Election Watch
McCain Tries to Lump Romney With Dems
01.27.08 -- 12:12 PM
Republican John McCain tried to lump Mitt Romney with Democrats who want a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.
But Romney never called for the kind of public withdrawal date or timeline that Democrats in Congress sought last year. Romney did indicate at one point, however, that there should be private timetables or benchmarks for gauging Iraq's ability to survive without U.S. support.
McCain, battling Romney in a tight primary race in Florida that culminates Tuesday, alleged Romney wanted a withdrawal date that "would have meant disaster." Romney protested. "That's simply wrong, and it's dishonest, and he should apologize," he said of McCain.
McCain is trying to shift the campaign debate away from the ailing economy, a stronger suit for Romney, a former venture capitalist and business consultant, toward the war in Iraq, a strength for McCain, a Vietnam war hero.
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GOP Primary a Toss-Up in Florida
01.21.08 -- 8:32 AM
So close to Republican hearts, Florida is a state of bewilderment for the party now.
Its changing population, shifting political alliances and states-within-a-state diversity make it a wild card in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, and a card that matters. The state that gave new meaning to elections too close to call is playing its unpredictable self again.
Quite by design, Florida now finds itself in play after years of little impact in nomination contests.
And it looms as a battleground in the fall - "a 50/50 state," as Democratic consultant David Beattie put it, one offering 10 percent of the electoral votes needed for the presidency.
In the Jan. 29 Republican primary, Rudy Giuliani will rise or fall here as a national prospect. His rivals can find their stride in Florida, or trip precipitously, after earlier contests gave victory to several of them but a clear shot at the prize to none.
And the race here, like just about everywhere, is wide open. What else could be expected in the state that decided the 2000 presidency for George W. Bush by a mere 537 votes?
"Florida is going to be a donnybrook, a four-way donnybrook," predicted Charles Black. He advises John McCain, who will come to Florida with a head of steam after winning South Carolina on Saturday.
Most Republican candidates will focus on the corridor between Tampa and Daytona Beach along Interstate 4, a swing part of the state that has seen much growth and is home to roughly two-thirds of the Republican primary vote.
The Democratic primary is of little consequence because the national party stripped all delegates from the contest as punishment for moving it earlier in the year. Florida Republicans lost half their delegates for doing the same.
Florida is so varied that some say it's several states in one.
"It's hard to have a singular, unifying message in Florida because you're talking to different constituencies," said David Johnson, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the state party. "People in Tampa perceive different problems and situations than people in Miami-Dade."
All Republican candidates have natural constituencies here:
_The Florida panhandle from Pensacola to Jacksonville is the area most akin to the Old South and the most conservative part of the state. This could end up as Mike Huckabee country.
_The southwestern part of the state around Fort Myers and Sarasota is much like the Midwest, with many retirees. Mitt Romney or Huckabee could do well.
_Tampa and Jacksonville have a heavy military presence and large numbers of veterans. McCain likely will benefit.
_Orlando is a mishmash of people with a strong Puerto Rican community, including some who migrated from New York. Possible advantage: Giuliani, the former New York mayor.
_Palm Beach, Broward County and the Miami area are not only home to Cuban immigrants, but also many Northeastern transplants and retirees. Giuliani and Romney could have an edge there.
Florida is a tough, expensive state to cover - 800 miles from Pensacola to Key West, 18 million people, sprawling urban areas and a large rural midsection. The population is about 20 percent Hispanic and 16 percent black. More than 2.2 million voters don't belong to either party and can't vote in the primary.
Anti-immigration stances that play well elsewhere in the country can hurt a candidate in some parts of Florida, particularly among a Cuban-American population with a high number of Republicans. McCain's effort to reform laws on illegal immigration cost him heavily with core Republicans in other states. Here, it could help him.
And that's just one of the twists the GOP field has to deal with in the winner-take-all contest for 57 delegates.
