Letters: September/October 2006 Letters
http://www.motherjones.com
Grounded
As a retired FAA flight standards inspector, I read your article about air-safety oversight ("Waiting to Happen") with great interest. I find most of your report factual, and while it identifies some of the problems with inspectors, it overlooks the issue of the experience and technical abilities of the average inspector.
In the early '90s the FAA started moving from a technically experienced workforce to one based entirely on diversity, political correctness, and union cronyism. It became increasingly difficult to hire industry-experienced personnel, especially on the air carrier side of the workforce. The FAA and the union took the position that all inspectors are equal and if not, a few weeks of training in Oklahoma City would level the playing field. In an industry as complex as American civil aviation, this attitude is as wrongheaded as one could possibly be. It's absurd to believe that a person with 10, 12, or even 20 years in the U.S. Air Force working on fighter aircraft, or a similar time in the Army maintaining helicopters or working for a state Highway Patrol, is the equivalent of one who has been working for an airline.
The FAA routinely hires people with little or no air carrier civil experience and places them in positions of oversight of air carriers. Without experience in the technical regulatory requirements of air carrier programs, these inspectors are not only ineffectual, they are dangerous.
The FAA senior management staff in Washington are fully aware of what they have created but cannot or will not take corrective measures until the tombstones start piling up. It's only a matter of time.
Lonnie R. Giles
Phoenix, Arizona
DAILY BRIEFING
October 23, 2006
Aviation groups take different routes to reauthorization
By Darren Goode, CongressDaily
Aviation trade groups are jockeying for position heading into next year's congressional debate over reauthorizing the financing mechanism for aviation programs for the first time in a decade.
Excise taxes that make up a large portion of the Federal Aviation Administration's financing are set to expire at the end of September 2007. One of the main issues is whether to restructure how much each aviation sector pays into federal coffers, which pits major airlines against corporate and private air passengers and aviation unions.
The Air Transport Association, which represents the airlines, the National Business Aviation Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association have been lobbying members on transportation, finance and tax-writing panels.
Airlines want Congress to replace the combination of commercial fuel and passenger taxes with a fee based on the use of the air traffic control system. They say the existing system results in airlines contributing at least 90 percent of the trust fund money though they are responsible for about two-thirds use of the system.
Others contend that noncommercial aviation users pay higher fuel taxes and many use smaller airports with less expensive infrastructure than major airlines. "All airplanes are not the same, all airplanes do not impose the same costs on the system," said Edward Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association, which represents about 7,000 companies.
Airline opponents also say user fees would discourage private pilots from using weather and other safety services or from flying altogether. "It would raise the cost on general aviation users to the point that it would kill our industry," said Andy Cebula, executive vice president for governmental affairs for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
AOPA, which represents 408,000 private owners and operators of small airplanes, has hired former Transportation Department Inspector General Ken Mead to lobby and has sent questionnaires to congressional candidates this fall asking whether they support retaining the system of using fuel taxes and commercial passenger taxes to largely finance the federal aviation trust fund.
The funding issue has riven the aviation industry. "It's maybe the biggest issue that we have ever had to face," Bolen said. The National Business Aviation Association this year hired Mitch Rose, an influential lobbyist and a former chief of staff for Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and aide to House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, before leaving for the private sector in 2000.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey has expressed concern about the solvency of the trust fund and raised the possibility of an overhaul. "We need a stable, cost-based revenue stream. The changing face of aviation brings with it the need to modernize, and we can't do that without fundamental reforms of the current financing system," she told the National Business Aviation Association last Tuesday.
An FAA financing proposal is being internally reviewed and probably will be released in January or February, an FAA spokeswoman said. Foes of the overhaul say the trust fund is solvent, and there will be enough money generated through the current system to pay for a plan to to replace ground-based radars with satellite navigation, implement an integrated weather system and revamp security.
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed
| October 24, 2006 |
| Trouble on the horizon • Yeager Airport facing shortage of air-traffic controllers |
| By Joe Morris Business Editor |
| Yeager Airport is facing a steep, and possibly dangerous, decline in its staff of air-traffic controllers. It has 19 controllers now, six fewer than were allotted three years ago. And in short order the staff could be cut by nearly a third, according to the controllers’ union. Filling those spots isn’t just a matter of hiring people. After controllers are hired, they must go through at least two years of on-site training before they can run traffic, even if they come to the job with years of air-traffic experience elsewhere. “You have to know your airspace, every nuclear plant, every radio tower, every field nearby,” says Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union. “You have to know it all.” If the Federal Aviation Administration, which hires controllers for Yeager, were to bring on new controllers today, “the soonest they’d be able to work traffic would be two years from now,” said Church. More typically, new controllers will take three years to be ready to work on their own, said Yeager director Rick Atkinson. The FAA is putting passengers at risk by letting the staffing levels fall so low, he said. “It’s playing with and jeopardizing the safety of the air-traveling public,” Atkinson said. “They know this is a problem.” The cutbacks have affected airports nationwide and started after the FAA came under the control of President Bush’s White House, he maintains. “This is a nationwide problem that the FAA under the Bush administration has ignored.” An understaffed air tower at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., could have been a factor in an August crash there that killed 49 people, Atkinson said. Just one controller was working when the plane took off from the wrong runway. Despite the lag time for training new controllers, the FAA hasn’t been hiring for Yeager, says Jim Ennis, a representative the controllers’ union local for Yeager. Next week, Yeager will lose two controllers who have been reassigned to another airport. Another controller will be retiring in January, another still is at retirement age now and two more will become eligible to retire next year, according to Ennis. With all of these gone, the airport would be left with 13 controllers. Atkinson said he estimates that the airport needs between 22 and 25 controllers. Yeager’s air-traffic control manager, Cliff Oravec, referred questions to the FAA. Officials there did not return calls for comment. Staffing levels at Yeager have been falling gradually for years, Ennis said. An agreement negotiated by the union and the FAA in 1998 had set Yeager’s allotment of controllers at 25, according to Ennis. But the FAA invalidated the pact in 2004 without explanation, he said. It first knocked the acceptable level down to 21, without conferring with the union. Then it reduced the minimum again, to 19, Ennis said. “This has been happening gradually with attrition,” he said. “It’s a situation where, you’re making it with this many people, let’s see if we can make it with less.” Nationwide, controller staff levels have been falling at a similar pace. Three years ago, the FAA employed 15,386, while as of June the number was down to 14,305, according to FAA statistics. Air traffic has remained roughly the same in that time span, the FAA data show. Meanwhile, no technology has been developed since then that would allow for automation of controller duties, Church said. “There’s no piece of equipment out there that’s going to alleviate the need for controllers,” he said. “No piece of equipment will do the controller’s job for them.” In the past three years, traffic at Yeager has increased slightly, Atkinson said. In addition to the on-site training, controllers generally must have a four-year college degree, pass an FAA exam and then go through FAA training. They have to retire at age 56, and are eligible to retire either after working 25 years or after working 20 years and reaching the age of 50. Since dissolving the staffing agreement with the union, the FAA hasn’t disclosed the criteria it uses to determine how many controllers are necessary at each airport. “Nobody knows” what formula the FAA is using, if any, Atkinson said. In fact, the FAA doesn’t seem to have a very good grasp on its future staffing needs, Church said. For the past two years it has underestimated how many controllers will retire. It predicted that 329 would retire in fiscal year 2004, but 362 actually did. In 2005, when 465 retired, it had predicted 341 would, Church said. By the end of next year, the union estimates that 3,600 — or 25 percent of the nationwide work force — will become eligible to retire. Any new hires “are just not going to be ready to fill in,” Church said. Among the consequences the shortages raise could be a slowdown in traffic, because controllers will need to space out takeoffs and landings, Church said. “These shortages will raise some serious questions,” he said. To contact staff writer Joe Morris, use e-mail or call 348-5179. |
FAA warns JetBlue after fatigue test
BY JAMES BERNSTEIN
Newsday Staff Writer
October 24, 2006
JetBlue Airways Corp. has been reprimanded by the Federal Aviation Administration for allowing pilots to fly more hours than regulations permit in an attempt to study pilot fatigue without permission from high-level FAA officials, the company said yesterday.
The Forest Hills-based airline, one of the nation's leading low-cost carriers, had 29 pilots fly as many as 11 hours a day on more than 50 flights in May 2005 to study alertness, said JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin. FAA regulations allow pilots to fly no more than eight hours a day.
Passengers were unaware the pilots had been flying longer than regulations allow.
Motion detectors were attached to pilots' wrists. They also used hand-held devices that issued prompts and recorded response speed. A third pilot was always aboard in case of problems, JetBlue said, adding that none came up.
Dervin acknowledged that JetBlue undertook the study without permission from high-level officials at FAA headquarters in Washington. The airline had only the approval of officials at the regional office at Kennedy Airport in Queens.
Dervin said there was a "miscommunication" with the FAA. "We believed it was appropriate to get the permission of the local FAA," she said. "We have since discovered it should have gone to headquarters."
The FAA verbally reprimanded the airline, issuing it "a letter of correction," Dervin said. The FAA did not issue any fines or take any other action.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said she had not heard of other carriers conducting similar studies.
All major airlines are looking to cut costs, and expanding the FAA's eight-hour rule may help in that regard, some industry analysts said. Dervin, however, said JetBlue had only "data collection" in mind. "We wanted to find out what the data tells us," Dervin said. "If it tells us pilots should fly only six hours a day, we would listen to the data." JetBlue is having a consultant analyze the data.
Pete Janhunen, a spokesman for the Airline Pilots Association, which represents pilots at most major airlines, said that while pilot fatigue is an important issue, "there are other ways to look at this. ... We would not recommend any of our members to participate in a single experiment at a single carrier." JetBlue's pilots are non-union.
Robert W. Mann, an independent airline consultant and analyst in Port Washington, however, said the local FAA office at Kennedy should have alerted JetBlue that permission from a higher level at the agency was needed.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
Article published Oct 25, 2006
FAA investigating case of sleeping air traffic controller
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating allegations that an air traffic controller responsible for directing planes in the Charleston area briefly fell asleep on the job early one morning last month.
A technician and another controller getting ready for the next shift said they saw the unidentified employee asleep in the control tower of Charleston International Airport about 6 a.m. Sept. 13, said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
No flights were affected by the dozing worker, she said.
However, five commercial flights were scheduled to take off that day by 6:30 a.m., including a 5:50 a.m. U.S. Airways departure to Charlotte, N.C., The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported for a story for Thursday papers.
"He allegedly dozed off for a few minutes," Bergen told The Associated Press. "We're looking into the circumstances surrounding the allegations that someone was sleeping on duty."
FAA-certified doctors have since cleared the employee to return to work. Bergen declined to comment on the worker's health or say whether the person was penalized.
The controller was alone in a windowless room equipped with radar screens tracking planes flying below 10,000 feet for 20 miles in all directions of Charleston International Airport, the busiest airport in South Carolina. The worker was also responsible for planes flying in and out of four small airports in Moncks Corner, Summerville, Mount Pleasant and Johns Island.
A second controller was working in another part of the tower. The tower is supposed to have two workers on a midnight shift, Bergen said.
Only 15 flights come in and out of Charleston between midnight and 6 a.m., which accounts for just 3 percent of the airport's daily flights, she said.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said most airport towers are understaffed. There are 14,200 FAA air traffic controllers nationwide, or a thousand fewer than three years ago. Six-day workweeks and mandatory overtime are becoming the norm, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the union.
"This is a tired work force, no doubt about it," he said. "There are fewer controllers handling more traffic than ever before."
On Aug. 28, a jet crashed on takeoff in Lexington, Ky., killing 49 people. The sole controller on duty had slept only two hours since his previous shift and had failed to warn the pilots they turned onto a runway that was too short.
