PLEASE CLICK

Will the hammer fall?
Once more, an ethics storm is swirling around Tom DeLay, but he's hanging tough
By Kit R. Roane, Dan Morrison and Carol Flake Chapman
Posted 3/20/05

It takes a lot to work off a bad handle. So it says something about Tom DeLay that the scrappy Texas legislator once known as "Hot Tub Tom" has become "the Hammer," one of the most powerful Republicans to come down the pike in a long time.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. It took years, but as he accumulated more and more power, DeLay also made more than his share of enemies, and some began looking for him to slip, wondering if there would finally be a payback time for his cozy relationships with lobbyists, his fundraising schemes, and his ham-handed politics.

These days, Washington is on the edge of its seat as the Hammer faces a maelstrom of legal and ethical troubles, caught up in scandals involving former aides, eight-figure lobbyists, and political action committees. Among his woes:

Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle has charged three leaders of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee, with money laundering and accepting illegal campaign contributions during a successful bid to fund Republican legislative candidates in the state. Jim Ellis, a former DeLay aide and the director of his national fundraising vehicle, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), is among those indicted. Earle has refused to rule out DeLay, a founder of and adviser to TRMPAC, as a possible target.

Documents in one of two civil lawsuits show that ARMPAC funneled money through TRMPAC to Republican candidates in Texas, a possible violation of state election laws. DeLay is the chairman of ARMPAC, which has also employed his wife, Christine.

Jack Abramoff, a longtime DeLay associate, and Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, are being investigated by both the Senate and the Justice Department for allegedly defrauding several Indian tribes of millions of dollars. U.S. News has learned that the FBI has more than three dozen agents working on the case. One area under review is how tribal money funneled through Abramoff may have illegally benefited DeLay's political operations.

DeLay may have violated House ethics rules by taking a 2000 junket to Scotland's fabled St. Andrews golf course that appears to have been paid for by Abramoff and financed by the Indian tribes who hired him.

DeLay also faces questions about a 2001 trip to South Korea paid for by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, a registered foreign agent.

Sharks. Last week DeLay came out fighting, saying he would happily appear before the House ethics committee, asserting that the trips were handled properly and calling other allegations against him "fiction and innuendo" planted by mean-spirited Democrats. That may be, but in Washington, political scandals have a momentum all their own, and right now DeLay is reaping the whirlwind. "What happens in these things," says a former top Democrat who has seen his share of Washington feeding frenzies, "is that once there's blood in the water, the sharks come out in droves."

This isn't the first time DeLay, 57, has been in hot water. In the late 1970s, when he was still drinking, smoking, and having a good old time as Hot Tub Tom, he ran afoul of the IRS, which placed several liens against his exterminator business. By 1985, DeLay had risen to the U.S. House of Representatives, taking his championship of laissez-faire economics to the national stage. By the next year he was wooing the Conservative Christian vote, having become born again. The Texan railed against environmental regulation and attacked federal funding of the arts. He won his new name, the Hammer, for his ability to push through close legislation on the backs of moderate Republicans he'd either threatened or wooed.

Not everyone got to see the softer side of the Christian spirit, however, and the Hammer continued to rack up personal and political troubles. He was sued in 1994. A business partner, Bob Blankenship, charged DeLay with using company funds to pay off old debts.

In defending himself, DeLay said in a sworn deposition that he didn't believe he was an officer in the company. The problem was that DeLay had been filing financial-disclosure reports listing himself as "chairman of the board." Pressed to explain, DeLay blamed a Democratic cabal and said he really wasn't sure of his role in the company. He later amended his financial-disclosure forms and added a clarification for the court.

DeLay has denied taking retribution after settling with Blankenship for an undisclosed sum. But both the plaintiff and many others in the Fort Bend County GOP establishment disagree, saying what occurred was a warning to would-be opponents. Calling it "quite a coincidence," Blankenship's lawyer, Gerald DeNisco, said he and several others associated with the case were audited by the IRS the next year. Blankenship's wife, Jacqueline, a prominent GOP organizer, was stripped of her party posts. DeLay then ordered Sheriff Milton Wright to remove her from his campaign. When Wright refused, DeLay tried unsuccessfully to unseat him. Asked why he didn't fold, the sheriff said in an interview that, as a former Texas Ranger, he "wasn't accustomed to being shoved around." But he added that after the primary, DeLay made peace. "Tom is driven by a pretty strong propulsion system that makes him go in the direction he wants to go," Wright says. "And he doesn't like to lose." After the campaign, Wright recalled, "DeLay said that 'it's politics and it's over, I support you now.' And he has."

