While party founder Ross Perot remains coy about his plans for 2000, he is still a force to be reckoned with within the Reform Party.
Meanwhile, Ventura’s candidate of choice appears to be former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker. The two
met for three hours in New York City last month to discuss the possibilities of a
presidential run. On CNN’s “Late Edition” last week, Ventura spoke of their
meeting. “I thought that Lowell would be a good national candidate for us to step
forward with. I think on the national level, we need to come forward with
somebody with some name recognition.” Both men have avoided firm answers on the
subject ever since. In an interview with Salon News, Weicker said he thinks
Ventura “is a fine man. What you see is what you get.” Despite this mutual
love-fest, Weicker is not scheduled to speak at this weekend’s Reform Party National Convention in Dearborn, Mich., and says he is still not sure if he will even attend.

But whether he’s there or not, Weicker will loom large as subtext as the rowdy bunch
of political
malcontents known fondly as the Reform Party gathers in Dearborn. In recent
months, a vital split among warring tribes of megalomaniacs, led by generals Perot
and Ventura respectively, has divided the Reform Party. This weekend’s
convention will be a crucial test for Reformers as a viable political force, as the “party of none of the above” struggles to find an identity.

It is well known that Perot, father of the Reform Party and two-time
presidential nominee, refuses to acknowledge the recent success of Ventura. The
Texas chapter of the Reform Party has blasted Ventura for courting Weicker,
commenting in their Saturday message, “It is not Gov. Ventura’s place to tell
the members of the Reform party whom they should select as candidates.”

Tension between the Perot and Ventura wings
has been widely suggested as the reason
Russell Verney, current chairman of the Reform Party and Perot loyalist, will
step down from his position after the party’s national convention. But Doug
Friedline, campaign manager to Ventura and president of Ventura for
Minnesota, explained that the governor’s recent outspoken leadership is not an
attempt at a power grab.

“The governor wants to stick together, to unify the party,” Friedline said. “He respects Mr. Perot. Without Ross Perot the Reform party would not be here today … But the governor wants a new candidate for the presidential election.
He wants a credible candidate who will be a major force in 2000.”

Verney admits not knowing much about Weicker’s background and points out that Perot “has not made a statement,” in regard to his plans in 2000. The current chairman said that whoever runs as the Reform candidate “will need to review the party platform and endorse the
party platform. Then he will need to present his skills, experience and vision to
the party members over the next few months.”

Verney went on to add that “the candidate will have to have principle, integrity and
pledge to tell the public the truth,” and be a strong advocate for government reform.

So is Weicker up to the run? That is the question of the moment. There’s no exploratory committee, no FEC filings, no Web site — yet. But Weicker certainly speaks in generalities fitting of a top-notch presidential contender. “To be
successful on the national level, a third-party candidate must be a centrist and have a wide appeal, addressing many issues — the broad spectrum, not just one issue. Once established, the third party would produce true competition,
resulting in ideas and actions far superior to those in government today.”

Weicker is a true political maverick. The former Republican member of Congress
left the party to win the governorship of Connecticut as an independent. And
looking at Weicker’s history in politics, it is obvious he is no stranger to
two-pronged attacks — from both the left and the right.

Weicker’s early career in politics is littered with the sorts of problems all
moderate Republicans face; he was too socially liberal for the controlling
conservative right wing of the party, too fiscally conservative to join the
Democrats. He is pro-choice and against school prayer. He believes that term
limits “take power out of people’s hands.” His three terms in the Senate are
marked with his overwhelming support of traditionally Democratic liberal social
issues. In 1988, he introduced what was to become the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and he was one of the first politicians to publicize AIDS awareness and seek
funding for research in the early ’80s. In the late ’70s, he helped create
legislation to protect the oceans from oil drilling and promote fish farming.
While still in the Senate, he took an active interest in oceanic research and
Hydro-Lab, an underwater habitation, where he spent a total of 10 days
underwater.

Social and environmental issues notwithstanding, Weicker’s most damaging and
noted “betrayal” of the Republican Party came during the Watergate investigation,
when he led the charge against the Nixon administration. A March 1973 editorial
in the Bridgeport Post praised his diligence to seek the truth, and asked, “What more
could be asked of a United States senator?” Republican colleagues, on the other
hand, remembered this transgression and quickly turned against him.

Weicker has already done battle with the Bush href="/news/feature/1999/07/21/dynasty/index.html">political dynasty. In
1982, with the support of national party officials, Prescott Bush Jr., uncle to
current Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush, challenged Weicker
for his Senate seat in the Republican primary. But, after 51 of 69 Republicans in
the Connecticut state legislature endorsed Weicker, Bush dropped out of the race; Weicker went on to win his third term in the Senate. Eventually his failing
relations with state and national Republican party officials cost him his seat.
In 1988, Weicker lost to Democrat Joe Lieberman, with 49 percent of the vote to Lieberman’s 50 percent.

