run for president. Kevin Sheekey, who was the architect behind Mr. Bloomberg’s unlikely mayoral bid in 2001, urged Mr. Bloomberg to run for president over steaks and drinks at a dinner at Dylan Prime to celebrate his re-election in 2005. Others argued that it was an impossible task and a waste of Mr. Bloomberg’s reputation and resources.

Mr. Bloomberg was described as conflicted about a national run, intrigued by the possibility of winning the presidency but telling friends that he would not run unless he was certain that he could win. And he did not want to go down in history as a spoiler who contributed to the defeat of a Democrat like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, he has told friends.

“He will not run to be a spoiler,” said Ester Fuchs, a special adviser to Mr. Bloomberg in his first term who remains close to the administration.

Even if Mr. Bloomberg in the end does not run, he is now assured of a platform to speak out on national issues and the country’s political climate, a stage that would fortify him as he enters what is normally the lame-duck portion of his term.

That national platform, coupled with Mr. Bloomberg’s vast wealth, means that he does not have to rush to make a decision. The first deadline for filing petitions to qualify for a state ballot is next May in Texas.

Aides involved with other campaigns said they could see a long-shot situation in which Mr. Bloomberg might enter the fray, particularly if the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates emerge as nominees after long and bloody primaries.

“Is it possible?” asked Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004 and is now a senior adviser to John Edwards’s campaign. “Yes, I think it is. The hardest thing is making sure you are on the ballot, and he has the resources to do it. The threat of him being in and being a real actor is real, and you have to take that seriously.”

In fact, should Mr. Sheekey win the tug of war in the Bloomberg camp, Mr. Bloomberg faces what analysts from both parties described as a huge task in trying to become the first independent to win the presidency. One hurdle is first collecting a total of 700,000 signatures to appear on the 50 state ballots.

Mr. Sheekey did not return calls.

Other potential obstacles include whether a liberal Jewish New Yorker little known outside his city can compete in a crowded and fluid field. Although he may be looking to take advantage of voter distress with the two parties created by polarization in Washington, as suggested by his California speeches, an independent candidacy would require huge defections by Republicans and Democrats at a time voters, particularly Democrats, seem more energized and likely to vote their party line.

“Despite people’s discontent with national politics, I do not think you are going to find massive numbers of Republicans and Democrats abandoning their parties,” said Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

Professor Jacobson said that although there were clearly disaffected Democrats and Republicans, he did not think that those voters shared many common opinions that would permit Mr. Bloomberg to appeal to them.

“That’s what it takes,” Professor Jacobson said. “It’s an extremely long-shot proposition.”

Beyond that, independent presidential candidates have traditionally been viewed skeptically by the public and news media. They are not assured spots in debates or in daily campaign coverage.

“There is a sense that our political culture doesn’t give the same kind of legitimacy to an independent candidate as to a Republican or Democratic candidate,” said Steven J. Rosenstone, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.

Even before Mr. Bloomberg made his move, interest was growing among political activists in trying to field a independent candidate.

Republican and Democrat activists this year created an organization, Unity08, to raise money to obtain a ballot line in the 50 states, removing the biggest hindrance to such a campaign, with the intention of nominating a candidate with an Internet vote by its members.

An organizer of the effort, Gerald Rafshoon, a longtime Democratic consultant, said Mr. Bloomberg had caught his eye.

“He’s certainly speaking our language,” Mr. Rafshoon said.

The news of Mr. Bloomberg’s decision was reported just after Time ran its cover article on him. The managing editor of the magazine, Richard Stengel, said it began thinking of a cover with Mr. Bloomberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California in the spring.

It took the cover photograph of them on May 12 in Washington. Mr. Bloomberg was told around June 8 that barring unforeseen news developments he and Mr. Schwarzenegger would be on the cover of the issue appearing on June 15.

Four days later came word of his decision to leave the Republican fold.

Mr. Stengel said he was “as flabbergasted as everyone else” when Mr. Bloomberg announced Tuesday that he was switching parties.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Los Angeles and Katharine Q. Seelye from New York.

    For 2 Years, Bloomberg Aides Prepared for Bid, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/us/politics/21bloomberg.html?hp

To Avoid Conflicts, Clintons Liquidate Holdings

June 15, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, June 14 — Concerned that their personal finances might become a political liability once again, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton in April sold the millions of dollars of stocks held by their blind trust after learning that those investments included oil and pharmaceutical companies, military contractors and Wal-Mart, their aides said Thursday.

The Clintons liquidated the trust — valued at $5 million to $25 million — and are leaving the proceeds for now in cash in an effort to eliminate any chance of ethical problems or political embarrassment from their holdings as Mrs. Clinton runs for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, their advisers said. By disposing of all their stocks, Mrs. Clinton was seeking to avoid potential conflicts of interest that might arise from legislation that she votes on in the Senate, as well as avoid holding financial stakes in companies and industries — like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the owner of Fox News — that could draw criticism from some Democratic voters.

Mrs. Clinton automatically became aware of her investments because of a government directive this spring that she, as a presidential candidate, had to dissolve her blind trust and disclose all of her assets to the public.

The decision by the Clintons to sell their stock carried a financial cost, according to their advisers and new personal financial documents made available Thursday. The couple will owe “substantial amounts” in capital gains taxes, an adviser said, and are giving up the potentially higher returns from stocks for the safety but generally lower returns of holding their money in various forms of savings accounts.

According to the financial disclosure documents, the couple’s total net worth falls between $10 million and $50 million. Besides investments, Mr. Clinton earned about $10 million in paid speeches in 2006, continuing a pattern since he left office of earning large sums through paid speeches and other activities to help pay legal bills and cover the couple’s expenses. Mrs. Clinton earned $350,025 in royalties for her autobiography, “Living History,”

The Clintons sold the stock as they prepared to disclose their holdings under government ethics rules for presidential candidates. Until getting ready to release the holdings in the blind trust, the Clintons did not know what stocks and other financial assets it contained. But the rules did not require the Clintons to sell the stock, their advisers said.

Their decision to cash out their holdings was a reminder of their history with investments that, fairly or not, came back to haunt them politically, most notably the Whitewater real estate affair that dogged them through Mr. Clinton’s presidency.