| New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com |
| GOP set to unlock the vault BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK AND KENNETH R. BAZINET DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU Friday, October 27th, 2006 WASHINGTON - Even though the trend is ominous, don't write off the Republicans just yet. Unwavering GOP operatives believe that in most close House and Senate races they could have the edge on Election Day because of their not-so-secret weapon - the party's vaunted "voter vault" database of information on rank-and-file Republicans. Party officials described the voter vault as a marketing tool that identifies even prospective GOP voters, based on their values, consumer interests and hobbies, even where they pray and their personal finances. "If you live on a certain street and subscribe to certain magazines, we can target you with mailings and have a shot at getting your vote even if you don't think of yourself as a Republican," a senior GOP official said. "We create a stake in the election for someone who may have been neutral." Republicans often know how frequently their supporters vote year to year and which issues spark their interests, as well as consumer preferences, from a person's favorite beer to what they watch on TV. Once personal data is in the vault, the GOP tries to use it to fire up the faithful. Months before the election, voters get an assortment of e-mails, targeted mailings, issue papers and phone calls, plus invitations to parties, barbecues and rallies. Naturally, they are also asked to contribute. "We even know what time most of our voters want us to call to remind them to vote on Election Day," a party official said. "We're organized. We've got a fantastic grass-roots organization to turn out the vote," President Bush boasted this week. Democrats long prevailed in moving their voters to the polls, but since 2002 they have been playing catchup. In a recent example of using the vault to penetrate Democratic ranks, the GOP micro-targeted Michigan snowmobilers facing government limits on where they could ride. The GOP let them know it was with the snowmobilers. "That's the strength of the vault," said Peter Wallsten, co-author of "One Party Country." For the database to be effective, the races must be close before voters cast ballots. "That's a big deal," GOP pollster Frank Luntz said. "Watch how many races are decided by one or two points." With voting imminent, the vault triggers a wave of e-mails, postcards, personal and automated phone calls, and people knocking on doors. On Election Day, a car may be standing by for a ride to the polls. "We've spent the last two years organizing, recruiting volunteers and using the latest technology to find and mobilize voters," GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman said. |
| Republicans lead in 2 of the nation's battleground Senate races By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) WASHINGTON - Republican Senate candidates have fought back to regain an edge in two key races, pivotal battlegrounds that could determine which party controls the Senate, according to a series of new McClatchy-MSNBC polls. Republicans hold narrow leads in Tennessee and Virginia, two must-win states where the party hopes to build a Southern bulwark against a Democratic tide that's threatening their Senate seats elsewhere across the country. The new polls show Democrats leading in two states they must hold - New Jersey and Washington - as well as in five states now held by Republicans: Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Yet even if Democrats take all seven of those, they still need to win either Tennessee or Virginia to take control of the Senate. Democrats must gain six seats overall to take a majority. "Control of the Senate is going to come down to Tennessee and Virginia," said Brad Coker, the pollster for Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. who conducted the surveys for McClatchy-MSNBC in eight states, as well as one in Virginia for several major newspapers there. Coker noted that Tennessee and Virginia are culturally conservative states in which Republicans have won Senate campaigns for more than a decade. Also, the Republican candidates in each state appeared to find their footing in recent weeks after missteps earlier. In Virginia, incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen stopped losing ground after he was accused of racial insensitivity and went on the attack against his Democratic opponent, James Webb, in part charging that Webb was insensitive to women in the military. In Tennessee, Republican candidate Bob Corker fired top campaign staff and went on the attack against his Democratic rival, Rep. Harold Ford. While many analysts and insiders of both major parties expect the Republicans to lose control of the House of Representatives, the Senate remains a close contest. Control of either house of Congress is crucial to passing legislation, while the Senate has sole power to confirm appointments to the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The polls revealed a slightly shifting landscape in recent weeks, with Democrats consolidating leads in several states but Republicans not only clawing back in Tennessee and Virginia but also narrowing their gap in Montana, all but given up as lost by national Republican leaders. Of the nine key battleground states, Republicans are ahead in two and within the polls' 4 percentage-point margin of error in three more. Iraq remains the dominant issue in all but one battleground state, despite weeks of news coverage of the page scandal in the House, North Korea's nuclear test and record highs in the stock market. That hurts Republicans, as those voting on Iraq break for Democrats by margins of 2-1 or more. Terrorism _usually a Republican strength - has receded as a major issue in most battleground states, with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and news of a foiled alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes fading into memory. Even Republican efforts to rekindle fear of terrorism might not help in most of these Senate campaigns: _Voters who say they're worried about a terrorist attack on the United States gave the Republican Senate candidate a clear edge only in Montana and Tennessee. _They favored the Democrat over the Republican in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. _They split almost evenly between the Democrat and Republican in Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio and Washington state. The polls partly affirmed decisions by Republican leaders to build a Southern wall to protect their Senate majority, steering campaign cash into Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia while pulling it out of states such as Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Here are snapshots of the races, first for Republican-held Senate seats: --- MISSOURI Democratic state Auditor Claire McCaskill led incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent by 46-43 percent. They were tied 43-43 percent in the same poll three weeks ago. McCaskill gained in part because Missouri voters focused more on Iraq in recent weeks. They ranked it their top issue; before, health care was their top concern. Those listing Iraq as their top issue supported the Democrat by a ratio of better than 2-1. McCaskill also continued to lead among voters most concerned about health care, as well as the economy. Talent led by 80-11 percent among those who ranked terrorism their top issue, but terrorism ranked fifth on Missourians' priority list. And those who said they were very worried about a terrorist attack on the United States preferred McCaskill by 49-35 percent. Breakout: McCaskill didn't have the support of a majority of women, but she did hold a slight lead among them, 47-41 percent. --- MONTANA Democrat Jon Tester, the state Senate president, led incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns by 46-43 percent. Tester led three weeks ago by 47-40 percent. Burns remains vulnerable largely because he was tied to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and has been hit by attacks from Tester on his ethics. More Montana voters, 43 percent, had an unfavorable opinion of Burns than a favorable opinion, 42 percent. Iraq dominates Montana's political landscape, ranked the top issue nearly 2-1 over terrorism. Iraq voters favored Tester by more than 2-1. The threat of terrorism remains a strength for Burns. Voters who say terrorism is their top issue favor him by 8-1. Those very worried about a terrorist attack support him by 54-30 percent. Breakout: Montana has a big gender gap. Women support the soft-spoken Tester by 53-34 percent. Men support the gruff-talking Burns by 52-39 percent. --- OHIO Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown led incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine by 48-40 percent. Three weeks ago, Brown led by 45-43 percent. Ohio is the one state in which Iraq isn't the top issue. Voters there rank the economy and jobs as their top concern, reflecting the retrenchment of the U.S. auto industry and its impact on Ohio assembly plants and parts suppliers. It also reflects years of losing manufacturing jobs. Voters who say the economy is their top issue support Brown by 53-35 percent. Iraq is a close second, and Iraq voters support Brown by better than 3-1. Breakout: Brown owes his lead in part to the fact that he's holding his base - drawing 84 percent of Democrats - while tapping into DeWine's by winning 18 percent of Republicans. He also benefits from a gender gap: He leads among women 53-36, while he and DeWine split the male vote. --- PENNSYLVANIA Democrat Bob Casey Jr., the state treasurer, led incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum by 51-39 percent. Casey led by 49-40 percent three weeks ago. Casey, the son of a popular former governor, may have found the right key to this state as a Democrat who opposes legal abortion. He leads by a 4-1 ratio in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, by 5-3 in the closely divided Philadelphia suburbs and by 5-4 in and around Pittsburgh, and manages 38 percent support in culturally conservative central Pennsylvania. Casey holds 90 percent of liberals, but also wins 17 percent of conservatives. He leads among women by 52-35 percent and among men by 50-43 percent. Iraq is the top issue. Terrorism ranks fourth, a top priority for just 11 percent. That's noteworthy given the state's exposure to the 2001 attacks: United Flight 93 crashed there, and Pennsylvania is close to New York and Virginia, the sites of the other attacks that day. Breakout: Santorum isn't popular. In fact, he was the most unpopular candidate in any battleground state, rated unfavorably by 48 percent and favorably by just 33 percent. --- RHODE ISLAND Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse led incumbent Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee by 48-43 percent, a wider margin than his 42-41 percent lead three weeks ago. Rhode Island is poison to Republicans this year, with the lowest approval rating for President Bush (22 percent) and Congress (15 percent) of any battleground state. It also is the most tuned in to the Iraq war, with 36 percent calling it their top issue. A whopping 74 percent of Rhode Island voters want to get troops out of Iraq, and they support Whitehouse. Even Chafee's much-publicized distance from Bush and the war aren't enough to survive in that environment. He trails among Iraq voters, health-care voters and those worried about a terrorist attack. Breakout: Chafee's opposition to Bush gets him some points, but not enough. Chafee gets 36 percent of those who disapprove of Bush, 32 percent of liberals and 21 percent of Democrats. --- TENNESSEE Republican Bob Corker, the former mayor of Chattanooga, led Democrat Rep. Harold Ford Jr. by 45-43 percent. Three weeks ago, Ford led by 43-42 percent. The campaign is for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Bill Frist, who's retiring. Tennessee remains relatively hospitable turf for Republicans. The state gives Bush a 46 percent approval rating, among his highest. Just 34 percent think that House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., should resign because of the House page sex scandal, the lowest among battleground states. Iraq is the top issue, and Iraq voters support Ford by a ratio of better than 3-1. Yet 44 percent approve of Bush's handling of Iraq. And those who support the president's policy on Iraq prefer Corker by 84-7 percent. Race is an undercurrent in Tennessee. Ford would be the first African-American ever elected to the Senate from the South. He leads among African-Americans by 86-4 percent; Corker leads among whites by 53-36 percent. Breakout: Tennessee is a state in which moral and family values rank high, the state's second highest issue. That could be because Ford emphasizes his religion, and Republicans have lambasted him for once attending a Super Bowl party with Playboy playmates. The values vote is going to Corker by a ratio of 12-1. --- VIRGINIA Republican Sen. George Allen led Democrat James Webb by 47-43 percent, regaining a lead he held in early September. Three weeks ago they were tied at 43 percent. Among the states in play this year, Virginia is one of the most hospitable to Republicans. The state's voters give Bush relatively high marks for his handling of the economy, 54 percent, and for fighting terrorism, 57 percent. Yet Iraq is a top issue, and that's not good for Republicans even in the state that's home to the Pentagon and the Atlantic Fleet. Just 43 percent of Virginia voters approve of Bush's handling of the Iraq war. That helps explain why Allen, a staunch defender of the war, recently started criticizing it. Also, Allen trails Webb in the Hampton Roads region, heavily populated with military families and retirees. Webb is a former Navy secretary under President Reagan who opposes the Iraq war. Breakout: Allen regained his footing as interest declined in stories about how he called an Indian-American a "macaca," a racial slur in some cultures, and how he was accused of using racial slurs while a college student. While 30 percent said they thought the college stories were true, 83 percent said they weren't important to their votes. --- Here are snapshots of the Democrat-held Senate seats: --- NEW JERSEY Incumbent Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez led Republican Tom Kean Jr., a state senator, by 45-42 percent. He led by the same margin, 44-41 percent, three weeks ago. The race there is a mudfest, with Menendez facing questions and ethics attacks over a land deal. Voters hold him in low regard, with 34 percent having a favorable opinion of him and the same percentage holding an unfavorable opinion. Kean, the son of a popular former governor, fares only slightly better, with 35 percent holding a favorable opinion and 29 percent unfavorable. Iraq beats terrorism as the top issue, noteworthy in a state that lost people in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Iraq voters break for the Democrat by 8-1. Those who rank terrorism their top issue support Kean by a ratio of 3-1. Yet those who say they're very worried about a terrorist attack split evenly between Kean and Menendez. Breakout: The state that saw its last governor resign because of an affair with a man gives the most support, 50 percent, to the notion that House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., should resign in the wake of the House page scandal. --- WASHINGTON STATE Incumbent Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell led Republican Mike McGavick by 52-37 percent, increasing her lead from 50-40 percent three weeks before. Cantwell had the highest favorable rating - 48 percent - of any candidate in the battleground states. Washington state is hostile to Republicans this year, giving some of the lowest approval ratings to Bush (34 percent) and Congress (22 percent). Iraq is the top issue, followed by the economy and jobs in a distant second place. Terrorism lags behind in seventh place. Iraq voters support Cantwell by a ratio of 8-1. Breakout: Cantwell benefits from a gender gap in one of the three states that have two female senators. (California and Maine are the others.) She leads among men by 48-38 percent and among women by 57-35 percent. --- BREAKOUT: In all the battleground states, those who identify themselves as moderates greatly prefer Democratic Senate candidates to Republicans. In Ohio, for example, self-proclaimed moderates backed the Democrat over the Republican by 59-27 percent. --- HOW WE POLL The McClatchy-MSNBC Poll is a snapshot of voter opinion at the time it was conducted. It is not a prediction of how people will vote on Election Day. The poll of 625 likely voters in each state was conducted by telephone Oct. 17-21. Those interviewed were selected by a random variation of telephone numbers from a cross-section of telephone exchanges. That means anyone in the state with a land-phone line had the same odds of being called as anyone else. Cell phone numbers are not in the exchanges. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points. That means that 95 percent of the time, the correct numbers could be up to 4 percentage points above our poll's percentage point findings or up to 4 percentage points below them. The other 5 percent of the time, the correct numbers could vary even more. The sampling margin of error doesn't include other variables that could affect results, including the way questions are worded or the order in which they're asked. The Mason-Dixon Virginia Poll was conducted for several major state newspapers and made available to McClatchy Newspapers. |
Another FAA Worker Heading For Private Sector
Wed, 25 Oct '06
David Balloff Leaving Agency For Job With Embraer
For the second time this year, a key employee in the Federal Aviation Administration is leaving the agency for bluer skies with an organization tied to the commercial airline industry.
Industry sources told ANN Tuesday David Balloff (right), currently the head of Congressional Relations at the FAA, is leaving to take a position at Brazilian planemaker Embraer. Balloff is set to start in November as Vice President of External Affairs with Embraer, where he'll be responsible for business development in the US and Canada.
He'll be based in Washington, DC. According to sources, Balloff will be replaced at the FAA by Megan Rosia, who currently works for Northwest Airlines government affairs.
As Aero-News reported in March, another FAA employee -- former assistant administrator Sharon Pinkerton -- was named vice president of government affairs for the Air Transport Association, the largest airline lobbying group in the country.
Pinkerton's move from government work, to the private sector, drew fire from many general aviation pilots... as a possible sign of collusion between the FAA and the airlines, at a time when ATA was pushing the FAA to slap user fees on general aviation pilots.
That fight is destined to pick back up as a multi-year package for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding and modernization programs will go before Congress next year. The ATA supports a reauthorization process, to shift from the traditional way the FAA has been funded -- on a per-use basis, with taxes on fuel -- to one based on user fees.
It's unlikely Balloff's move to Embraer will draw as much attention as Pinkerton's shift to the ATA... but it's worth noting the majority of Embraer's business comes from airlines. And then there's Rosia's background with Northwest...
Stay tuned.
OUTLOOK
October 23, 2006
The Showman
By William Powers, National Journal
Let us now praise Tony Snow. That's what the prestige media have been doing, anyway, as largely positive pieces about the White House press secretary have appeared in two leading newspapers over the last few weeks.
I say "largely" positive because both stories did a funny little two-step, attempting to be tough on Snow but winding up in his lap, purring.
The first, by The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, appeared on the front page of that paper's Style section last week under the headline "Tony Snow Knows How to Work More Than One Room; It's Gloves Off (and Pass the Hat) for Bush Spokesman." The essential message was that Snow is awfully good at his job, particularly when it comes to disarming the reporters who cover him:
"Part of Snow's art -- some might deem it spin -- is to openly proclaim what he is doing. Last week, for instance, after consulting with the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Snow doggedly refused to field questions on what President Bush thought of Hastert's handling of the Foley mess. 'I will dodge it, and I will tell you exactly why I'm going to dodge it,' Snow explained. 'Because this is a question that requires knowledge of a lot of details that are not in evidence, certainly not to me, at this point.'"
Of course the admitted-dodge dodge is a very old trick, but never mind. Such moves are working like a charm on the press corps, as the next paragraph made clear:
"In the five months since he succeeded the tightly scripted Scott McClellan, Snow has put his verbal agility and sense of humor to good use, and the White House has clearly given him more running room. Struggling on several fronts, from Iraq to domestic scandals to depressed poll numbers, that have put the Republican control of Congress at risk, the president has never been more in need of a slick salesman. Administration officials describe Snow as a major asset."
