Gebhardt vs. Gephardt
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt has seen the enemy, and the enemy is Richard A. Gebhardt. Gebhardt filed papers with the Missouri secretary of state’s office to run against Gephardt in the Democratic primary in Missouri’s 3rd District. Gebhardt, who some local GOP activists have fingered as a Republican, had originally filed in the 2nd District, leading state Democratic Party leaders to charge the GOP was engaging in “dirty tricks,” a charge the state Republican Party leadership denied.

State GOP Chairwoman Ann Wagner said that if the GOP was really engaged in dirty tricks, “we would have filed this guy in the 3rd,” against Gephardt. The next day, Gebhardt did just that.

Sources close to Gephardt suspect that one of his GOP opponents put Gebhardt up to the stunt. Gebhardt could not be reached for comment.

In a last-minute effort to help avoid confusion, Gephardt added his nickname, Dick, to the ballot to differentiate himself from his opponent with the similar moniker.

Gephardt spokesman Ed Rhode called the development “unbelievable” in a conversation with Salon Wednesday, but said he had “faith that the voters will see through the Republicans’ dirty tricks. This campaign should be about fighting for the people of the 3rd Congressional District, not about confusing voters.”

When asked if Gephardt’s new campaign slogan would be focused on spelling, Rhode said, “It’s going to have to.”

Another Clinton rebuke from the bench
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a ruling Wednesday that President Clinton and top White House officials committed a crime in 1998 when they released letters written to the president by Kathleen E. Willey, who had accused him of fondling her, reports the Washington Post. “The release of the Willey letters was a criminal violation of the Privacy Act,” Lamberth wrote. Such a violation is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.

Welcome to politics, Mr. Corzine
New York isn’t the only Northeastern state with a Senate race wrapped in controversy. Millionaire Democrat Jon Corzine, who is seeking the Democratic Senate nomination from New Jersey, is getting an early lesson in bad press. Corzine has come under fire from Emanuel Alfano, chairman of the Italian-American One Voice Committee, who says Corzine made offensive remarks against Italian-Americans, including one about a prominent Italian-American leader’s making “cement shoes.”

According to the New York Times, “Alfano called Mr. Corzine’s remarks outrageous, saying they demonstrated ‘a clear pattern of insensitivity and prejudice.’”

But the New York race continues to generate heat. The official e-mail list for Rudy Giuliani’s unofficial Senate campaign moved quickly to try to stop the bleeding from the political controversy surrounding the shooting of Haitian immigrant Patrick Dorismond — including continued attempts to link Hillary Rodham Clinton to Al Sharpton. Though some polls earlier this week showed Clinton moving ahead of Giuliani for the first time, a new Marist College poll released Thursday showed Giuliani clinging to a slight lead. And his Web team made sure everybody on the e-mail list saw the poll.
“Even after weeks of being attacked by Hillary Clinton’s divisive negative campaigning, Mayor Giuliani continues to hold the lead in the race for U.S. Senate,” the e-mail said. “In fact, it looks like Mrs. Clinton’s negative attacks are backfiring: her unfavorability rating soared 9 points, and the number of people concerned that she’s a carpetbagger to New York grew to a four-month high.” But as the New York Times points out, Giuliani’s 3-point lead is within the poll’s margin of error.

Giuliani spent his evening at a fund-raiser for George W. Bush, which netted more than $500,000 for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. The event marked the first time since the divisive New York primary that Bush, Gov. George Pataki and the mayor were in the same room together, though the Times noted that “the three men did not pose for the customary photo of hands clasped together in solidarity at the fund-raiser. In fact, they did not appear together on stage during the event.” Tensions have arisen between the Bush and Giuliani camps over Bush’s campaign tactics during the primary. Earlier this week, Bush’s vanquished opponent, John McCain, helped Giuliani raise some campaign cash of his own in Washington.

McCain was the focus of “a bluntly worded memo” circulated by House Republican campaign committee chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., who wrote that the party should align itself with McCain if it hopes to be successful in November, according to the Washington Post. Davis pointed out that McCain ran strong in the Northeast and in California, areas where Bush and Republican congressional candidates are lagging in early polls. “The presidential primaries have shown that there are legions of new voters out there ready for a change,” Davis wrote. “Every House Republican must open their arms to these Independent and like-minded Democrat voters and let them know they are welcome in the family. Every House Republican must reach out to these voters and let them know there’s room in our party for new ideas.”

The Elian factor
Some pundits are speculating that Bush’s most important running mate in Florida may be 6-year-old Cuban exile Elian Gonzales. Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade County — and an ally of Al Gore’s — said today that the area’s Cuban population, about 800,000 strong, would hold the
Clinton administration responsible if it returned the boy and civil unrest broke out,” writes the New York Times.

Who wants to be president II
The Phoenix Times has a new version of
its “who wants to be a president” game, titled “Round 2, Thunderdome.” A sample question includes: “You’ve spent a record
$63.2 million to obtain the Republican nomination. You should …
A. Keep spending. You can always get more.
B. Show your fiscal responsibility and cut back.
C. Blow the remaining $10 million on a hookers-and-coke Vegas bender.
D. Call your dad for a loan.

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Talking heads
(All EST and all guests tentative)

In more Democratic scandal news, Al Gore’s campaign manager, Tony Coelho, is reportedly under criminal investigation for his “questionable spending” activities as head of Expo ’98 in Lisbon, Portugal, according to a story originally broken Thursday in the National Journal. “An initial report by the inspector general, Jacquelyn L. Williams-Bridgers, last fall found that American officials involved in the American exhibition at the fair may have violated federal rules by hiring Mr. Coelho’s niece and that a Portuguese bank made a personal loan of $300,000 to Mr. Coelho for a private foundation to build a memorial at the fair,” according to the New York Times.