In 1993, Mr. Clinton complied with federal ethics rules and created a qualified blind trust to hold and invest the family’s assets. Under the rules, public officials must disclose their assets at the time of the creation of the trust, and then hand off day-to-day management of the trust and its investments to an independent trustee. Officials who set up blind trusts are not aware of, nor do they have influence over, the investments chosen.

According to their 1993 financial disclosure form, the Clintons were far less wealthy than they are today. Their estimated net worth at the time was $633,015 to $1.62 million. Mr. Clinton’s share of the blind trust was valued from $15,001 to $50,000, and Mrs. Clinton’s $500,001 to $1 million.

The Clintons continued with this executive branch blind trust through the end of his presidency in 2001. At that time, Mrs. Clinton became a senator from New York, and the family trust was registered as a Senate blind trust, according to her advisers. The trustee was Pell Rudman while Mr. Clinton was president; it became Citigroup when Mrs. Clinton entered the Senate.

This spring, the federal Office of Government Ethics informed Mrs. Clinton that, as a presidential candidate, she had to dissolve her trust and report all of her investments on public financial disclosure forms.

The Clintons discussed their options with a range of advisers, including one of their lawyers, Cheryl Mills, a former deputy White House counsel to Mr. Clinton and currently a top adviser to the couple.

They ultimately decided that they were better off, with Mrs. Clinton in office and running for the presidency, to liquidate the entire blind trust and not keep the stock or reinvest the money for the duration of her campaign, their advisers said. Senators are not required to have blind trusts.

“Senator Clinton and the president wanted to go above and beyond and avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, so they chose to liquidate the assets,” said Howard Wolfson, communications director of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

The disclosure forms have new details about Mr. Clinton’s investments and advisory role with funds in the Yucaipa Companies, a privately held California equity firm controlled by Ron Burkle, one of Mr. Clinton’s best friends and one of Mrs. Clinton’s top fund-raisers.

Mr. Clinton has assets of $100,001 to $250,000 in one Yucaipa investment, Garrard Worldwide Holdings Inc., a retail jeweler with a flagship store in London. He has an additional $15,001 to $50,000 in Brazilian Renewable Energy Company Ltd., which produces sugar-cane-based ethanol in Brazil.

Mr. Clinton also has $15,001 to $50,000 in Easy Bill Ltd., an India-based company that works on electronic transactions and business services for Indians.

Shortly after the Clinton campaign released the financial information, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, circulated to news organizations — on what it demanded be a not-for-attribution-basis — a scathing analysis. It called Mrs. Clinton “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” in its headline. The document referred to the investment in India and Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising efforts among Indian-Americans. The analysis also highlighted the acceptance by Mr. Clinton of $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company the Obama campaign said has moved American jobs to India.

A copy of the document was obtained by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which provided it to The New York Times. The Clinton campaign has long been frustrated by the effort by Mr. Obama to present his campaign as above the kind of attack politics that Mr. Obama and his aides say has led to widespread disillusionment with politics by many Americans.

Asked about the document, Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said: “We did give reporters a series of comments she made on the record and other things that are publicly available to anyone who has access to the Internet. I don’t see why anyone would take umbrage with that.”

Asked why the Obama campaign had initially insisted that it not be connected to the document, Mr. Burton replied, “I’m going to leave my comment at that.”

Most of the Clintons’ blind trust investments are a broad cross-section of Fortune 500 companies, but also include several corporations that, Clinton advisers say, neither Mr. Clinton nor Mrs. Clinton would have chosen.

The Clintons had investments in several pharmaceutical companies, including Abbott Labs, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Genentech, Genzyme, Novartis, Pfizer and Wyeth. The assets in each company ran from $100,001 to $250,000. The trust also had assets in BP Amoco, $50,001 to $100,000; Chevron, $15,001 to $50,000; and Exxon Mobil, $100,001 to $250,000, as well as common stock in Raytheon and Wal-Mart Stores, $100,001 to $250,000 each.

David D. Kirkpatrick and Adam Nagourney contributed reporting.

    To Avoid Conflicts, Clintons Liquidate Holdings, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/us/politics/15clintons.html?hp

Bill Clinton Made $10 Million for Talks

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former President Clinton made more than $10 million in paid speeches last year, according to new filings that show he and his presidential-candidate wife have at least $10 million in the bank, and may have closer to $50 million.

According to financial disclosure forms made public Thursday, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton hold two accounts, each valued at somewhere between $5 and $25 million. One is an old-fashioned bank account; the other is a blind trust.

The former president upped his speechmaking money from the previous year, garnering some $10.2 million in payments, compared with about $7.5 million the year before.

The Clintons had a much more pedestrian income when he ran for president in 1992. If Sen. Clinton's 2008 presidential bid is successful, they will enter the White House a very rich couple.

Six years out of power, Bill Clinton can still raise huge sums with a personal appearance. He made a staggering $450,000 for a single September speech in London, at a Fortune Forum event, as well as $200,000 for an April appearance in the Bahamas to speak to IBM, and another $200,000 for a New York speech to General Motors.

The former president's earnings must be reported as the spouse of a senator. Disclosure rules do not require him to reveal everything. He received an advance from Random House for an unpublished manuscript, but is only required to say that it was greater than $1,000.

He also did not have to say how much he earns as a partner with Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund, a Los Angeles-based investment firm.

The senator's own book profits are declining, years after her ''Living History'' became a best-seller. She reported royalties of $350,000 for the book last year.

    Bill Clinton Made $10 Million for Talks, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Candidates-Disclosure.html

Clinton Promotes Shared Responsibility

May 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:28 p.m. ET
The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an ''on your own'' society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ''ownership society'' really is an ''on your own'' society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

''I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society,'' she said. ''I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.''

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

''There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,'' she said. ''Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies.''

Clinton spoke at the Manchester School of Technology, which trains high school students for careers in the construction, automotive, graphic arts and other industries. The school highlighted one of the nine goals she outlined: increasing support for alternative schools and community colleges.