The New York Times followed this week with its own Snow study, a front-pager by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. Choking on The Post's fumes, The Times tried to make its piece feel newsy by emphasizing an angle that Kurtz had touched on briefly near the end of his story: Snow's popularity as a fundraiser for the GOP, a historically unprecedented role for a White House press secretary.
Stolberg laid out the objections to such activity, quoting, among others, David Gergen, who worried that if the press secretary "is seen as wearing two hats," the public will wonder if he's partisan. The fundraising question lent the piece a critical veneer. Still, thanks to a vivid lead about Snow performing brilliantly out in rubber-chicken land, the ultimate message of the story was the opposite of critical.
In effect, The Times was crowning this unusually partisan press secretary as the party's new pop idol. "It's like Mick Jagger at a rock concert," Karl Rove was effervescently quoted as saying.
Snow's rise is unquestionably news, and it's useful to know exactly how he tames the many-headed media beast (it's "the megawatt smile," one reporter told Kurtz). But because this was the kind of news that cares more about pure gamesmanship (Snow's riding high!!) than the principles underlying the game (Is he truthful? Is he doing anything to make this closed administration more open?), it wound up having less value than it appeared to have.
Except to Snow and his No. 1 client. For this White House to pull off this kind of coverage, in two not-exceedingly-friendly papers, at this particular moment in time -- war raging, polls down, a tough election weeks away -- is a pretty massive coup. After all, to be seen as dominating the press corps (yet again) is a guaranteed image-burnisher among the rank-and-file Republican voters whose turnout will be so crucial.
Snow's new stardom came up in the White House press briefing the day the Times piece appeared, albeit not in a terribly serious way. A questioner referred to both stories as raves, and Snow didn't miss a beat:
Snow: Stolberg wrote a rave? Thank you. (Laughter.)
Stolberg: It's all in the eye of the beholder. (Laughter.)
He sure keeps 'em laughing. Ha-ha.
ON POLITICS
October 24, 2006
Tough Call
By Charlie Cook, National Journal
Unlike 99.99 percent of the people who watch politics with a passion, political analysts don't care about which side wins, but they do care about correctly predicting the outcome. And that's why this election season has been so maddening: Trying to get a fix on what's going on has been like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall; it just won't stay put.
People expect analysts to have firm opinions about how an election year is going, even when key elements keep shifting. For the past 13 months, except for brief interludes in late spring and early fall, the Republicans' situation has looked increasingly serious.
The general trend, driven by the war in Iraq, scandals, and other issues as diverse as budget deficits, stem-cell research, and Terri Schiavo, was downward from the start. By early August, the number of endangered GOP House seats was getting close to the number that Democrats need to gain the majority. The GOP's grip on the Senate appeared to be weakening as well.
The Republicans' prospects took a decided upturn in September: Falling gasoline prices, the continuing interest in the arrest of terrorist suspects in London, and commemorations of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks effectively shifted the national spotlight back to terrorism, national security, and the fact that gas prices were no longer at a record high -- all of this meant a much more favorable agenda for Republicans.
I wrote at the time that if the public's attention remained on terrorism, national security, and cheaper gas, the GOP would likely hold its House majority and almost certainly hold its Senate majority. This prompted hateful e-mails from Democrats and liberals, who accused me of being a pawn of the White House -- and who obviously hadn't read my columns earlier this year that drew the enmity of conservatives and Republicans.
Toward the end of September, the spotlight shifted again, with 9/11 and terrorism falling off the front pages and off the top of the TV news. The war in Iraq and the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., and his sleazy e-mails to congressional pages began to take center stage, riveting the spotlight on the year's worst constellation of issues for the GOP. This, of course, prompted another round of hostile e-mails to my in-box from conservatives and Republicans.
Even though the election is just over two weeks away, the national spotlight could shift again. At this point, though, campaign-related or domestic political events probably couldn't pull public attention away from the issues that are so hurting the Republicans. It would take a major international or domestic crisis -- something powerful enough to shove Iraq and scandals off the front pages and out of the first 10 minutes of TV news broadcasts.
Democratic voters are champing at the bit to cast their ballots. Republicans, meanwhile, seem depressed and far less interested in this election than they were in the 2002 and 2004 contests, when the GOP beat the point spread by turning out unexpectedly high numbers of voters. Indeed a recent Pew Research/Associated Press survey found that Democrats are even more motivated than Republicans were in 1994, the year they wiped out the Democrats by gaining 52 House seats and eight Senate seats.
No rational person is talking about Democratic gains of that magnitude. The relatively low number of open GOP seats -- and other structural factors -- will hold down the Democrats' pickups. But unless something major happens, we are still looking at big Democratic gains.
As of now, Republicans appear to be headed toward losing at least 20 House seats -- perhaps 30 to 35 or even a few more. The competitive races are there: 45 GOP-held seats are vulnerable and another 18 are potentially so.
In the Senate, the Republicans will most likely lose five or six seats. Six, of course, would give Democrats control of the chamber. It's possible -- though less likely -- that the GOP will lose as few as four or as many as seven Senate seats.
In big-wave elections, analysts tend to underestimate the number of seats that the party in power will lose. And so far, no political analyst has figured out how to accurately predict the size of an electoral wave before it crashes ashore.
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed
PAY AND BENEFITS WATCH
October 26, 2006
Private Pay
By Karen Rutzick
krutzick@govexec.com
It's a classic conviction of some civil servants that they could be living the high-life in the private sector, if it weren't for their dedication to public service.
But two professional associations have taken that fantasy and grounded it in reality, releasing a detailed compensation survey for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area.
A private sector director of public affairs and government relations in the area made an average of $161,800 in base pay a year in 2005, with a range of $97,500 to $209,000. A deputy general counsel -- the second highest legal position in a company -- made an average of $156,100 last year, in a range of $90,000 to $208,700. And a chief technology officer, one notch below a chief information officer, earned an average of $184,900, in a range of $109,000 to $305,000.
The minimum rate of basic pay for a member of the Senior Executive Service in most federal agencies is $109,808, and the maximum is $165,200.
The 400-page document on contractor salaries, published this month by the Human Resource Association and the Professional Services Council, offers statistics on basic pay, raises, ranges and new hire rates for hundreds of job categories. Each one is accompanied by a detailed description, and the groups encourage employees to read them closely in matching up their jobs.
The survey also offers some aggregate statistics of interest. Salaries for executive level jobs for contractors were on average 61.3 percent higher than those for their federal employee counterparts.
"We are able to see salary changes that reflect an expanding contractor workforce at increasingly sophisticated levels to support increasingly sophisticated government customers," said Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for PSC.
In 2005, the average pay raise for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area was 4.5 percent. Those raises included merit increases, general increases, cost-of-living adjustments and market adjustments. In 2005, federal workers got a 3.5 percent raise, but that does not include promotions or step increases.
And, drilling down a level, 59 job categories in the private sector declined in pay while 169 increased.
Forty-one percent of contractors in the study paid a signing bonus to some new employees, to the tune of about $4,500 on average. Employees who received the signing bonus were usually making more than $50,000 to start.
Here's an incentive that doesn't exist in the federal sector: referral bonuses. About 70 percent of the companies in the survey said they give cash to employees who successfully refer someone for a job. The referral bonus range was from about $900 to $2,300.
The survey also included some data on compensation for workers with security clearances. Forty-seven percent of employers said they pay more to employees with a security clearance. Usually, this means a reported 13 percent to 22 percent higher base pay at all security clearance levels.
This is the third year that the HRA's National Capital Area chapter and the PSC have published a compensation survey expressly for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area. The results are available to companies for a few hundred dollars, depending on company size. They can be purchased at www.hra-nca.org.
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed
©2006 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Fighting for The Spoils
Lawmaker and Rainmaker Rahm Emanuel Wants a Nov. 7 Victory For the Democrats So Bad He Can Almost Taste It. If Only He Had Time to Eat.
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 22, 2006; D01
CHICAGO
This must be how Machiavelli ate his corned beef sandwiches.
Sitting in a South Side deli, Rahm Emanuel doesn't so much eat his lunch as overwhelm it with two hands and a hard stare. It's a combat glower familiar to the political opponents, reluctant donors and more than a few allies who have encountered the White House fixer-turned-Democratic
"There's no clean way to do this," Emanuel says, not quite clearly, through a garble of onion roll.
They heap the plates high at Manny's, an old-guard cafeteria popular with cops and pols. But within minutes, the football-size loaf of sliced meat and mustard is gone. Emanuel wipes his hands and picks up the BlackBerry that has been buzzing every 40 seconds or so on the Formica tabletop.
"God, I always eat it too fast," he mutters as he checks an e-mail. What follows is either a soft belch or a pfitz of surprise at some new poll results from Ohio.
Charging toward the biggest election day of his career, Emanuel, the 47-year-old chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, doesn't have much time for niceties.
Or, sometimes, even food. He's lost 14 pounds as the whirl of wheedling donors and lashing candidates to meet their fundraising targets has reached hurricane status in recent weeks. (It had been at least a year since he'd indulged his taste for Manny's corned beef.) He's always been slight, but his collar now gaps a bit at the neck; his cheeks, always lean, are now almost skeletal under the graying runner's buzz cut and the basset-hound eyes. He rubs his jaw (and you notice that he's missing a finger; he lost one to a boyhood infection). He admits he's not sleeping well.
"He's driving himself to exhaustion," says Paul Begala, a friend and political compatriot since they both served on Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign and afterward in the White House. "He's like Lyndon Johnson, who finished almost every campaign in a hospital bed. As someone from Texas, I don't make that comparison lightly, but Rahm just may be our skinny, nine-fingered, Jewish, Chicago version of LBJ."
Whether that's a fair comparison may be clear soon. If, as historians say, Johnson began his conquest of Capitol Hill with the political chits he collected as a young and triumphant chairman of the Senate campaign committee, what does next month promise for Rahm Emanuel? As the member of Congress responsible for recruiting candidates for House races, raising money and vetting strategy for dozens of districts, he's received raves from campaign connoisseurs in Washington for running a taut committee. Notably, he's nearly closed the perennial cash-on-hand gap between his team -- with $36 million in the bank at the end of September -- and its GOP counterpart. He's fielded credible candidates in districts no one had expected to be in play a year ago. And he's generally been flogging the party like a never-satisfied CEO.
"He has been an amazing success any way you look at it," says congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "I think it's the best operation of any chairman of either party in several years."
If Democrats do take the House -- they need to gain 15 seats to do so -- Emanuel, in only his second term in Congress, stands to claim considerable credit for ending a 12-year electoral drought. That's the kind of triumph Johnson rode to the top of the Senate.
But if they don't . . .
"If they don't win, it will be seen as a colossal failure," says Mann. "Rahm will be devastated."
Expectations Are High
In fact, Emanuel may have already fumbled the game of expectations -- they are wickedly high. With President Bush's approval ratings lodged at car-salesman levels, scandals going off like cluster bombs within the Republican caucus, and a general throw-the-bums-out restiveness in the land, even a near-miss by House Democrats will be seen as the greatest electoral choke since Dewey Didn't Defeat Truman after all. Commentators from George F. Will to James Carville have already laid down rhetorical markers: An opposition party unable to capture the House in this environment should find a purpose other than electoral politics. Selling Herbalife, maybe.
And Emanuel knows that some Democrats would find time during their grief for a small smile at his expense. Such is the "Rahmbo" style that his sizzling passage through the campaign has left scorch marks on some colleagues. Among the singed: Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, with whom Emanuel has tangled over spending priorities; several liberal would-be candidates who say they were steamrollered by Emanuel in favor of more centrist challengers; and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who went to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi this year with complaints about Emanuel's abrasive style and his increasing demands for them to raise money for the DCCC.
"Well, I never said Rahm was a diplomat who spends a lot of time schmoozing," says Pelosi, who picked Emanuel last year to run the campaign. She tapped him over more senior lawmakers, she says, because she knew he'd be "coldblooded enough" to push the party relentlessly. And to those who came to have their feathers unruffled, she says she made it clear that Emanuel has her full support. "I said to them: 'We're here to win this election. What is this conversation about?' I don't think we can be better served than by having Rahm at the DCCC."
"He's abrupt with me all the time," she adds with a laugh. "I call him the Field Marshal."
A Man for Changing Times
But to some observers of Chicago politics, Emanuel is less field marshal than Marshall Field (recalling the upscale department store that catered to the city's affluent classes). Emanuel was born in Chicago in 1959, the son of a doctor, and grew up in the decidedly non-working-class northern suburb of Wilmette. He's a graduate of the tony New Trier High School and a onetime ballet prodigy who was offered a scholarship with the Joffrey. A triathlete with a degree from Sarah Lawrence College, a master's in communications from Northwestern and a love of taking his children to modern dance concerts, Emanuel doesn't easily fit the stogie-gnawing stereotype of the old Chicago pol.
Nor did he serve the usual ward apprenticeships in the vaunted Democratic machine. Rather, after working as a fundraiser in various campaigns, Emanuel came fully of age politically with Clinton in Washington. He had never sought elected office before running for the House of Representatives in 2002. In particular, Emanuel knew he would be an odd successor for the working-class Polish and Catholic precincts of District 5, which stretches from the lakefront to the Cook County line. "The previous congressmen from my district were named Rostenkowski, Annunzio and Blagojevich," he says. "Then along comes Rahm Israel Emanuel? C'mon, how does that fit?"
But this is a changing Chicago. In front of Manny's, a police Segway is chained to a street sign as the officer eats his pastrami inside. The warehouse across the street is being converted into a Best Buy. And politics, too, has gotten a makeover.
"Rahm is part of the young breed that people call the new Chicago machine," says Don Rose, a longtime liberal activist who worked for Mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington. "They're not 'dem' and 'dose' politicians. They know the difference between red wine and white wine. They're not driven by ideology, and they play to win."
They all play to win, those Emanuel boys. Rahm is the middle son of three. His big brother, Ezekiel, is a Harvard oncologist and bioethicist. Younger brother Ari is a high-flying agent in Los Angeles. He made news recently as the only major agent to publicly call for an industrywide shunning of Mel Gibson following the actor's drunken, anti-Semitic tirade. Their baby sister, Shoshana, is a student.
Yes, the folks are mighty proud, Rahm says. How many mothers have two children who have partly inspired TV characters (Josh Lyman on "The West Wing" for Rahm, Ari Gold on "Entourage" for Ari)?