GOP tried to legalize foreign money

The Associated Press reports that GOP leaders tried to legalize donations from foreign countries, even though Republican candidates now routinely use the Chinese fund-raising scandal of the Clinton/Gore White House as a battering ram against Democrats on the campaign trail. The AP writes: “The legal filing may complicate the efforts of likely GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush to make the Democratic fund-raising scandal an issue in his battle with Vice President Al Gore.”

Here’s Johnny …

Yes, John McCain is back. Picking up right where he left off, he’s back on a whirlwind media tour, this time sitting down with a “Straight Talk Express” refugee, Alison Mitchell from the New York Times, and the Washington Post. McCain said he “didn’t want to harm” Bush’s chances in November and hoped to meet with the Texas governor “sooner rather than later,” but wouldn’t mind taking another crack at the job come 2004.

If she were a New Yorker, would she have to travel as much?

Congressional Republicans released White House data Thursday showing that Hillary Rodham Clinton has reimbursed taxpayers for only about 18 percent of the cost of her New York Senate campaign trips on government aircraft. The documents reveal that Clinton’s trips to and from New York cost $182,471, but that she reimbursed taxpayers for only $32,878. Still, that figure is far below the $905,406 the Republican National Committee estimated as recently as Wednesday. The first lady flies on government aircraft on the advice of the Secret Service, and reimburses the government the same way presidential candidates do: at the rate of a first-class commercial ticket. Clinton will be flying back to Washington in May to walk in the Million Mom March.

Bush scores points with this Democrat

Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew charges that Bush merely “talks a good game” on education. But in an interview with Knight Ridder Newspapers, 1992 Clinton-Gore advisor Will Marshall, who runs the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate Democratic think tank, said: “Test scores have been rising, and the achievements of low-income and minority students have been rising. Campaign hyperbole aside, Texas has one of the best accountability systems in the country.” The New York Times also focuses on Bush’s efforts to make education a central issue in the campaign.

Not just shooting from the hip

Bush has repeatedly said about Gore: “This is a man who will say anything to get elected.” What wasn’t known is that that line of attack had been tested, and proved effective, in a Republican “push poll” conducted in early February. The results of the poll, obtained by ABC News, provide a road map for Bush’s strategy going into the fall campaign: Go after Gore on trustworthiness and integrity.

Talking heads

(All EST and all guests tentative)

1) [The American] dream is so vivid — but too many say: The dream is not for me.
Kids who turn schoolyards into battlefields. Children who corrupt their wills
and souls with drugs, who limit their ambitions by having children themselves.
Failed schools are creating two societies: one that reads and one that can’t; one
that dreams and one that doesn’t. These are the burdens on the conscience of a
successful nation. The next president must close this gap of hope. It is the
great challenge to America’s good heart … I will be an activist president, who
sets goals worthy of a great nation.

2) Government can help. We can pass laws to give schools and principals more
authority to discipline children and protect the peace of classrooms. We must
encourage states to reform their juvenile justice laws. We must say to our
children, “We love you, but discipline and love go hand in hand, and there will
be bad consequences for bad behavior.”

3) I ask for your help to strengthen family life in America. And I make you
this pledge: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will marshal its authority,
its resources and its moral leadership to fight for America’s families. With
your help, I will take my own values of faith and family to the presidency — to
build an America that is not only better off, but better.

4) These are our deficits now: the time deficit in family life; the decency
deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our
elderly parents. Our families are loving but over-stretched. These deficits
cannot be measured in monthly economic tables, or even in the size of a family’s
paycheck. To find them, you have to look harder at the places our statistics do
not describe: the dinner tables that sit empty, when working parents do not have
the time to share a meal with their children. The entertainment that glorifies
aggression and indecency, with lessons more vivid and overpowering than those in
the classroom. The schools where discipline is eroding — and the school hallways
where guns and fear are becoming too common.

5) I will involve [people] in after-school programs, maternity group homes, drug
treatment, prison ministries. I will lay out specific incentives to encourage an
outpouring of giving in America.

6) There is a hunger and thirst for goodness among us. Just visible within a
generation’s journey is a new horizon: a 21st century America with stronger
families, stronger communities and a more vital democracy — in which we live
and govern according to our highest American ideals.

7) We’ll be prosperous if we embrace free trade. I’ll work to end tariffs and
break down barriers everywhere, entirely, so the whole world trades in freedom.
The fearful build walls. The confident demolish them. I am confident in American
workers and farmers and producers. And I am confident that America’s best is the
best in the world.

Responsible men and women must make their own most personal decisions based
on their own consciences, not government interference. No executive action can
mend a broken family. No legislation can reconnect a parent to a child, or a
family to a grandparent. No proposal can change a culture that does not place
family life at the top of our hierarchy of values, where it belongs. So today, I
say to every parent in America: It is our own lives we must master if we are to
have the moral authority to guide our children. The ultimate outcome does not
rest in the hands of any president, but with all our people taking
responsibility for themselves, and for each other. So my first promise is to ask
you, each of you, to fulfill that American promise.

9) Sin accisn, las palabras no valen nada — aunque sean bonitas. Mis amigos,
seguiremos, trabajando juntos, mano a mano, para el futuro de nuestras familias y
nuestros niqos.

1) Bush

2) Bush

3) Gore

4) Gore

5) Bush

6) Gore

7) Bush

Gore

9) Gore