''We have sent a message to our young people that if you don't go to college ... that you're thought less of in America. We have to stop this,'' she said. ''Our country cannot run without the people who have the skills that are taught in this school.''

Beyond education, Clinton said she would reduce special breaks for corporations, eliminate tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.

Clinton also said she would help people save more money by expanding and simplifying the earned income tax credit; create new jobs by pursuing energy independence; and ensure that every American has affordable health insurance.

    Clinton Promotes Shared Responsibility, NYT, 29.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Clinton-Economy.html

Clinton Moved Wal-Mart Board, but Only So Far

May 20, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BARBARO

In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, had a problem. He was under growing pressure from shareholders — and his wife, Helen — to appoint a woman to the company’s 15-member board of directors.

So Mr. Walton turned to a young lawyer who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is based: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton’s six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest company, remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career. And it is little known for a reason. Mrs. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign Web site.

Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

Her years on the Wal-Mart board, from 1986 to 1992, gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business — a credential that could serve as an antidote to Republican efforts to portray her as an enemy of free markets and an advocate for big government.

But that education came via a company that the Democratic Party — and its major ally, organized labor — has held up as a model of what is wrong with American business, with both groups accusing it of offering unaffordable health insurance and mistreating its workers.

So rather than promote her board membership, Mrs. Clinton is now running from it, even returning a $5,000 campaign donation from the giant discount chain in 2005, citing “serious differences” with its practices. But disentangling herself from the company is harder than it may seem.

Despite her criticism, Mrs. Clinton maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives through the Democratic Party and the tightly knit Arkansas business community. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, speaks frequently to Wal-Mart’s current chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., about issues like health care and even played host to Mr. Scott at the Clintons’ home in New York last July for a private dinner.

And several months ago, Mrs. Clinton helped broker a secret meeting between a top Wal-Mart executive and former Democratic operative, Leslie Dach, and leaders of the retailer’s longtime adversary at the United Food and Commercial Workers union, according to several people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so publicly.

The goal of the meeting was to tamp down the rancor between the company and the union, which has set up a group, WakeUpWalMart.com, that has harshly criticized the chain and leaked embarrassing internal documents to the news media, though an accord has not yet been reached.

Mrs. Clinton declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, her spokesman said, “Wal-Mart is now one of the country’s largest employers, and Mrs. Clinton still believes it is important to try to influence the decisions they make because they can affect so many people.”

In Mrs. Clinton’s complex relationship with Wal-Mart, there are echoes of the familiar themes that have defined much of her career: the trailblazing woman unafraid of challenging the men around her; the idealist pushing for complicated, at times expensive, reforms; and the political pragmatist, willing to accept policies she did not agree with to achieve her ends.

“Did Hillary like all of Wal-Mart practices? No,” said Garry Mauro, a longtime friend and supporter of the Clintons who sat on the Wal-Mart Environmental Advisory Board with Mrs. Clinton in the late 1980s and worked with her on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.

“But,” Mr. Mauro added, “was Wal-Mart a better company, with better practices, because Hillary was on the board? Yes.”

Mrs. Clinton was not Mr. Walton’s first choice for a woman on the board. That honor belonged to an executive at Nordstrom, the upscale department store. But Nordstrom opposed its employees sitting on a competitor’s board, so Wal-Mart turned instead to the 39-year-old Mrs. Clinton. They offered her about $15,000 a year for her time, generally four meetings a year.

She was a logical candidate: the wife of the governor, a Wal-Mart shareholder — with stock eventually worth nearly $100,000 — and a highly regarded lawyer at the Rose Law Firm, which had represented Wal-Mart in several cases.

But if her circumstances made her a natural choice for the board, her often liberal beliefs did not and she struggled to change the rigid, conservative culture at Wal-Mart, achieving modest results.

Early in her tenure, she pressed for information about the number of women in Wal-Mart’s management, worrying aloud that the company’s hiring practices might be discriminatory.

The data she received would have been troubling: by 1985, there was not a single woman among the company’s top 42 officers, according to “In Sam We Trust,” the 1998 book about Wal-Mart by Bob Ortega.

John E. Tate, who served as a director with Mrs. Clinton from 1988 to 1992, recalled that by her third board meeting Mrs. Clinton had announced “that you can expect me to push on issues for women. You know that. I have a reputation of trying to improve the status of women generally, and I will do it here.”

Mr. Walton appeared relieved to have a woman on the board to deflect criticism, telling shareholders during the annual meeting in 1987 that the company had a “strong-willed young lady on the board now who has already told the board it should do more to ensure the advancement of women.”

Still, the board’s discussions did not translate into significant progress. By the late 1990s, after Mrs. Clinton had left the board, Wal-Mart had added a second female director, but the number of women in senior management remained paltry, according to company records. (Today, 23 percent of Wal-Mart’s top 300 corporate officers are women, but the company is fighting a class-action lawsuit claiming sex discrimination filed on behalf of 1.6 million current and former female employees.)

Mrs. Clinton had greater success on environmental issues. At her request, Mr. Walton set up the environmental advisory group, which sent a series of recommendations to the company’s board.

When it came time to pick members, Mrs. Clinton, who led the advisory group, reached out to at least two colleagues from the McGovern presidential campaign — Mr. Mauro and Roy Spence, who headed an advertising firm in Texas that did extensive work for Wal-Mart.

Under her watch, the advisory group drew up elaborate plans. Consumers would bring in used motor oil and batteries for recycling. Suppliers would reduce the size of their packaging. And Wal-Mart would build stores with energy-saving features.

Wal-Mart executives put much of the program into place. In 1993, for example, they opened an experimental “eco-store” in Kansas, with skylights and wooden beams from forests that had not been clear cut.

One executive derided it as “Hillary’s store” because it was more expensive to build than the average Wal-Mart, but several of its features, like the skylights that cut energy bills by reducing the need for artificial lighting, were widely copied across the industry.

“We were on the leading edge of something that is being mandated now,” said Bill Fields, the head of merchandise at Wal-Mart in the early 1990s who worked closely with Mrs. Clinton on the environmental project.

For Wal-Mart, the largest employer in Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton’s presence had obvious advantages: on matters big and small, the company had the ear of the governor’s wife.