In 1990, feeling his strength was with the people rather than the establishment,
Weicker registered as an independent and ran as the “A Connecticut Party” candidate
for governor. Running on a platform of name recognition and a promise not to
increase taxes, Weicker won the three-way race.

But sometimes winning is the easy part. Just as Weicker was sworn into office in
January 1991, Connecticut was falling into economic chaos. Connecticut in the
early ’90s, like the rest of the nation, was facing an economic recession. As
governor, Weicker was shackled with enormous debt, increasing unemployment and,
as an independent, no allies in the state legislature to turn to for help and support.

“The problem was simple,” Weicker said. “The state was about to go belly up,
corporate taxes and the sales tax were already the highest in the nation and we
were facing a $1 billion deficit — and this was the wealthiest state in the Union.
Something had to be done to get out of the red and keep out of the red.”

The answer to the economic crisis came in the form of a statewide income tax — Connecticut’s first. Weicker knew the consequences the proposed tax would have on his political
future, but he also understood it was the only way to get the state moving in the
right direction. The income tax did not go over well with his constituents. On
Connecticut radio call-in shows during the early years of Weicker’s tenure as governor,
in the face of a level of economic hardship unmatched since the Great Depression, people often cursed Weicker’s name. The low point for Gov. Weicker came when a
Republican-led rally to repeal the tax sent more than 15,000 people to the
streets surrounding the capitol building.

Even with the economic controversy, Weicker managed to exert his independent
influence in the state legislature. He signed off on legislation protecting gays
and lesbians from discrimination, he worked to improve tense race relations and
he pushed through strict gun control laws. But, in the end, the hallmark of his
four years in Hartford turned out to be what was most controversial — the
personal income tax.

Weicker calls Connecticut’s current economic situation “terrific.” The residents
enjoy the highest personal income in the nation, business is booming and,
although the income tax still exists, it has been significantly reduced. The
success of Weicker’s income tax has other states looking. A March editorial
in New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor suggests implementing a similar
tax there, stressing, “a state income tax worked in Connecticut. It would work
here too.”

Weicker’s tenure as governor was also a major breakthrough for third-party
candidates. The New York Times praised his work in April 1994: “Mr. Weicker,
most politicians grant, has proven that a governor can govern without a major
party behind him. He has accustomed the state to hearing its chief executive say
what many people think: partisan politics does not make good government.”

Over the past decade, third-party candidates at the local and state levels have
established a political foothold all over the country with great electoral
success. Currently, independent politicians hold two governorships — Ventura in
Minnesota and Angus King in Maine — and in 1998, Democratic party bad boy Jerry
Brown registered independent and was elected mayor of Oakland, Calif. Each
of these politicians has faced criticism from the traditional partisan loyalists but they are also enjoying huge popularity with their constituents.

In his 32 years in public service, Weicker has had the kind of success that makes
the current front-runners quake in their boots. He has proven it is possible for
a third-party candidate to build coalitions that result in tangible progress.

“It’s real,” said Craig Crawford, editor in chief of the Hotline, Washington’s
daily journal for political junkies, referring to the threat of a third-party
candidate. “It’s pretty incredible the unprecedented animosity toward the two
parties right now. Both parties are as unpopular as they have ever been.”

Crawford went on to explain that third-party candidates attract fewer traditional
voters. But he went on to stress, “the only way a third party can take off is to
crystallize around an individual” who can be a major figure on the national stage.

Whether or not Lowell Weicker will try to become that figure will be a big part of
the discussion at the national convention this weekend, but a final decision from
Weicker himself could come relatively soon. Friedline expects Weicker to make a
decision on his presidential prospects in the next 30 to 60 days.

Crawford gave the Reformers a fighting chance in the 2000 presidential campaign, but said they would be better off with their most prominent politician at the top of the ticket. “Ventura could take the party further” than Weicker, he said. Still, he added, the former governor would be “a decent name to maintain the Reform Party.”

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s Washington Post, Spencer Kim blasted, in turn, the local authorities who conducted the search, the legal barriers to procuring crucial credit card and phone-use information in a timely way, interference from the national media, and — especially — the fact that a gate across a road on federal land was left unlocked. If the gate had been properly signed and locked, he argued, his son would never have driven 21 miles down a long, deserted logging road. Several days before Kim’s article, Sen. Feinstein, D-Calif., sent a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne complaining about the gate and demanding an investigation.