Early on, Romney's campaign was by far the most organized, snapping up endorsements from several allies of the popular former Gov. Jeb Bush. He has spent some $3 million on TV ads - but doesn't have soaring poll numbers to show for it.
During the past week, after floundering for a message, he found one that appeared to work - that he has the know-how to turn around the economy and fix a broken Washington. Like other states, Florida is seeing signs of a soft economy, dropping real estate prices and the potential for a dip in tourism.
Giuliani has planted himself and his senior staff and volunteers in the state but his organization may not be as strong as it has been perceived.
The more time he's spent in Florida, the less support he's seemed to get, judging by polls that now point to a close race by McCain, Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani. Fred Thompson's prospects were uncertain after he failed to perform strongly in South Carolina, where he said he needed to do well.
Giuliani's strong-against-terrorism message fell flat as the economy worsened and people focused on financial security instead of national security. His TV ads in Florida have shifted to that focus, but it may be too late.
Still, a win would go a long way toward validating his gamble that he could sit out early contests and spring into action in Florida and the multiple contests on Feb. 5, when the delegate count will really start to matter.
He's been shown right on one big theory - that the party would have no clear front-runner after the first round of primary and caucus voting.
McCain sought to build a strong Florida organization but all but pulled out during the summertime collapse of his campaign. Now, back in contention after winning New Hampshire and South Carolina, he's sent staff to Florida and, while money is tight, aides say they have enough for 10 days of TV ads.
Huckabee's rock-solid socially conservative positions and his workingman appeal may bridge some party factions, and it's quite possible Florida will embrace a former Southern governor with a stellar ability to communicate.
The former Arkansas governor's murky record on economic issues, however, could work against him. He also has little organization in Florida, and there are far fewer Christian evangelicals in the state than in Iowa or South Carolina.
The GOP contenders have been wooing the popular Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who has not tipped his hand on an endorsement.
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No More Mr. Nice Guy: Obama Mocks Hillary In Stand Up Routine
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01.18.08 -- 8:20 AM
The White House campaign has brought a new act to Vegas.
Barack Obama has stepped up his campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he's trying to use humor to bring her down before this weekend's Democratic presidential caucus.
His argument is starkly different from the "Iowa nice" approach he used in recent weeks when campaigning in the first caucus state. Candidates who go negative there have a history of turning off voters, so Obama rarely criticized Clinton directly in Iowa _ instead he made veiled references to "some of my opponents" _ and he won the state.
But there's nothing subtle about Las Vegas. With a high-stakes match on the line Saturday, Obama embraced local traditions by debuting a biting political standup routine Thursday night that mocked his rival.
Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork _ something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.
"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, `What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, `Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"
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Nevada's Democratic Caucus Stirs Lawsuit
01.15.08 -- 8:24 AM
The Nevada caucuses are becoming a proxy for the racially tinged fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, with Barack Obama's campaign criticizing Hillary Rodham Clinton's allies for a lawsuit that could prevent some minorities from participating.
On Friday, six Democrats and a teachers union connected to Clinton filed a lawsuit claiming the rules enabling Las Vegas Strip waitresses, dishwashers and bellhops to caucus inside nine resorts violate state law and federal equal protection guarantees. Other caucus-goers lack the same access, the suit argues.
The Clinton campaign has said it's not involved in the lawsuit. The Obama campaign says it may not be a coincidence that Clinton's allies are the plaintiffs.
Obama also suggested the timing was notable, since the suit was filed Friday - two days after he was endorsed by the powerful Culinary Union. That group's 60,000 members make it the largest union in the state, and nearly 40 percent of its members are Hispanic, its leaders say.
"Obviously the notion that some of the same people who helped to put together the caucus structure are now challenging it in the wake of the Culinary Union endorsement is a little troublesome," Obama told reporters Monday in Reno, Nev. "But we're confident that our people are going to show up, and I think we'll do very well."