For Mrs. Clinton, being a director at Wal-Mart gave her access to several of the state’s most powerful business executives. In the early 1980s, for example, Mr. Walton was instrumental in building support for a corporate tax program, pushed by Mrs. Clinton, that financed a major education overhaul in Arkansas, a signal achievement of her husband’s governorship.

Though she was passionate about issues like gender and sustainability, Mrs. Clinton largely sat on the sidelines when it came to Wal-Mart and unions, board members said. Since its founding in 1962, Wal-Mart has fought unionization efforts at its stores and warehouses, employing hard-nosed tactics — like allegedly firing union supporters and spying on employees — that have become the subject of legal complaints against the company.

A special team at Wal-Mart handled those activities, but Mr. Walton was vocal in his opposition to unions. Indeed, he appointed the lawyer who oversaw the company’s union monitoring, Mr. Tate, to the board, where he served with Mrs. Clinton.

During their meetings and private conversations, Mrs. Clinton never voiced objections to Wal-Mart’s stance on unions, said Mr. Tate and John A. Cooper, another board member.

“She was not an outspoken person on labor, because I think she was smart enough to know that if she favored labor, she was the only one,” Mr. Tate said. “It would only lessen her own position on the board if she took that position.”

Mr. Tate, a prominent management lawyer who has helped stop union drives at many major companies, said he worked closely with Mr. Walton to convince workers that a union would be bad for the company, personally telling employees when he visited stores that “the only people who need unions are those who do not work hard.”

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said, “Wal-Mart workers should be able to unionize and bargain collectively.”

    Clinton Moved Wal-Mart Board, but Only So Far, NYT, 20.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/politics/20walmart.html?hp

A Look at Candidates' Personal Finances

May 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:41 p.m. ET
The New York Times

Summaries of financial disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Senate:

------

DEMOCRATS:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois

Earned income (includes 2006 Senate salary and books): $737,690

Honoraria: None (senators must donate to charity)

Major assets: Morgan Chase Asset Management Checking Account, $100,000 to $250,000; Vanguard Wellington Fund, $100,000 to $250,000. State of Illinois pension, $50,000 to $100,000.

Major sources of unearned income: Vanguard Wellington Fund, $5,000 to $15,000.

Major liabilities: None

Narrative: The Obama campaign said Obama and his wife, both of whom held about $180,000 of Vanguard Wellington Fund in their University of Chicago retirement accounts, transferred those holdings to another fund upon discovering that Vanguard Wellington invested a small amount in a company that does business with Sudan.

Obama's earned income include Obama's $165,200 Senate salary, he received royalties for one book and advance for another totaling $572,490. His memoir, ''Dreams of My Father,'' published in 1995 and later reissued, earned $$147,490. He also received a $425,000 advance against royalties for his latest book, ''The Audacity of Hope,'' published in October.

Obama is also committed to the publishing House Random House to write one more book of nonfiction and a children's book.

His wife, Michelle, is a hospital administrator at University of Chicago Hospitals. She also has assets in her name with Vanguard Wellington Fund and Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund. In their 2006 tax return, made public earlier this year, the couple reported $991,296 in total income.

------

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson

Honoraria: None.

Earned income (2006 and partial 2007 salary): $146,667.

Major assets: Residential real estate and undeveloped land in Santa Fe, N.M., worth $1.75 million-$6.5 million; bank accounts, IRAs, money market funds and stock in Diamond Offshore Drilling and Valero Energy Co., $1.75 million-$3.68 million.

Major sources of unearned income: Dividends, interest and capital gains, $112,710-$296,000; rental real estate income, $100,002-$200,000; book royalties, $15,001-$50,000.

Major liabilities: Mortgages on rental and undeveloped property, $150,002-$350,000.

Narrative: Richardson reported an agreement giving him stock options for serving on the board of directors of San Antonio-based Valero in 2001 and 2002; he would divest his interest in the stock if elected president.

Richardson's book royalties are from his autobiography, ''Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life.''

------

REPUBLICANS:

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas

Earned income (2006 salary): $165,200

Honoraria: None (senators must donate to charity)

Major assets: Blind trust, $1 million-$5 million; IRAs, checking account, money market fund and stock in companies including Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., worth $539,024-$6.01 million; 335-acre grain farm in Kansas, $100,000-$250,000; Washington, D.C., condominium, $250,000-$500,000.

Major sources of unearned income: Blind trust dividends, interest and capital gains, $80,003-$200,000.

Major liabilities: Mortgage on Washington, D.C., condominium, $100,000-$250,000.

Narrative: Brownback's wife, Mary, owns a limited liability partnership worth more than $1 million.

Brownback reported a $15,000 advance last year for a book, ''From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion,'' about his upbringing and his softer-edged conservative worldview.

In all, the deal is worth $75,000 plus royalties; the money will be donated to a fund, started by the Brownbacks, that helps people pay for adoptions. Their daughter Jenna is from China and their son Mark is from Guatemala; both were adopted in 1998.

The couple sold off investments in companies that do business with Sudan, saying that to the best of their knowledge, their portfolio no longer has such investments.

------

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

Honoraria: $138,500.

Earned income (2006 and partial 2007 salary): $316,035.

Major assets: Bank and credit union accounts, stock, shares, money market fund and retirement account worth 297,008-$780,000; shares in 12 Stops Inc., set up to handle book royalties, worth $50,001-$100,000.

Major sources of unearned income: State of Arkansas pension, $14,101. Bank accounts and other investments earned $9,906-$27,000. Business income from shares in Troufion Radio Network, $9,657.

Major liabilities: None.

Narrative: Huckabee's income includes his $74,146 salary last year as governor, and his $40,000 salary as an officer of 12 Stops Inc., $161,889 in book sales and royalties and $40,000 in consulting fees from the National Association of Music Manufacturers.

His honoraria, received through 12 Stops Inc., were for 15 speeches to groups, including the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church; Prestonwood Baptist Church, whose pastor is former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham, and health groups and companies, including The Cooper Institute and Novo Nordisk.

His book is called ''From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 STOPS to Restoring America's Greatness.''