But, sadly, even if the search and rescue effort had been flawless, the results might not have changed. The disappearance of the Kim family and the untimely death of James Kim is not really about an unlocked gate, nor is it about credit cards or the purported shortcomings of any member of the search parties that tried to rescue the family.

Nearly every winter in the high mountains of the United States brings new stories of travelers who take wrong turns, of skiers who wander off groomed slopes and snowmobilers who run out of gas miles from civilization. In an era of cellphones and GPS, it’s hard for those inexperienced in the wild to understand that it is still possible to get well and truly lost. It is still possible to be overwhelmed by the forces of nature, and there is not yet any foolproof remedy for human error and a lack of luck.

Here is what happened to the Kims:

According to an entry in a timeline prepared by law enforcement officials for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, the Kim family stopped to eat at a Denny’s in Roseburg, Ore., just off Interstate 5, at about 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 25. They had called ahead to a motel at Gold Beach on the Oregon coast to ask that a key be left for them, because they would be arriving late. It was raining, and they would have a three-hour, 130-mile drive along Highway 42 up and over the Coast Range mountains before they reached the Pacific Ocean. Instead of reconsidering and stopping for the night along I-5, they set out into the darkness.

The Kim family reportedly missed the exit for Highway 42 just a few miles south of Roseburg. Instead of backtracking, they kept driving south on I-5, and then turned off the highway in search of an alternate route across the Coast Range. Their ultimate goal was something called Bear Camp Road. It hasn’t yet been officially reported which map the Kims were using, but the 2006 Rand McNally Road Atlas makes a sharp distinction between Bear Camp and Highway 42. The latter is considered a “principal highway,” whereas the route the Kims chose is labeled “other road.” Much of it passes directly through the Siskiyou National Forest at altitudes of up to 4,200 feet.

“It’s a narrow, winding mountain road with very few pull-offs,” said Patty Burel, a spokeswoman for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. “It’s only one lane, so if two cars approach each other, one might have to back up to find a pull-off so the other can pass.” Bear Camp Road is known for approximately 40 miles of twists, turns and white-knuckle driving — even in the summer.

In winter, the Forest Service does not close Bear Camp Road because it is a popular recreation area for hunters, snowmobilers and people seeking Christmas trees. Most winter road use comes from local residents, noted Burel, and those drivers are better prepared for the conditions.

All of that would have been news to the Kims. But they did know that it had begun to snow as they climbed into the mountains, and they might have seen several large yellow signs along their chosen path warning of road closures ahead due to snow.

Ultimately, they came to a fork in the road, where Bear Camp splits into Forest Service Road 23 on the left and a Bureau of Land Management logging road, its entrance unlocked, on the right. A sign on the left-hand fork, the continuation of Bear Camp, points travelers to the coast. The Kims turned right instead onto BLM 34-4-38 and drove 21 miles. Low on gas, they stopped for the night on the logging road. By morning, their Saab station wagon was mired in snow.

The Kims had violated a number of rules that would have been familiar to locals or to experienced backwoodsmen, but perhaps not to them. They had left too late at night, they had left the main road, and they hadn’t turned around or tried to back up once it began to snow and their gas tank edged toward empty. More than once they had forged ahead when they should’ve backtracked to the known world and safety.

Earlier in 2006, the Stiver family of Ashland, Ore., encountered a similar situation. The family of six were headed to the Oregon coast in their motor home in March when they got stuck in the snow on a logging road not far from where the Kims wound up. The Stivers were missing for two weeks before being rescued.

But all six of them were rescued. Much of their good fortune was due to following a cardinal rule of the wilderness, even if they did so inadvertently. They came prepared. The Stivers family was in a 36-foot-long house-on-wheels that was stocked with food and supplies left over from the Y2K scare. The Kims, on the other hand, were reportedly traveling through the Siskiyou with the bare essentials, something experts warn against even in good winter weather. And tire chains are recommended equipment even for those drivers in the Oregon-California border area who stick to I-5.

“Transportation of any kind during the winter, whether you are driving, skiing, snowmobiling, you need to be prepared, especially in the backcountry where help isn’t going to be immediately available,” related Steve Rollins, a 10-year veteran of Portland (Oregon) Mountain Rescue. He was not involved in the search for the Kim family, but was part of the search and rescue effort for three missing climbers on Mt. Hood late last year. “It’s always a good idea to have a survival kit with non-perishable food, water, iodine tablets and extra clothes and blankets.”

The Stivers survived, though, because they were lucky even when they broke the rules. Two members of the party, like James Kim, left their vehicle to look for help, generally considered the greater of two evils. Fortunately, they bumped into a Bureau of Land Management official. James Kim wasn’t so lucky. His wife and daughters stayed in the Saab. They survived. He did not.