The Clinton campaign at first distanced itself but then echoed part of the lawsuit argument - a risky strategy in Nevada, where blacks and Hispanics make up nearly a third of the electorate.
The nine special locations inside hotel casinos were meant to make it easier for employees in the state's biggest industry to caucus from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - but were restricted to workers employed within 2.5 miles of the Strip.
Bill Clinton on Monday defended the suit, saying the caucus rules unfairly favored one group over another.
"I think the rules ought to be the same for everybody," the former president told more than 550 senior students at Green Valley High School near Las Vegas. "I would question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and say only the people that work there, i.e., the people that we know are going to vote in a certain way or we think they will, (are) able to caucus."
The plaintiffs are the Nevada State Education Association, its president, Lynn Warne, and five others. Debbie Cahill, the deputy executive director of the teachers' union, is a Clinton supporter and a member of the campaign's Nevada Women's Leadership Council.
Two senior partners of the law firm handling the suit, Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw and Ferrario, have donated to Clinton in the past. Also, Clinton ally and former Rep. Jim Bilbray is an attorney at the firm.
The state Democratic Party unanimously approved the caucus rules last March, and the Democratic National Committee signed on in August. Four of the six plaintiffs are members of the committee that approved the rules.
Political consultant Dan Hart, who is a teachers' union operative, termed such speculation of a Clinton campaign maneuver to use the lawsuit to win the caucuses "political gossip." He said he heard the lawsuit was in the works and advised the teachers' union about a month ago.
"I think everybody better start taking a look at this thing, figure out whether the process is fair and stop playing this political game of Clue - it's the Clinton campaign, in the library, with the candlestick," Hart said. "The questions should be, 'Does the suit have substance? Are there issues we need to correct and are we going to do something to correct them?'"
Obama drew cheers at a Culinary Union event Sunday when he said the rules were fine until the union decided "'I'm going to support the outsider, I'm going to support the guy who's standing with the working people instead of the big shots.'"
"You don't win an election and you don't serve democracy by trying to keep people out," Obama said. "You're supposed to try to bring them in and encourage everybody to get involved."
Asked about the lawsuit while campaigning in Reno, Clinton said she was aware of it and hopes it "can be resolved by the courts and the state party because, obviously, we want as many people as possible to be able to participate. ... In the meantime, I'm just going to campaign as hard as I can here in Nevada."
A poll released Monday by the Reno Gazette-Journal shows a statistical tie among Obama, Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards.
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Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler and Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.
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Corporate elite fear candidate Edwards
01.12.08 -- 11:28 AM
Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards.
The former North Carolina senator's chosen profession alone raises the hackles of business people. Before entering politics, he made a fortune as a trial lawyer.
In litigious America, trial lawyers bring lawsuits against companies on behalf of aggrieved individuals and sometimes win multimillion-dollar settlements. Edwards won several.
But beyond his profession, Edwards' tone and language on the campaign trail have increased business antipathy toward him. His stump speeches are peppered with attacks on "corporate greed" and warnings of "the destruction of the middle class."
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Huckabee moves beyond religious right
01.09.08 -- 6:47 AM
ROCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Republican Mike Huckabee is trying to soften the image of the religious right as he reaches out to liberal Christians and blue-collar workers for support in his presidential campaign.
It's a delicate balancing act for the ordained Baptist minister who staunchly opposes abortion and gay marriage.
But the folksy southerner told Reuters he believed some evangelicals had widened their political concerns beyond the hot-button cultural issues that helped put George W. Bush in the White House and had mellowed enough to embrace causes like poverty and the environment.
Huckabee, who won the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa with the support of evangelicals and placed third in New Hampshire on Tuesday, wants to help bridge that divide.
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Democrats See Obama as Best Chance to Beat G.O.P., Exit Polls Find
01.08.08 -- 7:32 PM
Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire viewed Senator Barack Obama as more likely than Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to beat the Republican nominee in 2008, according to exit polls conducted Tuesday, a reversal of the previous trends in national polls.