"People ask me what my mother put in the soup," says Ari, who talks with Rahm two or three times a day. "I wish I knew. I have three boys of my own."
Their father is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who came to the United States after working for the pre-independence Israeli underground. In Chicago, he met Emanuel's mother, an X-ray technician and daughter of a local union organizer who ended up in more than one paddy wagon as a protester in the 1960s. "Politics and the civil rights movement were very much a part of our family life," says Ezekiel. "We went on Martin Luther King's march on Cicero with my mom."
When Rahm was 17, he cut his finger on a meat slicer at Arby's, where he worked a summer job. It became infected, the infection spread to the bone, and a cut grew into a potentially life-threatening condition. Doctors eventually amputated the finger, and Emanuel spent eight weeks in the hospital. He says the experience made him more focused for college and beyond.
"He blames me for ending up at Sarah Lawrence," says Ezekiel, who thought a small Eastern college would suit his brother better than a big school. "But he loved it. He loved being around all those women."
The young Rahm wasn't particularly political. That passion emerged during college when he starting working with the advocacy group Common Cause. Later, he landed on a few campaigns, including Paul Simon's successful first Senate race in 1984. Almost immediately Emanuel proved a peerless fundraiser. Richard M. Daley hired him to dial up dollars for his successful mayoral run in 1989. Two years later, Emanuel got a job in the soon-to-be-legendary "War Room" of Clinton's upstart presidential campaign in Little Rock.
"With the exception of the candidate and his wife, Rahm may have been the only indispensable person in that campaign," says Begala, who credits Emanuel with keeping the money flowing during the Gennifer Flowers unpleasantness. "He was a force of nature."
He stayed with Clinton through most of two terms. Early on, though, his hard-charging style riled as many allies -- in both the White House and the Capitol -- as opponents. In 1993, he was fired as political director, reportedly at the urging of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he stayed on as a senior adviser to redeem himself, with both Clintons, by successfully spearheading some of their diciest legislative ambitions, including NAFTA and the assault weapons ban.
Those initiatives passed, and along the way Emanuel's wonkier self bloomed like a thousand white papers. He talks fluidly about 401(k) regulations and dependent health coverage and universal college tuition. With fellow Clinton alum Bruce Reed, he recently wrote a book, "The Plan," an election-year wish list of New Democrat policy proposals.
"He's a great strategist, but I actually think he cares more about the policy side of it," says Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is close to Emanuel and is campaigning with him for several DCCC candidates in the final weeks. "He likes to talk tough, but deep under that crusty exterior is someone who believes that government can make a difference in people's lives."
But Emanuel's devotion to, say, tax reform may never overtake his rep for grenade-launcher etiquette. His spat with Howard Dean, for example, went publicly profane.
"Rahm and I have certainly had our disagreements," Dean says by e-mail. "But the bottom line is we both want to win."
Even within the White House, few were safe from his instinct for showstopping vulgarity. He once marched up to the newly elected Tony Blair in the Oval Office, where he and Clinton were preparing to go out for their first joint appearance. "This is important," Emanuel said to the British prime minister. "Don't [foul] it up."
"Blair looked pretty shocked before he started laughing," says Begala, who was there. "They are a little more formal in Britain than they are in Chicago."
Back in the Game
Toward the end of Clinton's second term, Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, a Wharton MBA, and the first of their three children moved back to Chicago with the express purpose of making some serious money. In 1999, without any previous experience, Emanuel joined the investment bank of Democratic donor Bruce Wasserstein. Within two years, thanks in part to the bank's being sold, Emanuel had made about $18 million, enough to get back into the game without worrying about his family's finances.
"Rahm was always going to go back into politics," says Ezekiel. "That was the whole point of going into investment banking, to earn a nest egg."
It was Da Mayor himself who first suggested that Emanuel run for the open North Side congressional seat in 2002.
"I told him he was crazy," Emanuel says. "But then I did a poll, and it actually looked like I had a shot."
With the Daley cogs turning on his behalf, Emanuel edged out a Polish American state legislator in the primary and went on to win the general election. It's a safe seat now -- he's not even running ads this year -- but he speaks with pride of the street-level fight he waged the first time.
"I walked a hundred precincts during that campaign," he says. "I stood in front of every grocery in my district seven times."
Emanuel keeps in regular contact with his City Hall patron. And some say he has brought LaSalle Street sensibilities to his House job, particularly those who have been on the wrong side of his DCCC machine. He hasn't hesitated to muscle aside liberal candidates in favor of ones he thought could go toe-to-toe with Republicans on security and social issues. He recruited several Iraq war veterans and found sheriffs to run in both Washington state and Indiana. He persuaded Heath Shuler, a former Redskins quarterback and an antiabortion Democrat, to run in North Carolina. (Shuler has said Emanuel's five-calls-a-day pushiness was worse than any college recruiter's.)
In one move that Rose calls a "classic Chicago power play," Emanuel pushed Tammy Duckworth, a political newcomer who lost both legs as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, to run in the congressional district of retiring Illinois Republican Henry Hyde. That didn't sit well with supporters of Christine Cegelis, a technology consultant who had scored a surprise 44 percent against Hyde in 2002. Her supporters say the DCCC effectively starved the antiwar Cegelis of money and support in favor of Duckworth, who calls the war "a mistake" but calls for more aggressive training of Iraqi forces before pulling out U.S. troops.
"There was a lot of frustration on the ground, trying to figure why the national Democratic Party was trying to squash a strong local movement like this," says Kevin Spidel, a founder of Progressive Democrats of America who managed the Cegelis campaign. "It generated a lot of volunteers for us. We were outspent 4 to 1 and came close to beating Rahm Emanuel and his Washington machine."
Out of the Wilderness
Asked if he ever has regrets about his hardball habits, Emanuel stares into his glass of tea for a long moment.
"Look, you're never as tough as they say you are," he says finally.
But the self-reflection lasts only as long as it takes for him to remember the tactics of the other side.
"They call Tammy Duckworth a cut-and-runner when she left two legs in Iraq?" he shouts, jabbing a finger in the air, drawing stares from around the deli. "How dare they! I'm going to give them the medicine that they've been giving out. That's what shocks them."
If Duckworth wins, along with enough of Emanuel's other candidates to deliver the House into Democratic hands, it's easy to predict that all the hard feelings within the party will be quickly swept away by the shouts of hallelujah. And Rahm Emanuel, with a month to go before his 48th birthday and less than five years of seniority on the Hill, will be basking in acclaim for helping to lead his long-suffering party from the backbencher wilderness to the Promised Land of majority.
Just what is the proper reward for an electoral Moses? Plum committee assignments? (He already has a coveted seat on the Ways and Means Committee.) A leadership post? Leapfrogging to a chairmanship?
"How about the great honor of serving as the chairman of the DCCC?" says Pelosi. "Honestly, we've never even had a conversation about that."
Emanuel refuses to muse, publicly at least, on how a good Nov. 7 could boost his career. Or whether that career is likely to be on Capitol Hill, in Springfield or up at City Hall. For now, he's consumed only with the race.
"I don't even want to talk about that," he says, tapping his BlackBerry on Manny's Formica. "Call me on November 8th. We'll talk about it then." WASHINGTON OUTLOOK / RONALD BROWNSTEIN
A possibly fatal flaw in GOP formula for success
Ronald Brownstein
Washington Outlook
October 22, 2006
The great risk in President Bush's political strategy has always been that it leaves him very little margin for error.
From the outset of his presidency, Bush has accepted division as the price of mobilization.
With a few exceptions, such as education and immigration policy, he has targeted his central initiatives — tax cuts, judicial appointments, the unilateral projection of U.S. power abroad — primarily at the priorities of conservatives while conceding little to interests outside his coalition.
In Congress and across the country, that ideologically polarizing agenda has helped Bush unify and excite Republicans. But it has come at the cost of antagonizing Democrats and straining his relations with independent voters.
This strategy has rested on the calculation that if Bush generates enough turnout on election day from Republicans and conservative-leaning independents, he can survive unease among moderate independents and intense opposition from Democrats.
On balance, that equation worked for Bush in his first term. Bolstered by his post-9/11 glow, Bush inspired an enormous Republican turnout that spurred GOP congressional gains in 2002. In 2004, another Republican surge powered gains in Congress and Bush's reelection over Democrat John F. Kerry. For Karl Rove and other top GOP strategists, those victories were evidence that Bush was building a narrow but stable electoral majority.
But even amid success, the limitations of the strategy were evident. Although Bush inspired passionate commitment from his supporters, he did not generate anywhere near the breadth of support that other two-term presidents, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan, achieved at their apogee.
Bush's margin of victory over Kerry, measured as a share of the popular vote, was the smallest ever for a reelected president. Even in the usual post-election honeymoon period, Bush's approval rating never exceeded 55% in Gallup surveys, below the high point for every other reelected president since World War II. Bush's support fell back beneath 50% even before his second inauguration.
All of this meant that even on Bush's best days, nearly half the country opposed him and his direction. That didn't leave him with much of a cushion for bad days, which have come in bunches during his second term.
A combination of missteps (the faltering federal response to Hurricane Katrina) and miscalculations (the Terri Schiavo case, the crash of the Social Security restructuring plan) topped by the relentless, grinding violence and disorder in Iraq, have kept Bush on the defensive almost constantly since early 2005.
Because Bush started with backing from only about half the country, these reversals have lowered him, and his party, to dangerous depths. His approval rating since mid-2005 has rarely reached 45%, and he is now limping into the midterm election with support in most surveys below 40%.
That discontent over Bush's performance and decisions, especially concerning Iraq, is the largest factor threatening the GOP hold on the House and Senate.
One measure of Bush's impact on the election comes from the Majority Watch project conducted by the polling firms RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics. Since the summer, the project has conducted nearly 75,000 automated phone surveys in congressional districts around the country. And it has found a close correlation between attitudes about Bush and preferences in November.
Tom Riehle, a partner at RT Strategies, recently cumulated the results of the project's interviews. He found that 80% of voters who approve of Bush's performance say they intend to vote Republican for Congress next month. But 77% of those who disapprove intend to vote Democratic.
That result partly reflects the intense partisanship of our time. But even among independents, attitudes toward Bush are a clear dividing line. Fully 71% of independents who approve of him say they will vote Republican. But 73% of independents who disapprove are voting Democratic.
The obvious danger for Republicans is that far more voters in the surveys disapprove (53%) than approve of Bush's performance (39%). Among independents, those who disapprove outnumber supporters by 2 to 1.
Bush's decline is exposing Republican candidates to different risks in different places. In Democratic-leaning states, Republicans who have survived as moderates are facing more resistance from center-left voters reluctant to help Bush advance his agenda by providing the GOP another vote in Congress.
"He's a really good and decent man, but he empowers the Bush administration," Anne Crofts of Providence said at a recent local Democratic rally to explain why she would vote against moderate Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.).
In states that are more conservative, Republicans confront two risks. The lesser threat is that Bush's assorted second-term disputes with conservative leaders and the congressional sex scandal may somewhat depress turnout by the GOP base. The bigger danger is a powerful desire for change even among many voters who philosophically tilt more toward Republicans than Democrats. Voters "are overlooking a lot of things about the Democrats that would normally bother them because they want change," said one senior GOP strategist.
Bush is once again stressing sharp-edged ideological differences with Democrats on taxes and national security; maybe that will rally enough conservatives to the polls to avoid a deluge on Nov. 7. But if a deluge comes, more of the Republicans looking to succeed Bush in 2008 may ask whether a political strategy that provokes so much opposition, even on its strongest days, can be sustained. They may also question whether the White House vision of a narrow but stable electoral majority is a contradiction in terms.
ronald.brownstein@latimes.comThree states could swing Senate control
In Tennessee and two other closely contested races, candidates court disaffected GOP voters.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
October 22, 2006
In his paint-splattered sweatshirt and battered baseball cap, Chris Foust stopped by on his lunch break last week to listen to Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., the Democratic Senate nominee, at a downtown rally.
Foust, a soft-spoken regular churchgoer who worries about illegal immigration and opposes gay marriage, usually votes Republican and backed President Bush in 2004. But he's grown disillusioned with Bush, especially over the Iraq war. And after Ford finished his energetic speech at the noon rally, Foust decided to support him in next month's election.
"He seems like he's an honest guy," said Foust, who works for a commercial painting company. "He seems like he has a genuine concern for people."
Disenchanted, usually Republican-leaning voters like Foust may decide not only the tight Tennessee contest between Ford and Republican Bob Corker, but the battle for control of the Senate as well.
Two weeks before election day, odds are increasing that the Senate could turn on the results of close contests in Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri, three states along the border between the solidly Republican Deep South and Democratic terrain in the Northeast and industrial Midwest.
Each of these states presents a distinct political puzzle. But Democrats face the common challenge of attracting right-of-center voters like Foust who helped Bush carry all three states two years ago but have soured on the nation's direction since.
"No one is going to say these aren't tough states," said Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz, who is advising Ford in Tennessee and Democratic Senate nominee Jim Webb in Virginia. "But voters are very hungry for change."
Still, finding enough disenchanted voters remains difficult for Democrats in the three states, largely because of enduring Republican strength in socially conservative small-town and rural communities. If Democrats fall short in their bid to recapture the Senate, these three states may be their Heartbreak Hill.
Trends across the Senate battlefield are moving the three states into their potentially pivotal role. Recent polls show Democrats consistently leading incumbent Republican senators in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Montana, and maintaining a more marginal edge in Rhode Island. In New Jersey, where Republicans have their best opportunity to capture a Democratic-held seat, most recent surveys show Sen. Robert Menendez reestablishing a narrow lead over his Republican challenger.
But even if all those states break for the Democrats, the party still would capture the Senate only if it won two of the three Republican seats in Tennessee, Missouri and Virginia. In a measure of the Democratic challenge, Republicans now hold all six of the three states' Senate seats.
This year, in Virginia, public polls generally show Republican Sen. George Allen narrowly leading Webb, who was Navy secretary under President Reagan; in Missouri, Republican Sen. Jim Talent and Democratic state Auditor Claire McCaskill trading the lead; and here, Ford, who represents a district in Memphis, edging Corker, the mayor of Chattanooga, for the seat of retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
Of the three contests, Tennessee may combine the most fascinating ingredients. Ford is running against not only the recent history of Republican ascendancy across the South but the weight of history with a capital H: He is seeking to become the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction.