After the flood of media attention and the tragic outcome, it was a natural response on the part of all observers, not just James Kim’s loved ones, to wonder how his death could have been prevented. That natural reaction made experienced outdoorsmen and rescue professionals nervous.

Steve Rollins, for one, is worried about unnecessary and unhelpful changes in law and policy.

“There is a need to understand the problem before rushing into legislation,” he said. “Sometimes people are compelled to do something just for the sake of doing it, and they don’t take the time to consult and find out all the issues.

“If the search and rescue community felt there was a need for legislation, they would be jumping up and down about it.”

Sure enough, there has been a flurry of investigations and calls for action. They’ve come from Sen. Feinstein, the governor of Oregon, and the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency responsible for the road where the Kims got stuck. The BLM’s investigation is expected to be complete by the end of this month.

And just as Rollins feared, there have been specific legislative and policy proposals. In his Washington Post article, James Kim’s bereaved father made several of them.

Spencer Kim said it was crucial that federal authorities maintain better oversight over logging roads, and that they need to make sure they are barred and properly signed. “It is crucial that measures be adopted,” he wrote. He demanded that laws be changed so that credit card and cellphone records could be made immediately available to the next of kin in emergencies. He urged that the Federal Aviation Administration better enforce an existing rule that restricts media overflights during search-and-rescue operations.

Kim rightly notes that time was lost before credit card and cellphone records were released to searchers, and that it was the hotel and restaurant receipts and the last-known “ping” from the cellphone that, once known to rescuers, led to the rescue of Kati Kim and her daughters.

His proposal for federal roads, however, might be unworkable. Michael Campbell, who handles public affairs for BLM in Oregon and Washington state, noted the sheer volume of roads on BLM land, which accounts for about a quarter of all acreage in Oregon. “There are 24,000 roads, comprising about 14,000 miles. We deal with a wide variety of issues: vandalism, flooding, landslides,” Campbell said. “There isn’t always one solution to fix everything on such a large area of land.”

What is truly troubling, however, is Kim’s specific criticism of the work of those who tried to rescue his son. He faults local authorities for “confusion, communication breakdowns and failures of leadership.”

“Steps should be taken,” wrote Kim, “to ensure that authorities are adequately trained for search-and-rescue operations, have a clear sense of their available resources and fully understand the procedures necessary to conduct an effective, well-coordinated search-and-rescue operation.”

Certainly local and state governments as well as the Bureau of Land Management should do their part to protect people who utilize their land. But how much responsibility should they have to shoulder when people choose to travel into remote, unpopulated and unknown terrain — especially in harsh weather conditions?

The cost of search and rescue efforts can be physically and financially exhausting to remote rural areas. Despite a low population and a modest tax base, rural counties in the Rockies and the Pacific mountain ranges often must expend tens of thousands of dollars finding out-of-towners who have wandered off the grid. The cost of a search can run into six figures — the unsuccessful hunt for two women in Alaska cost $127,000. Failure, meanwhile, brings with it the additional risk of litigation.

The effort to find the Kim family was one of the largest in the history of Josephine, Curry and Coos counties. Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson addressed the issue himself just after James Kim’s body was found: “We’re a poor county,” he told the Oregonian in December. “The availability of three helicopters is unheard of for us.” Indeed, it was the financial resources of James Kim’s family that afforded them assets (including several rented private helicopters) that they couldn’t summon themselves. Putting a single chopper in the air can cost up to $5,000 an hour.

In a case such as the Kims’, the price of search and rescue can be unintentionally increased due to notoriety and media coverage. “There is no question,” Chris Brewster, president of the nonprofit United States Lifesaving Association, recently told the Washington Times, “that as attention to an incident increases, potential costs rise as well, because of the pressure brought to bear on agencies overseeing the rescue.”

A few states have taken measures to help small jurisdictions pay for the kinds of exhaustive searches that are now expected. They have passed laws that allow governments to ask for reimbursement in some search and rescue situations. One of them is Oregon. Another is Colorado, which also sells the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Search and Rescue Card in order to offset the cost of search and rescue missions. One county in Utah sends bills to rescued mountain bikers, and ski areas in Idaho are allowed to ask lost skiers for reimbursement. In general, however, such measures are only invoked in extreme cases, like hoaxes.