But in contrast to polling results in the Iowa caucuses, women here rallied around Mrs. Clinton. Nearly half the women who voted in the Democratic primary gave her their support, the exit polls showed.
On the Republican side, nearly half of primary voters said their biggest concerns were terrorism and the Iraq war. The exit polls showed that nearly half were dissatisfied or angry with President Bush. A third disapproved of the war. Each of those groups of Republicans broke decisively for Senator John McCain, suggesting more viewed him as a critic than as a supporter of the administration.
The wide-open contests in both parties drew record crowds, and some polling places were forced to send out for extra ballots. Voters in both parties said that they were worried the economy was going in the wrong direction — including nearly all Democrats and about 8 in 10 Republicans — but the exit polls suggested that a more complicated mix of issues decided the races.
Voters said they resoundingly rejected the populist appeals to their economic anxieties that they had heard from John Edwards among the Democrats and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans. Instead, Democrats said they were drawn to Mr. Obama’s promises of unity and change, and Republicans to Mr. McCain’s leadership in matters of national security.
Undeclared voters, who can participate in either primary, were a major factor on the Democratic side. Mr. Obama won big among undeclared voters but lost to Mrs. Clinton among registered Democrats. On the Republican side, Mr. McCain beat former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts among undeclared voters, who have been a mainstay of his support, and registered Republicans.
The exit polls were conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool consortium among 1,799 Democratic voters and 1,300 Republican voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for each party.
Mr. Obama received more than twice as much support as Mrs. Clinton among voters under 30, lost to her only narrowly among older voters and beat her handily among men.
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Obama's rise stuns observers of U.S. race relations
01.07.08 -- 9:08 AM
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Barack Obama's sudden ascendancy to front-runner status among Democrats vying for the White House has opened what could be a new chapter in race relations in America.
Observers of the U.S. debate over race say that however fleeting this may be, Obama's victory in last week's Iowa caucuses shatters an assumption about black Americans in national politics. Iowa is largely white and rural.
The Illinois senator would be the first black president and several commentators and voters said the excitement over his candidacy has led them to imagine a softening of their long-held skepticism about black-white relations in the United States.
"Obama has stepped up out of the script and we are in uncharted waters," said William Jelani Cobb, history professor at Atlanta's Spelman College and the author of a recent book of essays on contemporary black culture.
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Iowa Races Still Too Close to Call as Candidates Make Last-minute Pitches for Votes
01.02.08 -- 7:10 AM
Uplifting appeals largely replaced stinging insults Tuesday as Democratic and Republican candidates did the only thing left to do in Iowa races that are too close to call - encourage supporters to vote for them. "The polls look good, but understand this - the polls are not enough. The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus," Democrat Barack Obama told a fired-up crowd of young and old packed into a high school gymnasium.
Amid murmurs of "Amen!" at a pizza parlor in Sergeant Bluff, Republican Mike Huckabee urged hundreds: "Don't go alone. Take people with you. Fill up your car. Rent a van. Hijack your church's bus, whatever you've got to do to get people to the caucus who are going to vote for me."
Candidates made the pitch repeatedly as they canvassed the state for Thursday's caucuses, the first votes of the presidential nominating process. At least 130,000 Democrats and 80,000 Republicans are expected to participate in 1,781 neighborhood meetings at schools, fire stations and community centers across Iowa on what is forecast to be a clear but cold night.
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Man Charged With Knife at Clinton Office
01.02.08 -- 7:05 AM
A man with a knife was arrested inside a campaign headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in Decorah in northeast Iowa, police said Wednesday.
Christopher James Faris, 42, of Decorah was arrested Monday evening. He was charged with carrying weapons and with third-degree harassment.
Police Chief Tom Courtney said Faris pulled out the knife, but no direct threats were made.
"He just came into the headquarters, just mainly staff was there. There were no comments made about Hillary Clinton at all or nothing like that."
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