Ford, who has served since age 26 in the House seat once held by his father, Harold E. Ford Sr., is also challenging liberal orthodoxy on more issues than probably any other major Democratic contender this year.
He embraces several familiar Democratic priorities, including raising the minimum wage and allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices. But he supports constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and flag burning and to require a balanced budget, and says he would have voted against the bipartisan Senate immigration bill because he opposes any form of legalization for illegal immigrants.
And though he is bitingly critical of Bush's management of the Iraq war, Ford opposes any effort to legislate a timetable for withdrawing American troops. Instead, he urges the U.S. to push Iraqi leaders to divide the country into semi-autonomous Shiite, Sunni and Kurd regions.
More striking is Ford's unabashed emphasis on his religious faith. In his speeches, he quotes Scripture as frequently as other candidates quote government reports.
Last week he delivered remarks that sounded more like a sermon than a political speech before 700 people who overflowed a downtown Knoxville hotel ballroom for an interdenominational prayer breakfast, one in a series of such events he's hosting. He has even filmed a television ad in which he testifies to his religious conviction from inside a church.
Just 36 and imperially slim, Ford is a charismatic presence who attracts large, integrated crowds that cluster around him for photographs after his speeches.
He maintains punishing hours on the campaign trail, but it is still tempting to view Corker as the tortoise to Ford's hare.
Corker, slight and 54, doesn't turn heads when he enters a room or attract such large audiences. But he projects an approachable competence and sincerity. "He seems a little more like a hometown kind of guy," said Aubrey Powers, a social worker, after attending a Corker appearance in Maryville, Tenn.
After shaking up his campaign staff this month, Corker is intensifying his effort to present himself as a bipartisan problem-solver.
But Corker also needs to consolidate the Republican base after defeating two more-conservative opponents in a bitter GOP primary this summer, and must stamp Ford as too liberal for the state.
The social issues that typically help Republicans in that effort have not cut as sharply for Corker. Though he now supports a ban on abortion, he did not earlier in his career; whereas the National Right to Life Committee has endorsed him, the Tennessee affiliate has not.
And though the National Rifle Assn., a potent political force here, has endorsed Corker and plans to tout him to its members, the group will not criticize Ford, who received a B grade from the organization, said Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's public affairs director. That could amount to a major bullet-dodge for Ford.
In his ads and stump speeches, Corker stresses his Tennessee roots and his business experience. Meanwhile, his campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have barraged Ford with personal attacks, portraying him as a slick career politician, condemning the "Ford Political Machine" and spotlighting his connections to Washington, where he spent most of his youth while his father served in Congress.
The attacks have reached a point where even Corker, in a rare move, on Friday publicly urged the Republican National Committee to withdraw a new ad that features a blond white woman — presumably an actress — cooing into the camera that she met Ford at a party sponsored by Playboy magazine.
Race is the great wild card in the contest. In Washington, many analysts believe Ford will draw fewer votes than polls suggest because of voters' unspoken reluctance to back an African American. In Tennessee, that assumption isn't as widely shared.
"I don't think his race is going to be a factor," Frank Griffith, a lifelong Republican, said after a Corker rally in the small southeast Tennessee town of Madisonville. "I've lived here my whole life and I see the same people supporting the Democratic candidate with bumper stickers just like any other candidate."
Griffith, a retired teacher, said Ford's greatest problem would be convincing conservatives in his rural community that he was not too liberal.
The same might be said for Jim Webb in Virginia and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. In the end, the challenges facing Ford revolve less around the issues unique to him because of his race than those he shares with the Democratic nominees in each of the three states that could determine which party controls the Senate next year.
ronald.brownstein @latimes.com
FAA hears it over air traffic
By JAMES NASH
NEW CANAAN — The chief elected officials gathered at New Canaan Town Hall Tuesday afternoon mostly shared the same complaint: they'd received little or no notice regarding public hearings on a proposed Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] plan that would increase air traffic above their Fairfield County towns.
Although four alternatives were developed for a Draft Environmental Impact Study [DEIS], the FAA's favored proposal to "redesign the airspace" in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia metropolitan area would impact air traffic at La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark, Teterboro, Philadelphia International and satellite airports including and Westchester County and Sikorsky Memorial and increase air traffic over Connecticut.
FAA Airspace Redesign Manager Steve Kelley told town leaders from Wilton, Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Ridgefield and Redding the airspace redesign was necessary to reduce delays and increase efficiencies.
To accomplish that end, the proposal changes airport flight patterns. "What it has created is a shifting of those aircraft to the east," Kelly said.
Under the plan, Kelly said aircraft would "probably enter Fairfield County at 10,000 feet and exit at 5,000 feet," noting the Fairfield County crossing altitude would be 8,000 feet.
Kelley said the FAA has forecast growth at many airports, except LaGuardia, which has reached maximum capacity.
Congressmen Chris Shays [R-5th] and John Mica [R-Fl.], Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, arranged the hearing. "They're trying to bring in more planes and that troubles me," Shays said.
According to the DEIS using 2006 and 2011 study years, the proposed Integrated Airspace with Integrated Control Complex alternative "provides the most substantial benefit of any of the designs. It is a wholesale restructuring of arrival and departure routes."
The FAA's favored proposal is intended to increase efficiencies through additional use of available runways and departure headings to accommodate increased traffic.
The FAA claims airspace delays will be virtually eliminated under the plan, and although flying distances will be increased for many flights, delay reductions will create a net benefit to traffic. Kelley said only Philadelphia International will increase runway space.
Fairfield County falls below the established 65 Day/Night Average Sound Level or DNL, which is the threshold above which aircraft noise is considered to be incompatible with residential areas.
According to the FAA, a slight to moderate impact occurs with a 5 DNL minimum increase resulting in noise exposure between 45 and 50 DNL.
Kelly said most of the noise impacts would occur around Newark, northern New Jersey and Philadelphia. In New York City, Rikers Island, which Kelley said has a transient population, would be impacted.
But town leaders attending the meeting criticized the FAA for not notifying them beforehand of public hearings held earlier this year and they expressed skepticism that increased aircraft traffic over their towns would not have significant noise impacts.
New Canaan First Selectman Judy Neville said the 20,000 residents in her town would likely find significant impacts with increased air traffic.
"Where is the communication? Where is the transparency in government," Neville asked Kelley regarding notification of the public hearing period that ended in April.
Wilton First Selectman William Brennan also complained about the notification process. "I think a better job could have been done in working with the towns," he said, noting 20 people attended public hearings in Connecticut.
Brennan also criticized the FAA's graphic presentation saying maps projected on a screen lacked vital information. "You could have identified state lines and towns more completely," he said.
Brennan noted maps showing colorized flight traffic increases appeared to "camouflage that information."
Kelley said notifications were sent by e-mail, 30 public hearings were held - one in Stamford on February 8 and one in Danbury on April 11. "We thought we were being very transparent with the notifications," Kelley said. "In certain instances we failed."
Kelley said the current airspace design was implemented in the 1980s.
The FAA first began the airspace redesign in 1998 with staffing. According to the FAA, 1,174 people attended 31 workshops between September 1999 and February 3, 2000 and 712 comments were received.
Another 28 public meetings were held throughout the study area during a "scoping process" conducted from January to June 2001. The latest public hearing and comment periods closed in April and June.
Kelley said the FAA will review comments and information in the New Year and attempt to mitigate noise impacts where possible. A public hearing will be held in every impacted state and a decision on the airspace redesign will be made by next April or May. The plan would be implemented sometime between 2007 and 2011, Kelley said.
Mica said Congress funds FAA programs and, "We intend to maintain our legislative prerogatives."
Aircraft can have differing noise impacts flying over different parts of a city, town or community and people have different perceptions of noise, Kelley said.
The FAA has established a web site for finding DNL projections for particular locations. For information, go to www.FAA.gov/nynjphl_airspace
Click on the U.S. Census Bureau link to locate census track and census block numbers. DNL numbers for 2006 and 2011 are listed in the noise exposure tables alongside the census numbers.
Entering the Era of Smart Card ID
By Stephen Barr
Thursday, October 26, 2006; D01
The government begins issuing a new identification card tomorrow, the kickoff of a multiyear effort to provide all government workers and many contractors with a "smart card" that can be used to verify their identity when they enter a building or log onto computer networks.
In addition to showing a person's name and agency, an electronic chip in the card will contain personal data, such as images from two fingerprints, a special identification number and digital certificates that permit access to places and systems.
President Bush issued a homeland security directive in 2004 requiring that agencies issue the cards and install software that will allow them to be recognized across the government. The goal is to have government employees carry one ID card, replacing the multiple cards many employees must use to get into offices or obtain sensitive information.
Issuing the cards and upgrading equipment to read them will probably take three to five years, said Karen Evans , the administrator for electronic government and technology at the Office of Management and Budget. The ambitious effort, she said, will improve national security and ensure "that we give access to who we should."
Groups concerned about privacy rights and database security are watching the Bush administration's card project, in part because it may provide lessons for ongoing debates on whether Americans should carry a national identification card.
Evans said personal data on government employees and contractors would not be compiled in one vast database. However, it seems likely that some large records-keeping systems will be created or expanded with the advent of the new card.
There is no tally of how many smart cards will be handed out across the government, but they will number in the millions. The Defense Department, for example, has 3.2 million "common access cards" in circulation and will replace them as they expire -- a five-year project that includes deployment of new software.
There's also no estimate of how many federal employees will be issued the new smart card tomorrow.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget hope to see the cards roll out tomorrow in cities with large numbers of federal employees, such as Washington, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle and New York. OMB has asked agencies to send in a photocopy of a card they have issued, with appropriate privacy redactions, so that the White House knows they have put a smart-card program in place.
The General Services Administration and the Interior Department are issuing the smart cards on behalf of numerous agencies and departments. Some, such as Defense and the Social Security Administration, will run their own card programs.
The Social Security Administration said it issued a smart card to Jo Anne Barnhart , the agency's commissioner, last week, and plans to issue about 100,000 of the cards over the next two years.
The Defense Department issues about 10,000 ID cards every day. Matt Boehmer , director of the joint advertising market research and studies program at the Defense Human Resources Agency, has volunteered to take on the ceremonial role of first Defense recipient of the next-generation ID card, said Lynne Prince , acting director for the department's access card office.
Bush called for "secure and reliable forms of identification" to be developed for government workers as part of the administration's efforts to stop terrorists, criminals and unauthorized persons from getting into federal buildings and hacking into computer systems.
Employees receiving the smart card undergo a credit and criminal background check.
The process set up by the GSA, which is providing card services to 38 federal agencies and departments, takes a person's fingerprints, checks them against FBI records and enters them into a database, along with a photograph and other personal data.
The GSA had enrolled more than 70 people as of yesterday, an official said.
"We have assured our clients that one person from every participating agency will receive a credential on Friday. We probably will be issuing more than one, but that is our minimum target," said Michel Kareis , the GSA program manager.
Kareis said the GSA smart-card database will cover at least 400,000 people, and probably more because information on how many contractors will need the card is incomplete.
The GSA cards will cost the agencies $110 for each initial issuance and $52 annually for card and database maintenance. If more than 500,000 cards are issued, the GSA will be able to take advantage of the volume and lower prices, Kareis said.
She said the GSA plans to set up about 200 enrollment stations throughout the nation, starting next year, to get the new ID cards out to federal employees.
Diary associate Eric Yoder contributed to this report. Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.
The Year Of Playing Dirtier
Negative Ads Get Positively Surreal
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 27, 2006; A01
Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!
Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face.
It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow convicted child molesters to enter this country."
To Nelson, that doesn't even qualify as negative campaigning.
"Negative campaigning is vicious personal attacks," he said in an interview. "This isn't personal at all."
By 2006 standards, maybe it isn't.
On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.
At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.
"When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive to go to the extremes."
The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit. A few examples of the "character issues" taking center stage two weeks before Election Day:
· In New York, the NRCC ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. "Hi, sexy," a dancing woman purrs. "You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line." It turns out that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.
· In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell, trailing by more than 20 points in polls, has accused front-running Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland of protecting a former aide who was convicted in 1994 on a misdemeanor indecency charge. Blackwell's campaign is also warning voters through suggestive "push polls" that Strickland failed to support a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. Strickland, a psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot have healthy relationships when they grow up.
· The Republican Party of Wisconsin distributed a mailing linking Democratic House candidate Steve Kagen to a convicted serial killer and child rapist. The supposed connection: The "bloodthirsty" attorney for the killer had also done legal work for Kagen.
· In two dozen congressional districts, a political action committee supported by a white Indianapolis businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, is running ads saying Democrats want to abort black babies. A voice says, "If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout de suite, no questions asked."
· In the most controversial recent ad, the Republican National Committee slammed Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) for attending a Playboy-sponsored Super Bowl party. In the ad, a scantily clad white actress winks as she reminisces about good times with Ford, who is black. That ad has been pulled, but the RNC has a new one saying Ford "wants to give the abortion pill to schoolchildren."
Some Democrats are playing rough, too. House candidate Chris Carney is running ads slamming the "family values" of Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), whose former mistress accused him of choking her. And House candidate Kirsten Gillibrand has an ad online ridiculing Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) for attending a late-night fraternity party. "What's a 50-year-old man doing at a frat party anyway?" one young woman asks, as a faux Sweeney boogies behind her to the Beastie Boys. "Totally creeping me out!" another responds.
But most harsh Democratic attacks have focused on the policies and performance of the GOP majority, trying to link Republicans to Bush, the unpopular war in Iraq and the scandals involving former representative Mark Foley and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. That is not surprising, given that polls show two-thirds of the electorate thinks the country is going in the wrong direction. And studies show that negative ads can reduce turnout; Democrats hope a constant drumbeat of scandal, Iraq and "stay the course" will persuade conservatives to stay home on Nov. 7.
It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout and fire up their conservative base. One GOP strategy has been raising the specter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, becoming speaker; for example, Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.) is airing radio ads warning that a Democratic victory would allow Pelosi to "put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda." Then again, Hostettler's opponent, Democrat Brad Ellsworth, has accused him of promoting the sale of guns to criminals, "including child-rapists."