James Kim was a hero for his efforts to save his family, and his father’s proposal about credit card and cellphone information merits debate. But any criticisms, no matter their source, of the search and rescue professionals and volunteers of southwestern Oregon seem harsh. And it’s also true that while Spencer Kim’s recommendations might save someone like his son, the circumstances of each wilderness rescue case are very specific. His proposals might not save the next traveler. Technology, whether in the form of GPS, cellphones or even helicopters, can’t save everyone. In the end it comes down to whether people are prepared for the wilderness, whether they respect it or even believe that such a thing still exists. There is no balm for human error in legislation, or in criticizing the people who worked doggedly for days to save James Kim’s life.

Polls consistently show Americans are more concerned with government programs
than government refunds. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows only 44
percent feel cutting taxes is very important, whereas 79 percent think it is very
important to improve education.

The improved economy is one reason people shied away from the GOP’s
tax-cut plan — but in addition, many Americans read the Republican tax cut as a partisan jab at the White House rather than a realistic plan for economic stability. Another
recent poll from ABC News.com found that 49 percent of those polled think only
the rich would benefit from Republican tax cuts. Even some GOP lawmakers criticized the proposal.

“The people don’t need to be fooled about this … They want to be realistic and
have us start at the beginning with something that can go through, a smaller tax
cut, rather than this bloated bill that can never pass,” Rep. Connie Morella, one
of a handful of moderate Republicans to vote against the tax cut, told the
Washington Post.

Despite growing internal problems facing the GOP, fiscal conservatives are
still standing firm, insisting that a large tax cut be made before Clinton leaves the
White House.

“The threat of a veto should never scare the Republican majority from creating
tax relief legislation,” said GOP pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick.

“Taxes should always be a Republican issue,” she added. “Once that distinction is
removed between Democrats and Republicans there is just a glob, there is no real
contrast between the parties.”

The GOP’s question, “Where do we go from here?” is getting different answers
from philosophical tax-cutters and strategists looking for a viable issue for
campaign 2000. While Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott claims there will be “no
tax cut this year,” other Republicans plan to keep the option open for early next
year.

“The Republicans need to treat this like welfare reform — pass, veto, pass,
veto, pass, veto, until [the president] caves,” said Grover Norquist, president
of Americans for Tax Reform. “He needs to have a political interest to sign this
and we are still too far off from the election.”

Democrats, led by President Clinton, are still pushing for a more modest,
targeted tax-cut package. “I think some of the leadership in the Republican Party
have indicated that they want to throw in the towel and start the campaign
season … the president hasn’t given up on this Congress, and I don’t think the
Congress should give up on itself,” said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart at a
briefing last week. The White House “will continue to make the case that Social
Security and Medicare have to come first, but we can provide tax relief” as
well, he added.

For the moment, Republican hopes of implementing tax-cut legislation have been
scrapped. But there is still optimism that the most important “pieces of the
bill, like the marriage penalty, can be taken care of in smaller bits … and
passed between now and next spring,” said GOP strategist Rich Galen.

With the presidential election just over a year away, tax relief issues are sure
to play a big part in next year’s Republican campaign. And although the past two
years have left the GOP empty-handed on tax cuts, it isn’t for lack of trying.

“The future of the party does not hinge on this one piece of legislation.
[Republicans] deserve credit from their fiscal base for trying it and actually
getting the legislation through the House and the Senate,” Galen said. “Last year
Republicans could not take up a tax cut because the Democrats threatened to
filibuster.”

In the end, Galen said, the bill “makes the Republican Party look better to the
Republican Party.”

The cat-and-mouse game played from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other
doesn’t seem to be nearing an end any time soon. Clinton won’t cut taxes to terms
that will please fiscal conservatives, and is all too happy to repaint the
Republican-controlled Congress as more concerned with revenge than with passing
meaningful legislation.

With the August recess and the tax-cut defeat behind them, Congress faces the
quickly approaching federal budget deadline. With their consistent record of
battles over the federal budget, the Republicans might retaliate against the
Clinton veto by forcing a government shutdown — despite the fact that the public has
consistently sided with Democrats in past budget battles.

“Yes, there is potential for [a shutdown],” said Galen. But, he explained,
Congress is not yet at that point and with compromise and debate they should be
able to work around the spending caps.

Even if there is no government shutdown, Congress will very likely miss its
Oct. 1 deadline for passing a budget. Of the 13 appropriations bills that
need to be finalized before the beginning of fiscal year 2000, only four have
been passed. Unless these budgets are finished in the next two weeks, this
could bring the government to a screeching halt — again.

“I think most Americans have come to see the Republican Party as captive to its
far-right wing while it pushes its extreme agenda,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman John Del Cecato.

With all the problems facing the Republican Party over the last few years,
another shutdown could convince voters that the GOP is unfit to lead Congress,
and could potentially damage their chances of maintaining their House majority.