Huckabee also serves on the boards of The Cooper Institute of Dallas and medical networking company Flagship Global Health in New York.

    A Look at Candidates' Personal Finances, NYT, 16.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Candidates-Finances-Glance.html

Clinton Says Bush Governs 'For the Few'

May 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:07 a.m. ET
The New York Times

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized President Bush on Saturday as running a ''government of the few, for the few and by the few.''

''For six long years the hardworking families of our middle class have been invisible to this president,'' she said, promising to be a president who again sets goals for the country.

Democrats attending the Ohio state party's annual dinner gave a rousing cheer when the senator from New York asked, ''Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and restore America's reputation around the world?''

Only two Democrats since 1900 have won the presidency without carrying Ohio and no Republican has done so.

The state clinched re-election for Bush in 2004, but Democrats have new optimism that they can win the state that Clinton's husband, Bill, carried twice.

Democrats captured the Ohio governor's seat for the first time in 16 years last November and, in a backlash attributed in part to a state government investment scandal, seized three other statewide offices long held by Republicans.

The $150-per-plate dinner drew about 3,000 people and generated $550,000 after expenses for the party, the most money the dinner has ever raised, said Chris Redfern, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman.

Clinton, leading the Democratic field for president in national and Ohio polls, promised universal health care and said she would make college more affordable. She also said she would be more aggressive in developing alternative sources of energy and that her administration would hire more qualified people for government jobs.

Clinton came to Ohio from South Carolina where she gave the commencement address at historically black Claflin University earlier on Saturday.

She spoke of making college more affordable and gave a nod to Barack Obama, her Senate colleague and Democratic primary opponent, while drawing on the university's 1960s-era demonstrations.

''Think about the students from this university who braved tear gas and water hoses and beatings and bullets to protest the injustice of segregation and usher in a new era of equality and never lived to see the day of an African-American man running for president,'' Clinton told the crowd of around 4,000 at the college.

She said the class of 320 graduating students represented a minority who are able to afford and complete the college degrees they began pursuing.

''But what I'm finding is that so many students and their hardworking parents and families are balking at the cost of higher education,'' Clinton said. ''When they see the price tag their hearts sink.''

With fewer than half of the nation's students completing the degrees their start, government must play a larger role, Clinton said.

''We need to begin by making college more affordable and accessible,'' she said. ''I think we need to take on the student loan industry and send a clear message they will be held accountable for the way they treat and mistreat students and families.''

She is pushing a ''student borrower bill of rights'' that sets payments as a percentage of income and keeps fees and interest rates reasonable. ''I don't believe that you should be subjected to bait-and-switch programs where they tell you what it's going to be and then they change it on you,'' she said.

Associated Press Writer Jim Davenport in Orangeburg, S.C., contributed to this report.

    Clinton Says Bush Governs 'For the Few', NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Clinton-2008.html

Giuliani Takes On G.O.P. Orthodoxy on Social Issues

May 12, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA and ADAM NAGOURNEY

HOUSTON, May 11 — Rudolph W. Giuliani directly challenged Republican orthodoxy on Friday, asserting that his support for abortion rights, gun control and gay rights should not disqualify him from winning the party’s presidential nomination.

He said that Republicans needed to be tolerant of dissenting views on those issues if they wanted to retain the White House.

In a forceful summation of the substantive and political case for his candidacy, delivered to a conservative audience at Houston Baptist College, Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, acknowledged that his views on social issues were out of line with those of many Republican primary voters.

But he argued that there were even greater matters at stake in the election, starting with which party would better protect the nation from terrorism. Mr. Giuliani suggested that his record in New York, which included leading the city after the attacks of Sept. 11 and overseeing a decline in violent crime during his eight years in office, made him the most electable of the Republican candidates, no matter his stand on social issues like abortion.

“If we don’t find a way of uniting around broad principles that will appeal to a large segment of this country, if we can’t figure that out, we are going to lose this election,” he said.

The speech by Mr. Giuliani reflected a decision — other campaigns suggested “gamble” might be a better word — to address head-on a fundamental obstacle to his winning the nomination: his long history as a moderate Northeast Republican in a party increasingly dominated by Southern and Midwestern conservatives. As such, it loomed as a potentially important moment in the party’s efforts to decide how to compete against the Democrats in 2008 and what it should stand for in a post-Bush era.

“The mere fact that I am standing here running for president of the United States with the views that I have, that are different in some respects on some of these issues, shows that we much more adequately represent the length and breadth and the opinions of America than the other party does,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Since the late 1970s, national Republican candidates have increasingly taken conservative positions on social issues. In that sense, Mr. Giuliani is bucking what many members of his party consider to be a powerful trend and confronting what is often assumed to be a wall of opposition among Christian conservatives, among other constituencies that play influential roles in the nominating process.

Both his leading opponents, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, oppose abortion rights. Mr. McCain regularly refers to his lifelong opposition to abortion rights. Mr. Romney also regularly talks about his opposition, though he is perhaps more politically constrained because he supported abortion rights through much of his political career in Massachusetts.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a group of conservative Christians, dismissed Mr. Giuliani’s speech in an e-mail message he sent to supporters Friday afternoon.

“When people hear Rudy Giuliani speak about taxpayer-funded abortions, gay ‘rights’ and gun control, they don’t hear a choice, they hear an echo of Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Perkins wrote.

Mr. Giuliani’s speech came a week after he gave a convoluted answer to questions at a debate about his views on abortion rights, setting off criticism by conservative groups. On Friday, he offered a lengthy explanation of his views on abortion, saying that he personally opposed it but that government should not prohibit it. He acknowledged that the views differed from those of many in the audience.

“Where people of good faith, people who are equally decent, equally moral and equally religious, when they come to different conclusions about this, about something so very very personal, I believe you have to respect their viewpoint,” he said. “You give them a level of choice here.”

Mr. Giuliani asserted that his differences with his audience on gun control and gay rights were probably less sharp.

He defended his advocacy for tough gun control measures while he was mayor of New York, but said that was central to his strategy to reduce crime in the city. He described himself as an advocate of a view of the Second Amendment that holds that it permits citizens to bear arms. Mr. Giuliani said he supported allowing gay men and lesbians to enter into domestic partnerships but opposed allowing them to marry.