Some of this year's negative ads are more substantive, reprising a successful Republican strategy from 2002 and 2004: portraying Democrats as soft on terrorism. For example, Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) has an ad lambasting her opponent for opposing Bush's efforts to conduct wiretaps without search warrants. A host of Democrats have been accused of trying to "cut and run" in Iraq -- including House candidate Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost both legs in Iraq.
The RNC has raised eyebrows with an ad consisting almost entirely of al-Qaeda videos starring Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. There is no sound except the ticking of a bomb before the final warning: "These are the stakes. Vote November 7th." John G. Geer, a Vanderbilt professor who has written a book defending negative political ads, said he told a well-connected Republican friend in Washington that the ticking-bomb ploy seemed like a desperation move. The friend e-mailed back: "John, we're desperate!"
"Look, the electorate is polarized, the stakes are large, and neither party has much to run on right now," Geer said. "You can expect to see some pretty outlandish ads."
The "pays for sex" ad against Kind in Wisconsin -- along with a similar one aired against Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) -- may be the most extreme. It says Kind spent tax dollars to study "the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes" and "the masturbation habits of old men" and "to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia." Cue the punch line: "Ron Kind pays for sex, but not for soldiers." The Wisconsin Republican Party denounced the ad, and several TV stations refused to air it, but that only got it more attention. It is the centerpiece of Nelson's Web site: "This ad is so powerful, a sitting U.S. Congressman threatened TV stations with legal action if they dared to play it."
Kind joked in an interview that he has been paying for sex ever since he said "I do." But on a more serious note, he said Nelson's attack ad is typical of modern politics, in which desperate candidates can attract media coverage and rally their base with distortion. He opposed the amendment in question -- as did many Republicans -- because he does not think Congress should interfere in peer-reviewed NIH studies, not because of any interest in teenage genitalia. That particular study, incidentally, had nothing to do with teenagers.
"Man, it's a crazy system, and it's getting worse every year," Kind said. "We rip each other to shreds, and then we're all supposed to come back to Washington and try to work together. It's a hell of a way to elect representatives."
At least it is clear who is responsible for Nelson's ad: Nelson. The Playboy ad bashing Ford, on the other hand, is a typical product of the attack politics of 2006. Its beneficiary, GOP Senate candidate Bob Corker, called it "tacky" but said he cannot do anything about an RNC ad. Even RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said he is powerless to stop it; it is an "independent expenditure" of the RNC, out of the committee's control. He doesn't seem too upset about it, though. Corker has been rising in the polls since it started airing.
Experts say that in the past, negative ads were usually more accurate, better documented and more informative than positive ads; there was a higher burden of proof. Stanford's Iyengar thinks that is still true for candidate-funded messages, which now require candidates to say they approved them. But it is not true when the messages are produced by political parties, shadowy independent groups or partisans posting on YouTube.
"You're going to see more of this sensational, off-the-wall stuff," Iyengar said. "If you get people disgusted, they might withdraw from politics, and that's the real goal these days."
Fla. Lawmaker Faces Racial-Slur Inquiry
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 27, 2006; A03
MIAMI -- For months, state Rep. Rafael Arza has ducked accusations that he repeatedly used a racial slur. But last Saturday night, according to authorities, he was caught using the derogatory term for a black person on another legislator's voice mail, and what has been a long-running sideshow here has come to a political climax.
In a rare move, House Democrats vowed this week to walk out unless the prominent Republican legislator resigns or is expelled.
House Republicans, meanwhile, have put an inquiry into Arza's phone messages on the fast track, but it is not known whether there will be enough votes in the GOP-controlled legislature to expel him. Police and state law enforcement officers are also investigating the calls because the recipient of the messages, a fellow House Republican, was allegedly threatened with physical harm.
"We want Mr. Arza to know that there is no road to redemption that leads through the Florida House," said Dan Gelber, the designated House Democratic leader. "He can't simply apologize. Once you tolerate this behavior, you have endorsed it."
In a statement, Arza apologized for the phone message, blaming it in part on drinking. He is expected to be reelected on Nov. 7.
But the scandal represents a dramatic turn for a legislator who was a key ally in Gov. Jeb Bush's education reform drive. Described as a bully by critics, Arza was first reported to have used the term this spring in reference to Miami-Dade schools chief Rudy Crew, an African American, in a discussion on the House floor.
Several top Republicans distanced themselves from Arza this week.
"Opening up wounds like that just doesn't make sense -- it's tragic and it's sad," Bush said.
While praising Arza as a "great partner in education reform," Bush said "he's got problems. He's got to work on his problems. . . . Now I think it's time for him to focus on his own personal issues."
The tortuous intrigue began in April when Crew and others accused Arza of using racial slurs in English and Spanish to refer to him.
The lawmaker denied the allegation.
"I'm shocked by it," Arza told the Miami Herald.
But, in May, Arza stopped proceedings on the House floor to offer a conditional apology and a denial.
"I have never made a single negative or disparaging comment -- public comment -- about Dr. Rudy Crew," he said. "And if I have ever made a statement to anyone of you that you believe would be offensive to Dr. Crew or even racially insensitive, then I apologize."
House members gave him a standing ovation.
But the episode did not end.
Earlier this month, Miami Beach lawmaker Gustavo A. Barreiro (R) filed a written complaint asserting that Arza had repeatedly used the racial epithets in reference to Crew.
The complaint apparently enraged Arza.
Last Saturday night, Barreiro received a profanity-laced tirade on his cellphone. In it, Barreiro said, Arza referred to him using a racial slur, though Barreiro is not of African descent.
Other messages followed from another caller who was with Arza and threatened physical harm, Barreiro said. Barreiro said he is concerned for his family. Miami police now have a copy of the messages.
Barreiro said he does not know why Arza used the racial language again on a recorder, especially since he must have known he was under investigation.
"It sounded like arrogance," Barreiro said. "It was as if he were saying, 'I can say this again and nothing will happen to me.' . . . He's a bully, and somebody had to stand up to him."
An Ascent Shadowed By Questions on Race
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 26, 2006; A01
In February 2004, Sen. George Allen was on a bus taking him from Birmingham to Selma, Ala. On a video screen in front of him was "Eyes on the Prize," the acclaimed documentary chronicling the civil rights movement.
Allen "knew very little" about the history of that struggle, according to his seatmate, Paul Gillis, former president of the Virginia NAACP. But Gillis, once a bitter critic and now one of his few prominent black supporters, was impressed with Allen's willingness to take a three-day pilgrimage, sponsored by the nonpartisan Faith & Politics Institute, to visit the battlegrounds of that era and listen to the testimony of those who spilled their blood.
It was many miles from the sun-splashed Los Angeles suburbs, where some classmates at Palos Verdes High School recall a lone tobacco-chewing teenage cowboy who was disliked, even feared.
"George was not what I would call mainstream," said Don Gause, a wide receiver who caught Allen's passes for the Sea Kings. One reason, Gause said, was that Allen used anti-black epithets and "ran with a group of guys off the football field" who used the same language.
"George took some hard lines in that area," said Gause, a real estate executive in Orange County, Calif. His sense, though, was that it was more for attention than out of any racial animus.
"He was immature, like most of us," Gause said. "He was looking for who he was."
Who George Allen was, and who he is today after 23 years in politics, remains an issue as the Virginia Republican seeks reelection. Supporters say the pilgrimage was one leg of a journey that has led to genuine maturation for Allen, 54, whose style melds Ronald Reagan's optimism with George W. Bush's Texas swagger.
Popular as a governor and a senator, with a genial presence on the campaign trail, Allen has considered running for president. But a series of events have revived lingering questions about his attitudes on race and have helped turn what was expected to be an easy path to reelection into a fight for his political career.
At an August rally in southwest Virginia, Allen interrupted a routine stump speech and pointed to a man of Indian descent who was videotaping the event for his Democratic opponent, James Webb, and called the aide "macaca," a genus of monkey. Some of Allen's former football teammates at the University of Virginia came forward later to say that he routinely used racist language. Asked at a debate last month about reports of his Jewish roots, he denounced the accounts as "aspersions" before confirming them a day later.
The episodes unraveled an effort by Allen to mend a reputation for racial insensitivity that has pursued him through his steady rise from Palos Verdes to college athlete, lawyer, state legislator, governor and, in 2000, U.S. senator. Allen has, for example, had to explain his fondness for the Confederate flag and the presence of a hangman's noose in his Charlottesville law office.
In his first Senate term, he has taken three civil rights pilgrimages, co-sponsored a resolution apologizing to lynching victims and their descendants, and proposed allocating a half-billion dollars to historically black colleges.
But "macaca" raises a question: Has Allen really evolved, or did his true nature slip into public view?
Allen, who denies using racist language, declined requests for an interview, asking instead for written questions. By yesterday, his campaign had not provided answers.
Those closest to him say that Allen is no bigot and that partisan enemies have seized on murky 30-year-old anecdotes and meaningless lapses in political correctness to damage him.
"Politics has become more of a contact sport than football," said Allen's brother Bruce, general manager of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "I know the person. I know the man."
Others from Allen's past said they saw a distressingly familiar, coldly taunting hatred when they viewed the macaca tape.
"So let's give a welcome to macaca here," Allen said, pointing a finger. "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Allen later said he didn't know what the word meant and apologized to the Webb volunteer, S.R. Sidarth.
"I saw how he looked, that attitude of condescension and superiority," said Ed Sabornie, a former Virginia player and now a professor of special education at North Carolina State University.
"That rang a bell for me."
'Greasers, Surfers, Crew-Cutters'
There was darkness on the edges of the world of privilege and glamour in which Allen grew up.
His father, George Allen, was the milk-chugging NFL Hall of Famer who took the Washington Redskins to their first Super Bowl in 1973. He compiled a 116-47-5 record over 12 seasons as a coach with the Los Angeles Rams and the Redskins but made room for little else in his life.
"If a man is going to succeed in anything, he must neglect everything else, whether it is his wife, his children or himself," he told an interviewer in 1970.
Even when he took his sons to the Rams' summer training camp, they spent most of their time with Allen's assistants and friendly players such as Deacon Jones, said Gause, who accompanied the younger Allen one year.
When the coach was at their Mediterranean-style home on a cul-de-sac with jaw-dropping views of the Pacific Ocean, the family's spirits rose and fell with the fortunes of the team.
After a painful 1968 loss, George and his brother Gregory elected to go home with neighbors rather than face their father's black mood. In her vivid family memoir, "Fifth Quarter," his sister Jennifer Allen described violence at home, including her father breaking Gregory's nose in a fight at the dinner table after a 1969 playoff loss.
Neither Jennifer nor Gregory Allen responded to requests for interviews. Bruce Allen, who said he doesn't remember the incident, said his sister's book was written "from a little girl's eyes" and should not be taken literally.
Allen's mother, Henrietta, known as Etty, is a gracious woman with a bitter and sometimes fiercely vindictive side, especially when it comes to protecting her husband's reputation. She effectively raised the Allen children on her own.
"Etty ran the show," said Melvin Durslag, a columnist for the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner and a longtime family friend.
She also carried the pain of her own turbulent childhood. Born in Tunis to French-Jewish parents, Etty Lumbroso endured the 1942-43 Nazi occupation and Allied bombing that destroyed her home. She watched her father, Felix, a wine importer, taken to a labor camp by the Germans. She met Allen in 1950 while visiting friends in Sioux City, Iowa, where he was coaching at Morningside College. They married a year later.
On summer evenings when the coach and the boys were at training camp, Jennifer Allen wrote, Etty would sip wine and lament the death in a motorcycle accident of a French fiancé she called "the love of my life."
Etty told The Washington Post last month that her husband, who died in 1990, asked her to conceal her Jewish identity from his family and that she and Allen wanted to protect their children from the fear she experienced during the war. It remained a secret between her and her husband, she said, until a dinner conversation with George in August.
There was a price to pay for the long years of keeping the secret. Her daughter hints at the private pain in the form of boxes from Tunis and France, stacked in the garage in Palos Verdes. Etty told Jennifer she would never unpack them. Jennifer wrote that she always looked at her mother's life before she met her father as "an unopened box."
Young George and his two brothers filled the gaps at home with friends Jennifer described as "greasers, surfers, crew-cutters" who were "toughs."
"My brothers led each pack," she said. As the oldest, George was sometimes the enforcer. When Jennifer refused to go to bed, he dragged her upstairs by her hair.
One of Allen's friends, Deke Applegate, said Allen's crowd was rough-and-tumble but disputes Gause's recollection of racism. "That's not the guy I hung out with," said Applegate, a Las Vegas businessman.
Allen and Applegate did share an affinity for the Confederate flag. Yearbook pictures show them with pins on their collars. Applegate said it was a "symbol of rebellion against the establishment," nothing more.
Others say Allen acted out at school. Tim Good, a classmate, said he had to confront the 6-foot-plus Allen after his younger brother reported that Allen had stolen his bicycle.
"George Allen was a big bully," said Good, now an accountant in Torrance, Calif. Allen denied stealing the bike, but Good said it reappeared at school the next day.
One morning, students arrived to see workers removing graffiti spray-painted on an outside wall. It was the day of a basketball game with the lone majority-black school in Palos Verdes's athletic conference, Morningside High in Inglewood.
The graffiti included the phrase "Kill Whitey," said Good, who added that former students have said that Allen was responsible. In a 2000 interview with The Post, Allen said there was an incident at school but declined to discuss the details. "I did something wrong when I was young that I regret," he said.
After a year at the University of California at Los Angeles, Allen followed his family east in 1971, when his father was named coach of the Redskins. His football teammates at the University of Virginia said they found some of the same racial insensitivity.
"People gave him a wide berth," said Ken Shelton, one of three former Cavaliers who told Salon magazine in September that Allen regularly used racial slurs for blacks.
Shelton, a North Carolina radiologist, said in an interview that in Newcomb Hall, the student center, Allen would spit tobacco juice "anywhere -- on the walls, on the floors, in the elevators" and habitually shouldered people aside as he walked by.
Change was beginning to stir in Charlottesville, long a clubby redoubt for the sons of Virginia's white establishment. Blacks and women had started to shake up the campus culture. The football team included the first four African Americans to receive full athletic scholarships.