Mr. Giuliani’s speech appeared to reflect two calculations by his campaign. The first is that Republicans are so alarmed at the prospect of losing the White House, particularly after Democrats took control of Congress last year, that they will be willing to overlook differences on issues like abortion. The second is that voters often reward politicians for candor and independence though disagreeing with them on issues.

Mr. Giuliani drew a standing ovation from his audience, and many members, in interviews after the remarks, praised him for what they described as his candor in presenting his position on difficult issues. But leaders of some evangelical and conservative groups quickly denounced him and predicted his downfall.

“The mayor’s position on abortion couldn’t be more repugnant to pro-lifers” said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. “It shows a moral obtuseness that is stunning.”

Republicans, even some involved in rival campaigns, said they were fascinated by his move, and applauded his frankness, even as they predicted that the party would not embrace a candidate who was an unapologetic advocate of abortion rights or gay rights.

“He’s going to tell it like it is about who he is, and for that he deserves positive recognition,” said Richard Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who is supporting Mr. McCain. “But the history of the Republican presidential nominating process, going back to John Anderson or Arlen Specter to name a few, suggests that that kind of dialogue and that kind of approach has not proved successful.”

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign went to some lengths to present his speech as historic in that it echoed a speech given in the same city in 1960 that proved to be a milestone in American political history: At that time, John F. Kennedy appeared before an audience of Baptists to address concerns about electing a Roman Catholic president.

In discussing abortion, Mr. Giuliani said he was guided by “the two pillars of my thinking.”

“One is I believe abortion is wrong,” he said. “I think it is morally wrong, and if I were asked my advice by someone who was considering abortion, I would tell them not to have the abortion.”

But, he continued, his personal opposition to abortion does not permit him to impose his views on people who do not agree with him.

“Because I think ultimately even if you disagree, you have to respect the fact that their conscience is as strong as yours is about this, and they’re the ones that are most affected by it,” he said. “So therefore I would grant women the right to make that choice.”

Mr. Giuliani said that he remained firmly committed to the idea that marriage should be between a man and woman, but that he was equally committed to protecting the rights of gay men and lesbians.

On guns, Mr. Giuliani defended his strict enforcement and calls for tougher gun laws when he was mayor, given the crime situation he faced. But he said, at that time and now, the decision on gun regulation should be left to local governments.

“I believe that the Constitution of the United States gives a personal right to bear arms,” he said.

Marc Santora reported from Houston, and Adam Nagourney from Washington.

    Giuliani Takes On G.O.P. Orthodoxy on Social Issues, NYT, 12.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/us/politics/12rudy.html?hp

At Baptist school,

Giuliani explains abortion view

Fri May 11, 2007
4:47PM EDT
Reuters
By Bruce Nichols

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, under fire from conservatives for his support of abortion rights, defended his views on Friday but said there were other important issues in the 2008 White House race.

The former mayor of New York City and the leader in national polls for the Republican nomination argued the fight against international terrorism and preserving the free-market economy are too crucial to let one issue divide Republicans.

"I disagree with myself sometimes, and I change my mind sometimes," Giuliani said to laughter as he addressed a largely anti-abortion audience at Houston Baptist University.

The lone candidate in the Republican field to support a woman's right to an abortion, Giuliani was criticized for appearing to vacillate on the issue in last week's debate in California. Asked whether the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade should be overturned, Giuliani said it would be OK either way but that he would appoint judges and let them do their job.

On Friday, Giuliani restated his personal opposition to abortion but support of a woman's right to choose.

"It's a difficult issue," he said.

He sought to defuse the potent subject that could harm his chances of winning over primary voters who tend to be more conservative, saying Republicans risk losing the White House if they allow themselves to be divided.

"If we don't find a way of unifying around broad principles ... we're going to lose this election," Giuliani said.

And he called for more respect between people who have good-faith disagreements about issues.

"Those principles come from God, and that's why we're so lucky," he said.

A member of the audience, Carla Cox, who said she was firmly against abortion and skeptical of Giuliani, praised his appearance.

"He was a lot warmer than he comes across on television," said Cox, a marketing director for a home health care company. "His authenticity doesn't have a chance to come across in those sound bites."

    At Baptist school, Giuliani explains abortion view, R, 11.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1146061820070511

Giuliani to Support Abortion Rights

May 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MARC SANTORA

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

That approach, they said, became more appealing after the Legislature in Florida, another state they said would be receptive to Mr. Giuliani, voted last week to move the primary forward to the end of January.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights.

Mr. Giuliani’s aides were concerned both because the responses opened him up to a new round of criticism from abortion critics, who have never been happy with the prospect of a Republican presidential candidate who supports abortion rights, while threatening to undercut his image as a tough-talking iconoclast who does not equivocate on tough issues.

The campaign’s approach would be a sharp departure from the traditional route to the Republican nomination in the last 20 years, in which Republicans have highlighted their antiabortion views.

Mr. Giuliani hinted at what aides said would be his uncompromising position on abortion rights yesterday in Huntsville, Ala., where he was besieged with questions about abortion and his donations to Planned Parenthood. “Ultimately, there has to be a right to choose,” he said.

Asked if Republicans would accept that, he said, “I guess we are going to find out.”

Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that his stance on abortion alone might disqualify him with some voters, but he said, “I am at peace with that.”

His aides said that in focusing on the Feb. 5 and Florida primaries, they were not writing off Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, acknowledging the historic importance of those states and arguing that Mr. Giuliani could do well in South Carolina and New Hampshire. But they said the events of the past week had reinforced the notion that later states were more promising for a moderate Republican, particularly one who was a political celebrity with a big campaign bank account.

Along those lines, campaign aides said they were still debating whether Mr. Giuliani would participate in a nonbinding straw poll of Iowa Republicans. That huge Republican gathering this summer is a critical early test for anyone taking part in the caucuses next January.

At the same time, Republicans in New Hampshire said yesterday that Mr. Giuliani had been a notably infrequent visitor there, causing annoyance among party activists and speculation that he has given up on the state.

Giuliani advisers, describing their strategy in what has emerged as one of the most challenging weeks of his campaign, said Republican primary voters would forgive their concerns about him on abortion and other social issues if they concluded that his positions on those issues would actually appeal to Democratic voters and thus make him the strongest Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

From that perspective, Mr. Giuliani benefits from the fact that his major opponents, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, are also viewed by Republicans as flawed in some respects. It was revealed yesterday, for instance, that Mr. Romney’s wife had also donated to Planned Parenthood.

“We have so many candidates out there — and there is no one emerging candidate — that electability is clearly an issue, and people are judging that,” said Saul Anuzis, the Michigan Republican Party chairman. “There is a pretty big fear with respect to a President Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama. And people saying we want to make sure we can beat them.”

Mr. Giuliani’s aides argued that Republican voters had been aware of his support for abortion rights before last Thursday’s debate. And they argued that abortion and other social issues were not as decisive for Republican primary voters in this election, providing Mr. Giuliani with an opportunity to break from a 30-year tradition and run as a Republican nominee who supports abortion rights.

His aides said polling had found a relatively small number of voters who would base their vote solely on abortion. They argued that Mr. Giuliani’s appeal was based on what many Americans see as a tough leadership style that helped turn New York City around in the 1990s, and carry it through the attacks of Sept. 11.

“Conventional wisdom says he can’t” win the nomination, said Mike DuHaime, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign manager, who then played down the significance of the discordance between Mr. Giuliani and much of his party on abortion and other social issues. “But we believe that based on his record in New York City, based on his leadership when America was tested on Sept. 11, that he can.”

The risks for Mr. Giuliani are clearly high. Polling continues to show abortion is a major concern of Republican primary voters. In a New York Times/CBS News poll in March, 41 percent of Republicans thought abortions should be prohibited, compared with 23 percent of Americans in general; in addition, 53 percent of Republicans said they wanted a Republican presidential nominee who would make abortions more difficult to get.

The first President Bush supported abortion rights early in his political career. He opposed abortion rights after he ran for vice president, with Ronald Reagan, and when he was elected president in 1988. Mr. Romney also moved from supporting abortion rights to opposing them as he approached the 2008 presidential election.

Some conservative Republicans said abortion alone was a major hurdle for Mr. Giuliani.

“I think it’s a big problem for him,” said Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime opponent of abortion. “The Republican Party has been pro-life in its platform ever since 1976, the first platform after Roe, and I think most of the Republicans understand they can’t afford to lose the pro-life constituency.”

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, the conservative magazine, said, “You can’t win as a pro-choicer who is going to deliberately set on challenging the party’s orthodoxy on the issue.”

“It doesn’t have to take him down,” Mr. Lowry said of Mr. Giuliani and the abortion issue, “but if he continues to mishandle it, it’s going to be a real problem for him. One of the big ironies for him is he doesn’t care about abortion.”

    Giuliani to Support Abortion Rights, NYT, 10.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/politics/10giuliani.html?hp

Giuliani, Speaking at the Citadel, Calls for a Bigger Army

May 6, 2007
The New York Times
By CHRIS DIXON and MARC SANTORA

CHARLESTON, S.C., May 5 — Rudolph W. Giuliani called on Saturday for a large-scale increase in the overall troop strength of the Army and the creation of a special force to specifically handle post-combat operations.

In a speech before the graduating class at the Citadel, Mr. Giuliani, who has stressed an aggressive and muscular foreign policy in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, said that he would like to see the Army grow to 582,000 troops from its current 512,000, an even larger increase than President Bush has advocated.

“I believe that America needs at least 10 new combat brigades above the additions that are already proposed by President Bush and are already in the budget,” he said.

While Mr. Giuliani did not say the troops were meant specifically to aid the effort in Iraq, the war has placed a heavy burden on the armed forces and, as the war stretches into its fifth year, the Army is increasingly stretched thin.

The two other leading candidates for the Republican nomination — Senator John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts — have also called for an increase in the size of the Army, as has Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Giuliani did not directly condemn the handling of the war by President Bush, but his call for a new force to handle post-combat efforts implied that the approach in Iraq up until recently has been flawed.

Saturday’s commencement address was a preview of a much more detailed foreign policy speech that Mr. Giuliani will make in the near future, his aides said.

Mr. Giuliani called the 438 cadets, all of whom were still in high school when he was mayor of New York City and terrorists attacked the World Trade center in 2001, “the leaders of the 9/11 generation.”

As he has done in the past, he questioned the wisdom of Democratic leaders who want to pull out of Iraq, saying they “counsel defeat.”

“Never, ever wave the white flag of defeat in front of those who want to come here and kill you and take away your way of life,” he said. “Never.”

“The reality is that in this world today, there are terrorists, Islamic radical terrorists, who are planning as we sit here at this graduation, who are planning to come here and kill us,” he said.

To try to avoid the chaos that has ravaged Iraq, Mr. Giuliani called for a hybrid force whose role would be to provide stabilization and help rebuilding.

“We also have to think about the constructive role that America plays in combat zones when the fighting is over,” he said. “The reality is that America is sometimes faced with a difficult choice. After defeating the enemy as we did in Iraq, after a sudden victory in deposing Saddam Hussein, we have a choice.”

It was clear, he said, that America had an obligation to stay and work to rebuild countries where it has engaged in military conflict, as opposed to President Bush, who, in the 2000 election, railed against what he called “nation building.”

“It will be difficult,” he said, “and will require a new organization of our military and civilian components that are needed to do this — some kind of hybrid we’re going to have to create.”

As the cadets and 5,000 people gathered to hear the speech applauded, Mr. Giuliani emphasized that he would not be inclined to pull out of the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon.

“Final victory will take time,” he said. “The cold war took years, but we prevailed. And it will happen, and on that day your generation will take its place beside the greatest generations in our nation’s history.”

Thanking the cadets for their service, Mr. Giuliani evoked his own memories of Sept. 11, as well as Pearl Harbor and the period between the first and second World Wars, as examples of when the nation was caught unprepared for military challenges.

He vowed not to allow that to happen again, not to implement what he called “the peacetime dividend” when the size of the military is decreased because there is no war or overarching threat.