It was a challenging environment for the athletes. Harrison Davis, the Cavaliers' first black starter at quarterback, who regularly received hate mail, said he never heard Allen use racial slurs. Nor did Stanley Land, a defensive tackle. But Land, a Houston chemical executive, said he was offended by the Confederate flags he saw in Allen's van and his campus apartment, especially when some of his teammates were under such pressure.
"To me, that showed a lack of real respect for his African American teammates," Land said.
'Not the Man He Once Was'
In 1979, Roy Parks's land-use and design firm in Charlottesville needed more room. He spoke to George Allen about renting space in the building he owned on Market Street, where he'd set up his law practice. As the negotiations came to naught, Parks said, their conversations drifted to politics.
Allen, getting ready to make his first run for the state legislature, allowed that he had supported a Democrat, Edward Lane, for state attorney general in 1977. Lane had been a segregationist in the 1950s, an architect of Virginia's "massive resistance" movement in which communities closed schools rather than comply with court orders to integrate. He lost to Republican J. Marshall Coleman.
"When I questioned George further, he said that Lane, like him, was an advocate for states' rights and was only a man of his time," said Parks, who was stunned by Allen's admission.
Lane, now 82 and ill with Parkinson's disease, was unable to comment. His wife, Jean, said she has no memory of Allen's support.
As a state legislator in 1984, Allen was one of 27 members of the House of Delegates to oppose a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. During his 1993 gubernatorial campaign, he acknowledged displaying the Confederate flag in his living room, calling it part of a flag collection. A hangman's noose, which he said was part of a Western memorabilia collection, hung in his law office.
As governor, Allen appointed one black cabinet member, Kay Coles James, as secretary of health and human resources, and a Latino, Transportation Secretary Robert E. Martinez. Midway through his term, the number of African Americans in senior posts had declined by half from the tenure of L. Douglas Wilder, the state's first black governor, according to an audit by a state watchdog agency. For three years, he incensed black leaders with an annual Confederate History Month proclamation that failed to mention slavery.
Allen had an active term as governor. He abolished the state's parole system, replacing it with a "truth in sentencing" law that requires those convicted of crimes to serve the bulk of their sentence. He pushed through changes in welfare and education policy and signed a measure requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions.
As he launched his 2000 Senate campaign, Allen began some attempts to mend racial fences. He backed Gov. James S. Gilmore's proposal for an MLK holiday in Virginia. After defeating Charles S. Robb, his first floor speech was in support of the appointment of Richmond lawyer Roger Gregory, an African American, to the 4th Circuit federal appeals court. Then came the 2004 pilgrimage, the first of three that he took.
"None of us can presume to know what the motivation is" for Allen's civil rights trips, said the Rev. Douglas Tanner, who recently retired as president and chief executive of the Faith & Politics Institute. "For someone in politics, it's always likely to be a mixture of genuine interest and whatever the political advantage is."
Gillis, who has supported other Republicans, said that he doesn't know whether Allen used racist language but that, in the end, it's not that important. "I've had white friends who've used those words in the heat of passion," he said. "It's a time past. He's not the man he once was."
Allen remains an opponent of affirmative action. In 2005, the NAACP said he supported legislation deemed to be in its interest 15 percent of the time.
More often, his advocacy is in initiatives such as his co-sponsorship of the resolution apologizing to lynching victims and their descendants. In other areas, he has co-authored legislation blocking federal taxes on Internet access and online sales. He also collaborated on the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which invests $3.7 billion in research.
His appearances before black audiences are a delicate dance. At the NAACP state conference in Hampton on Friday night, he got no questions about "macaca" or other recent revelations.
When the moderator presented Allen with an application for a lifetime membership, he happily took the opportunity for a positive gesture.
Later, answering a question about racial profiling, Allen explained that he opposed the practice. When someone in the audience said "Amen," Allen was briefly startled.
"Did I say that right?" he asked.
Metro researcher Meg Smith, researcher Rena Kirsch and director of information resources Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
October 27, 2006
Democrats Fear Disillusionment in Black Voters
By IAN URBINA
Last weekend, Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat who hopes to oust Senator George Allen, crammed in visits to 12 black churches, and for several weeks he has been pumping money into advertisements on black radio stations and in black newspapers.
In Missouri, Claire McCaskill, the Democrat trying to unseat Senator Jim Talent, has been running advertisements about sickle cell anemia, a genetic illness that mostly afflicts black people, and the importance of stem cell research in helping to find a cure.
For Democrats like these in tight races, black voter turnout will be crucial on Election Day. But despite a generally buoyant Democratic Party nationally, there are worries among Democratic strategists in some states that blacks may not turn up at the polls in big enough numbers because of disillusionment over past shenanigans.
“This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we’re having to go out of our way to counter them this year,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist.
This will be the first midterm election in which the Democratic Party is mobilizing teams of lawyers and poll watchers, to check for irregularities including suppression of the black vote, in at least a dozen of the closest districts, Ms. Brazile said.
Democrats’ worries are backed up by a Pew Research Center report that found that blacks were twice as likely now than they were in 2004 to say they had little or no confidence in the voting system, rising to 29 percent from 15 percent.
And more than three times as many blacks as whites — 29 percent versus 8 percent — say they do not believe that their vote will be accurately tallied.
Voting experts say the disillusionment is the cumulative effect of election problems in 2000 and 2004, and a reaction to new identification and voter registration laws.
Long lines and shortages of poll workers in lower-income neighborhoods in the 2004 election and widespread reports of fliers with misinformation appearing in minority areas have also had a corrosive effect on confidence, experts say.
The harder question is whether this jaded outlook will diminish turnout.
Recent polls have found record levels of outrage from Democrats about the current political leadership, which may offset the effect of black disillusion.
But Saleemah Affoul of Milwaukee, for one, is not so sure. Like many other black people in her neighborhood, Ms. Affoul said she was convinced that no matter how she voted, it would not be counted fairly.
“I do think the system is rigged,” she said. “I vote anyway because my forefathers worked too hard to win me that right. But not everyone feels that responsibility around here.”
Walking along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the gritty and mostly black section of Brewers Hill on the North Side of Milwaukee, Ms. Affoul said that cynicism in her neighborhood was on the rise.
She traced her own skepticism to one afternoon two months before the last presidential election when she overheard several young black men saying they were not going to vote because they feared being arrested at the polling station for their unpaid parking tickets. The neighborhood had been flooded with fliers from the Milwaukee Black Voters League, a fictitious group, saying that even minor infractions like parking tickets disqualified people from voting.
Ms. Affoul, 66, said she argued with the men but failed to convince them that they had been misinformed.
“I realized that maybe the poll tax isn’t gone after all, and that if people were willing to try that trick, they might be willing to do a lot more that I don’t even know about,” she said.
Black voters are expected to play crucial roles in races for governor and the Senate in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia.
In Maryland, where blacks make up about 30 percent of the electorate, the Democratic candidate for governor, Martin O’Malley, who is white, is trailing the Republican incumbent, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., by several points. Mr. O’Malley needs a large turnout among blacks in Baltimore to win, and he has mobilized more than 2,000 get-out-the-vote workers in black neighborhoods. He also helped his chances of attracting the black vote by selecting Anthony G. Brown, a black lawyer, as his running mate.
In Tennessee, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. is depending on a strong showing from blacks in Memphis, which he represents, to edge past Bob Corker and become the first black senator from a Southern state since Reconstruction.
In Virginia, Democrats hope that recent accusations of racism against Senator Allen will motivate blacks to vote for his Democratic opponent, Mr. Webb.
Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said the reason for the rise in black voters’ cynicism could be summed up in a single word: confirmation.
Mr. Walters said that episodes of voter suppression that were dismissed in 2000 as unfounded recurred in 2004 and were better documented because rights groups dispatched thousands of lawyers and poll watchers. In addition, the first national data-tracking tool, the Election Incident Reporting System, offered a national hot line that fed a database of what ended up to be 40,000 problems.
“All of a sudden after 2004, these weren’t just baseless or isolated incidents,” Mr. Walters said.
The type of misleading letter sent this month to 14,000 Hispanic immigrants in Orange County, Calif., threatening them with arrest if they tried to vote, was hardly a first. In 2004, similar fliers appeared in predominantly black neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, on official-looking letterheads. The fliers said that because of unusually high voter registration, Republicans were to vote on Election Day, and Democrats were to vote the next day.
Fliers sent in Lake County, Ohio, told people that if they had registered through the N.A.A.C.P., they could not vote.
Asked whether such tactics from 2004 could influence black turnout next month, the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, whose National Action Network is also mobilizing voter protection teams, said that despite insufficient action from Democrats in responding to the problems, he believed that black turnout would be high.
“Just because more of us believe that folks are trying to rob us of certain rights doesn’t mean we are more likely to give up and leave the front door unlocked,” Mr. Sharpton said.
The rollout of new voting machines may also be contributing to black voters’ fears.
“African-Americans are more susceptible to conspiracy theories about the new technology because they have been subject to actual conspiracies more often than the rest of the population,” said David A. Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, a research organization dedicated to African-American issues.
Marsha Lindsey, a black paramedic and former poll worker in Dayton, Ohio, said that after 2004 she stopped arguing with her black friends when they said there was no point in voting.
Spencer Overton, a law professor at George Washington University and author of “Stealing Democracy: the New Politics of Voter Suppression,” said the threat of voter suppression presented difficult strategic decisions.
“Voter suppression is a real threat,” Mr. Overton said, “but Democrats can’t invest so much into voter protection that they don’t have adequate resources to turn out their voters to the polls in the first place.”
The Rev. DeForest B. Soaries, who is black and was appointed by President George W. Bush as the first chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission, an agency meant to help carry out the Help America Vote Act, said Democrats overestimated the problem of voter suppression in much the same way Republicans overestimated the problem of voter fraud.
Skepticism is especially pronounced in poor black neighborhoods, Mr. Soaries said, because these communities are often disproportionately affected by problems with machines and the number and training of poll workers. When problems do occur in these areas, he added, they occur against a historical backdrop of voter suppression.
Whatever its consequence, the topic is very much on Democrats’ minds. At a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Atlanta, at the home of Representative John Lewis, who is black, conversation centered on perceptions that widespread voter disenfranchisement would haunt the 2006 elections.
Former President Bill Clinton addressed the issue there, criticizing some Republican campaign tactics. After mentioning rough-edged political ads and other strategies, he said, “And when that doesn’t work, they try to keep you from voting.”
Headed into a statewide candidates’ forum on prison overhaul, for pastors from Baltimore, the Rev. Heber Brown III, who is black, said that the success of black voter mobilization efforts in 2004 set the stage for some disillusion.
“Last time, you had hip-hop leaders like Russell Simmons, Eminem and Sean Combs with the Vote or Die campaign and lots of young blacks voted but what did they get?” said Mr. Brown, 26, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore County. “Now when you talk to young black voters you can’t just say, ‘Get out the vote,’ you have to first do a lot of explaining, cut through a lot of confusion about the 2004 vote and first talk about how change takes time.”
Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.
October 27, 2006
Tennessee Controversy Shaped by Spin Expert
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and JIM RUTENBERG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — When an advertisement mocking Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. set off controversy in the Tennessee Senate race last week, a question quickly arose: Who was behind the provocative and, critics said, racially loaded television spot?
No Republicans wanted to take credit. When the identity of the producer, Scott Howell, emerged, Democrats quickly pounced on his history of bare-knuckled tactics and close relationship with Karl Rove as evidence of a familiar Republican approach.
And the incident quickly set off a wave of denials and denunciations from Republican officials, including the national party chairman and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has hired Terry Nelson, another consultant affiliated with the spot.
The advertisement in question suggested a flirtation between a young bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress, and Mr. Ford, the Democratic candidate in Tennessee for the Senate. It was supposed to stop running on Thursday amid complaints that it seemed intended to stir racial hatred, though there were reports that it was being broadcast on some stations.
Associates of Mr. Howell said the advertisement was typical of a media strategist who has in the past manufactured political controversy to win tough races in spite of — or because of — the intense reaction the work so often provokes.
He helped produce the early 2004 advertisement for President Bush that showed a coffin coming out of the rubble of the World Trade Center wreckage. It was immediately criticized by a group of Sept. 11 widows but was later credited with changing the subject of the campaign from economic woes to the president’s national security credentials.
In Georgia, Mr. Howell also was a top member of the media team working for Saxby Chambliss, the Republican whose advertisement in the 2002 Senate race accused Max Cleland, the Democratic incumbent and a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, of being weak on national security by featuring an image of Osama Bin Laden to drive the point home. The spot infuriated Democrats but helped lead to Mr. Cleland’s defeat.
Jim Jordan, a strategist for Mr. Ford, said that even if the anti-Ford advertisement was no longer running on television, it might have already helped inspire the core voters that Bob Corker, the Republican candidate for the Senate, will need to win.
“He’s having a hard time with his base, and this is the kind of ad the Republicans believe appeals to their base,” Mr. Jordan said of Mr. Corker. But, Mr. Jordan said, the advertisement and the angry reaction it has provoked will backfire nonetheless by offending more important swing voters.
Yet if angry voters are looking for a place to direct their anger, they may have a hard time.
Mr. Howell did not produce the spot for Mr. Corker, who has disavowed it. He produced it for a quasi-independent organization that is financed by the Republican National Committee but operates wholly out of the committee’s control or direction.
Campaign finance regulations limit how much money the political parties can spend on campaigns with which they coordinate. But they allow parties to spend without limit if they set up committees that operate independent of the party leadership.
Advocates for stricter campaign finance laws say the regulations, a result of court decisions several years ago, do little more than provide a fig leaf for the parties, insulating them from controversy like the one that is now engulfing the advertisement in Tennessee.
Democrats have had their own run-ins with independent expenditure groups, though none as prominent as the controversy in Tennessee.
Station managers in Montana chafed at a Democratic senatorial committee advertisement, produced by an independent group, that featured Senator Conrad Burns using coarse language in discussing local firefighters. Mr. Howell, who once worked for Mr. Rove’s direct-mail business in Texas, was hired by Mr. Nelson, who was political director of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004. Mr. Nelson was in turn hired by Ken Mehlman, the former Bush-Cheney campaign manager and White House political director who is now chairman of the Republican National Committee, to oversee the so-called independent expenditure operations.