“We need a force that can both deter aggression and meet the many challenges that might come our way,” he said.

Chris Dixon reported from Charleston and Marc Santora from Los Angeles.

    Giuliani, Speaking at the Citadel, Calls for a Bigger Army, NYT, 6.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/politics/06giuliani.html

’08 Republicans Differ

on Defining Party’s Future

May 4, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MARC SANTORA

SIMI VALLEY, Calif., May 3 — The 10 declared Republican presidential candidates met together for the first time here Thursday night in what amounted to a tentative but occasionally vibrant competition to define the party’s ideology and agenda in a post-Bush era.

The leading candidates offered sharply contrasting views of Mr. Bush himself. But they also differed on an array of social issues — abortion, stem cell research, immigration and evolution — in a debate that highlighted a party in flux as it struggles to figure out how to retain the White House for a third consecutive term.

Senator John McCain of Arizona in particular signaled that a McCain presidency would rectify what he described as mistakes by Mr. Bush in his handling of the war in Iraq and in overseeing government spending, while Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said Mr. Bush acted too slowly in dismissing Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

“I would not have mismanaged the war,” Mr. McCain said. “And I would have vetoed spending bill after spending bill after pork-barrel project after pork-barrel project, in the tradition of President Reagan.”

By contrast, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, offered a dramatic embrace of Mr. Bush before a Republican audience, invoking Mr. Bush’s reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 as he firmly tied himself to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

“I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time on Sept. 20, 2001, to put us on offense against terrorists,” Mr. Giuliani said. “I think history will remember him for that. And I think we as Republicans should remind people of that.”

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, spoke of Mr. Bush’s “character, his passion, his love for his country.”

More than anything, the debate offered Republicans voters, and the nation, a chance to see the cast of candidates side by side for the first time. The debate was at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, with Nancy Reagan sitting in the audience.

There were revealing moments that went past the well-rehearsed lines by all the candidates. Three of the candidates — Mr. Huckabee, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in evolution.

Mr. McCain, looking at Mrs. Reagan in the audience, split from most of his rivals in stating unequivocally that he would support the use of federal funding to expand stem cell research.

Mr. Giuliani was the only other candidate to offer limited support for funded research, if, he added, “We’re not creating life in order to destroy it, as long as we’re not having human cloning, and we limit it to that.”

Three of the better-known candidates — Mr. Romney, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. McCain, saying he was speaking with the benefit of hindsight — said Congress made a mistake in interceding in the legal question of whether to maintain life support for Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman.

Several Republicans said they believed the intervention by a Republican Congress in that case helped the party lose control of both Houses last years.

Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani struggled when pressed on their views on abortion.

Mr. Giuliani, who has said he supports abortion rights, gave conflicting signals on the issue. He joined the other nine in saying he would not be upset if the Supreme Court voted to overturn the decision that legalized abortion. But later he endorsed a woman’s right to make a decision on whether to have an abortion.

“It would be O.K. to repeal,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Or it would be O.K. also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as a precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision.”

Similarly, he said that, while he supported public financing of abortion for poor women in New York, in other states, “people can come to a different decision.”

Mr. Romney sought to explain his shift on the issue from being in favor of abortion rights, when he was running for office in Massachusetts, to running as a strong opponent now.

“I’ve always been personally pro-life, but for me there was a great question about whether or not government should intrude in that decision,” Mr. Romney said. It was the debate over cloning in his state that pressed him to change his mind, he said.

“I said, ‘Look, we have gone too far; it’s a brave new world mentality that Roe v. Wade has given us,’ and I changed my mind. I took the same course that Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and Henry Hyde took. And I said I was wrong and changed my mind and said I’m pro-life. And I’m proud of that and I won’t apologize to anybody for becoming pro-life.”

The 90-minute debate was sponsored by MSNBC and Politico.com, employing a mixture of questions from two moderators — Chris Matthews of MSNBC and John Harris of Politico.Com — with questions over the Internet from viewers.

On an issue of obviously great interest, the candidates raced to endorse various forms of tax cuts. Mr. McCain called for the repeal of the alternative minimum tax, saying it was hurting middle-class families, while Mr. Giuliani called for adjusting that tax — presumably by exempting more middle-class families — while repealing the estate tax. Mr. Romney called for repealing the capital gains tax on middle-class families.Mr. Tancredo, who has built his campaign around a strong call for tough measures against illegal immigration, criticized his opponents — he did not mention any by name, though his remarks appeared directed at Mr. Giuliani and Mr. McCain — for what he said was equivocation on the issue.

“No more platitudes,” he said. “No more obfuscating with using words like, ‘Well, I am not for amnesty but I’m for letting them stay.’ That kind of stuff has got to be taken away from the political debate, as far as I’m concerned, so people can understand exactly who is where on this incredibly important issue.”

When Mr. Matthews asked if any of the candidates wished to take Mr. Tancredo up on his challenge, only Mr. McCain responded. “One thing we would all agree on: the status quo is not acceptable,” he said. “We have to secure our borders, but we also need a temporary worker program, and we have to dispose of the issue of 12 million people who are in this country illegally.”

Throughout the proceedings, the moderators of the debate pushed candidates for answers, often cutting their statements short to press for more specifics.

The Iraq war, terrorism, abortion and health care weighed heavy during the debate, with the more standard lines of inquiry frequently broken up by questions submitted by viewers.

At several points, it seemed as if the candidates were on a television game show, blurting out 30-second answers on a whirlwind of disparate issues.

What do you dislike most about America? Do you have a plan to solve the shortage of organs donated for transplant? Have you watched Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth?” Do you trust the mainstream media?

Mr. McCain was asked whether he would be comfortable with Mr. Tancredo as director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“In a word: no,” Mr. McCain said with a smile.

But barely taking a breath, he addressed a previous question about how vigorously the United States should pursue Osama bin laden, declaring: “I’ll follow him to the gates of hell.”

The other candidates in the debate were former Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia, former Representative Duncan Hunter of California, Representative Ron Paul of Texas and former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Simi Valley,

and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

’08 Republicans Differ on Defining Party’s Future, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/us/politics/04repubs.html