All independent expenditure units are required to sign legal papers promising not to have contact with the campaign that they are hired to advocate on behalf of, and to receive only financial support, not strategic advice, from the national party. Mr. Nelson’s firm, the Crosslink Strategy Group, employs as a consultant Chris LaCivita, who worked with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that produced negative advertisements about Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, according to the firm’s Web site.
Calls to a spokesman for Mr. Howell were not returned. Mr. Nelson, who has agreed to work with Mr. McCain if he runs for president in 2008, also did not return calls.
John Weaver, an adviser to Mr. McCain, said Mr. Nelson would continue as an adviser to the senator despite the incident. But, Mr. Weaver said: “We’re pleased that the ad has been pulled down.”
The Republican National Committee has said Mr. Howell’s work against Mr. Ford was created out of sight of Mr. Mehlman, who did not even know what the spot would look like, when it would run or when it would stop running. And Mr. Mehlman was described by an associate who requested anonymity to share private conversations as frustrated by the process, which has occasionally made his committee responsible for advertisements that he has personally found objectionable.
“It may seem confusing and convoluted that the R.N.C. has no knowledge of these ads,” said Brian Jones, a committee spokesman. “But that’s the way the law’s been written, and we abide by it.”
October 26, 2006
Republicans Intensify Push in New Jersey
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — National Republican campaign strategists are beginning an intensive last-minute offensive in New Jersey, seizing on the tight race between Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Thomas H. Kean Jr.
Officials with the National Republican Senatorial Committee said they were putting $3.5 million into the race in its final 12 days to pay for television advertisements attacking Mr. Menendez that were expected to be on major stations by Thursday morning.
Brian Nick, a spokesman for the committee, said Mr. Kean had remained at least competitive with Mr. Menendez — though trailing in two recent polls — despite being outspent. Mr. Nick said the committee believed that the new advertising, produced by a quasi-independent arm of the committee created under federal campaign finance law, had the potential to change the dynamic of the race.
“We’re coming in with financial resources to help get parity in spending,” Mr. Nick said. “And when that happens, Kean will win.”
Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the party would provide an extra push for Mr. Kean with an aggressive drive to get out the vote.
“We feel that there’s a real opportunity in New Jersey,” Mr. Jones said.
The $3.5 million advertising outlay is a major investment in two of the most expensive media markets in the nation, New York and Philadelphia, both of which transmit into New Jersey.
Mr. Kean had spent $2.5 million through Sept. 30, with $3.2 million left on hand for his final push, according to campaign finance records. Mr. Menendez had spent $6.5 million and had $5.5 million left as of Sept. 30, according to the filings.
The new push in New Jersey reflects the state’s status as the Republicans’ great hope this year. Mr. Menendez’s Senate seat is the only one now held by a Democrat that Republicans in Washington believe they can steal away this year.
Democrats need to gain six seats to win control of the Senate next year, a goal that several polls show to be within the realm of possibility.
Though New Jersey tends to vote Democratic, it has a history of selecting moderate Republicans like Mr. Kean, a state senator whose father was New Jersey governor and more recently was a chairman of the Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Kean has run an extremely tough race, despite the advantages that Mr. Menendez has as an incumbent and prominent fund-raiser for his party. The race has been so competitive that Democratic leaders, who have managed to keep Republican Senate candidates on the run elsewhere, acknowledge that this is the one Democratic-held Senate seat that is vulnerable.
Mr. Kean has sought to portray Mr. Menendez as an unethical politician who has his roots in the notorious Hudson County political machine. He has, for example, pointed to a nonprofit agency that paid more than $320,000 to lease a building in Union City from Mr. Menendez for nearly a decade while he helped the agency, the North Hudson Community Action Corporation, secure millions of dollars in federal grants. Mr. Menendez has said that the rent was comparable to market rates at the time and that he has done nothing wrong.
Mr. Menendez has sought to tie Mr. Kean to the policies of President Bush, whose popularity polls show is unpopular in New Jersey. He has also tried linking Mr. Kean to a jailed Hudson County Democrat whom Mr. Kean’s campaign had contacted in hopes of undercutting Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Kean has attempted to distance himself from the Bush administration, recently calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Democrats had not expected to find themselves playing defense this year in New Jersey, a solidly Democratic state in recent statewide elections. State voters have not elected a Republican to the United States Senate since 1972 .
Last year, Jon S. Corzine, who was the senior senator at the time, left office after being elected governor. He chose Mr. Menendez, a United States representative for Hudson County at the time, to complete the remainder of his term.
Phil Singer, a spokesman for Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said his committee had spent $7.5 million on the race in New Jersey, and had a $4 million advertising campaign running now.
And he suggested that the Republican push in New Jersey represented a bluff. “They’ve got no place else to go,” he said.
Matt Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Menendez, said his campaign was not concerned, as it has millions more dollars in the bank than Mr. Kean does. And he said several recent polls showed Mr. Menendez ahead in the race, including a Gannett poll showing Mr. Menendez up by nine percentage points.
But a Los Angeles Times poll released on Tuesday showed Mr. Menendez just four percentage points ahead of Mr. Kean.
Raymond Hernandez contributed reporting.
October 26, 2006
News Analysis
Bush Focuses on Iraq as G.O.P. Tries to Change Subject
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — With a shift in tone and the suggestion of flexibility on tactics in Iraq, President Bush gambled Wednesday that he could rescue Republican candidates who are having a hard time defending the war and an even harder time running away from it.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Mr. Bush’s decision to address the war and its problems so prominently carries the risk that he will strengthen the Democrats’ case that the midterm election is primarily a referendum on his own handling of the war.
Republican candidates around the country have been trying for months to de-emphasize the war as an issue, and to distance themselves from Mr. Bush more generally. In an interview with The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said his party’s challenge “is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue.”
If his party’s candidates want to change the subject, Mr. Bush surely did not help them on Wednesday. While the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the tumult over the war has already thrust the issue to the center of the political stage, Mr. Bush spent more than an hour discussing Iraq with reporters at the White House, acknowledging the overriding importance of the issue and stating flatly that he should ultimately be held accountable.
What came across was a president more candid than in the past about the military and political problems in Iraq and more willing to admit misjudgments about America’s enemies and allies there. He said that in many cases Iraqi troops were not up to the job of defending their own country and that he was not satisfied with progress toward a resolution of the political and sectarian conflicts raging across the country.
But Mr. Bush, like other wartime presidents before him, remained grimly determined to press on in the face of mounting casualties and growing domestic discontent.
“The fact that the fighting is tough does not mean our efforts in Iraq are not worth it,” the president said. “To the contrary; the consequences in Iraq will have a decisive impact on the security of our country, because defeating the terrorists in Iraq is essential to turning back the cause of extremism in the Middle East.”
Some beleaguered Republican candidates welcomed the president’s new realism and the flexibility he sought to project in how he would try to achieve victory.
“We are on the verge of chaos, and the current approach is clearly not working,” said Jill Hazelbaker, spokeswoman for Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in New Jersey. “We’ve seen an enormous amount of violence in Iraq, and Kean thinks it’s a responsibility of the U.S. to determine: are there other strategies we can pursue? So, in that sense, yes, we welcome tactical changes.”
But other Republicans were skeptical. Tony Fabrizio, a pollster working for several Republican candidates, said the president did his party more harm than good by highlighting a troublesome issue and seeming to change course so close to Election Day.
“It makes it look like they have a confused policy,” he said. “Now the question will be, every day, what are the parameters of flexibility?”
Senior Democrats in Congress said the president presented little more than an old policy in new garb.
Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Bush gave little ground on Wednesday and was unlikely to reap any political benefit.
“I don’t see any reason to believe the president is any more realistic,” Mr. Levin said. “What he said was an effort to get himself past the election by telling the American people that he’s changing course while telling the Iraqis he’s not changing course.”
It is too early to say whether this is a major turning point in the president’s thinking about the conduct of the war. But he said he was willing to consider altering his policy when he received the recommendations of a bipartisan panel led by James A. Baker III, the Republican former secretary of state, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic representative from Indiana, later this year.
The moment is reminiscent of early 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson convened a panel of wise men to advise him on the Vietnam War, which by then was killing hundreds of Americans a month with little military progress to show for it. Mr. Johnson insisted that American credibility was at stake and believed that a leader in wartime had to show resolve in the face of an implacable enemy and loud domestic criticism.
That spring, he capitulated, announcing plans to begin to de-escalate the war and declaring that he would not seek re-election. It took seven more years for Presidents Nixon and Ford to extricate the United States fully from Vietnam.
Mr. Bush may be facing a similar moment of truth, when the steadiness applauded by the American public after Sept. 11, 2001, begins to look like stubbornness and a refusal to recognize reality, according to Bruce W. Jentleson, professor of public policy at Duke University.
“This rush to make all these changes on the eve of the election isn’t going to help that much,” said Mr. Jentleson, who has advised Democratic candidates but is not affiliated with any campaign this fall. “The question is, what does he do after he gets this electoral outcome? Is he willing to change course and find a solution that avoids total disaster in Iraq?”
George C. Edwards III, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University, said the president’s appearance on Wednesday was both an act of political desperation and a possible turning point in the war. He cautioned, however, that little in Mr. Bush’s record indicated he was capable of a radical change of direction.
“Many factors have come together to force him to re-evaluate,” Professor Edwards said. “But we also have a long history of him being obdurate, while we don’t have a long history of his being a particularly insightful decision maker about these things. We still should have some skepticism.”
Business groups woo Democrats
Campaign contributions rise for lawmakers who might hold leadership positions after Nov. 7.
By Richard Simon
Times Staff Writer
October 27, 2006
"Some people have discovered virtues in me that they had previously overlooked," Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who stands to become chairman of the Financial Services Committee if Democrats control the House, mused recently. "The prospect of the chairmanship seems to have been a very good introduction."
Frank was referring to a surge in campaign contributions from pro-business groups — groups whose members would have to deal with the liberal Democrat instead of a probably-more-congenial Republican. (Rep. Michael G. Oxley, the Ohio Republican who now heads the committee, is retiring after this term.)
Issues involving the financial services industry fall under the committee's jurisdiction. And the New York Life Insurance Co.'s political action committee has contributed $10,000 to Frank this election season, up from $1,000 in the 2003-'04 cycle, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks political donations. The National Assn. of Insurance and Financial Advisors PAC contributed $10,000 to Frank this election season, up from $3,000 in the last cycle.
Frank is not alone. As prospects appear to grow that Republicans will lose control of the House and perhaps even the Senate, business groups, trade associations, and their lobbyists and political advisors have developed a sudden enthusiasm for contributing to Democrats — especially to those likely to be in the House leadership or to head important committees if Republicans lose their majorities.
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), for example, would chair the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in a Democratic-run House, and he has begun hearing from groups he says had not called since the Republicans won control of the House in 1994.
"I don't think meeting with the chairman of General Electric has anything to do with my taking over Ways and Means; I just never realized how much they loved me," Rangel joked.
In this election cycle, the congressman has raised $17,000 from General Electric's political action committee for his campaign and his leadership PAC, which provides campaign funds for other Democrats. That's more than twice what he collected the previous cycle, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.
None of this is to say business has changed sides. It continues to give far more to Republicans than to Democrats. And the major groups representing the business community, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are working hard to protect the GOP majorities in Congress.
Moreover, many business groups seek to play down their campaign contributions to the other side. New York Life spokesman William Werfel said that his company's PAC was giving more in general this cycle and that the GOP still got the most.
But as storm clouds gathered over the GOP this election season, business leaders, lobbyists and PACs quietly began to take out a form of political insurance — contributing more to Democrats who, if they become the majority party, will wield power over issues affecting business' bottom line.
"All of the Democratic ranking members have seen an increase in attentiveness to their fundraising…. There has definitely been an increase in people paying attention to the ranking members in particular," a House Democratic aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for members.
Frank, for one, sent out a solicitation asking contributors to "help me raise campaign funds which, as you know, I am using in substantial part to make sure that the next time we talk after that, I will be the Chairman in Waiting of the House Financial Services Committee."
As Democrats try to encourage the shift in campaign contributions and Republicans try to counter it, the result can be a behind-the-scenes tug of war.
"The Democrats are telling business lobbyists: 'Hedge your bets, we probably are going to be in control,' " said James Benton of the campaign watchdog group Common Cause. "The Republicans, on the other hand, are saying: 'We're watching. Don't give your money to Democrats. We're the people you can trust.' "
One lobbyist, who spoke on condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of his relationship with the business groups he represented, acknowledged that business groups were ramping up their political donations to Democrats. "It's typical of the business community," he said. "They panic."
Political spending is projected to reach $2.6 billion in 2005-'06, making this the most expensive congressional campaign in history, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. PAC spending is expected to exceed $1 billion for the first time, "reflecting the ever-growing influence of business, labor and ideological interests," the center's acting director, Sheila Krumholz, said.
Washington lobbyist Aaron Houston said he had seen business' new interest in Democrats at a number of recent fundraisers. "There are a whole lot of $3,000 suits showing up," he said.
Republicans say they're not surprised.
"Business PACs go with wherever they see the wind blowing," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Typical of the emerging pattern is the National Beer Wholesalers Assn. PAC. Although Republicans still receive a larger share of its donations, the wholesalers have made $10,000 contributions to more than twice as many House Democrats as they did in the last election.
Craig Purser, president of the beer wholesalers, said in a written statement: "It looks like there are going to be more close races this year than in recent memory, so we are getting more requests from everyone. However, our strategy remains what it has always been. The NBWA-PAC simply continues to support those who stand with beer distributors on the issues that matter the most."
House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) had received no support from the beer wholesalers for at least a decade, but the trade group contributed $15,000 to the would-be majority leader's campaign committee and his leadership PAC in this election cycle.
Thanks in part to larger contributions from some kinds of businesses — including banking and insurance interests and defense and technology companies — Hoyer has raised nearly $4 million through his campaign committee and leadership PAC, more than in any election cycle during his 24-year congressional career.
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who stands to chair the defense appropriations subcommittee in a Democratic-controlled House, has raised more than $2.5 million this year, including $179,400 from the defense industry — more than in previous election cycles.
And Rangel is poised to surpass the $879,554 he raised from PACs for the last election cycle. If Democrats should take over one or both chambers of Congress, Krumholz and other experts said, business contributions are likely to increase even more.