His desire to win, possibly at any cost, may be DeLay's Achilles heel. During his 11 terms in Congress, DeLay's drive to enforce party loyalty and build a well-oiled fundraising machine has bumped up repeatedly against ethical and legal guidelines. According to a 1998 affidavit filed by Peter Cloeren, a Texas businessman and political novice, he flew DeLay to his factory for a fundraiser for a local Republican candidate. DeLay and his staff, Cloeren said, encouraged him to help fund the local candidate using means that turned out to be illegal. Cloeren then poured tens of thousands of dollars into the candidate's campaign through intermediaries, to get around campaign limits. In the end, Cloeren and his company paid $400,000 to settle illegal fundraising charges. DeLay, who was never charged, told CNN he didn't know Cloeren "from Adam."

DeLay's troubles didn't end there. Last year the House ethics committee rebuked him three times, once for inviting executives of several large electricity companies to a TRMPAC fundraiser just days before a conference committee he served on was going to discuss a new comprehensive energy bill. The panel noted that the bill "was of critical importance to the attendees" and that DeLay was "in a position to significantly influence" it. DeLay called the rebuke politically motivated.

Despite DeLay's assertion last week that he's ready to face new questions about his ethics, it's unlikely he will hear from the committee anytime soon. Following his knuckle-rapping by the committee last year, House Speaker Dennis Hastert replaced the three Republican members who voted to admonish DeLay. Two of the new Republicans on the panel, Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, are DeLay backers who have contributed to his legal-defense fund. DeLay did not respond to U.S. News questions regarding the current and past allegations.

He may be tough on his enemies, but DeLay certainly has some loyal friends. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, a possible candidate for DeLay's post should he fall, says the Texan "continues to have the strong support of our conference."

Back in his hometown of Sugar Land, DeLay's base appears almost emboldened by the charges. "He has always been there for me, whether it's the Barber Board or coon hunting," says A. D. Eversole, 65, who first met DeLay in the early 1970s, right after he was elected to the Legislature. At Eversole's barber shop, an autographed photo of DeLay hangs on a wall, flanked by two cutouts of John Wayne.

For all his support, there are also some signs of trouble. DeLay, running against a virtual unknown last year, took just 53 percent of the vote in Fort Bend County, his longtime stronghold. Some say he might do worse next time. "He got elected at a time when all you had to do around here was put Republican in front of your name," says Republican Beverly Carter, a longtime DeLay critic. But, Carter adds, people are getting tired of voting for DeLay just because "he's our son of a bitch."

Meantime, the pressure is building. In Washington, Democrats say they'll keep the heat on DeLay when they return next month and attempt to flush some moderate Republican colleagues from the blind. Then there's the criminal case back in Texas. Buck Wood, an attorney in one of the civil suits related to TRMPAC, says there's something about the prospect of doing prison time in Texas that tends to loosen lips. "At that point, you stop worrying about politics and start worrying about your liberty," he says. "You stop thinking about Tom DeLay's interests."

SUCH VERY GOOD FRIENDS

Much of the controversy surrounding the House majority leader stems from legal troubles of former aides and associates.

Michael Scanlon, political consultant

UNDER INVESTIGATION for influence peddling. "I want all their money!!!" wrote Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, to his partner, Jack Abramoff.

Warren Robold, fundraiser

CHARGED with making and accepting illegal contributions. DeLay's Washington-based moneyman, he worked alongside a top aide to the Texas congressman.

Jim Ellis, political operative

CHARGED with money laundering. A Texas prosecutor says fundraising efforts there are "an effort to use corporate contributions to control representative democracy in Texas."

Jack Abramoff, lobbyist

UNDER INVESTIGATION for influence peddling. The Justice Department and the Senate are trying to determine whether lobbying work that he and partner Michael Scanlon did on behalf of Indian tribes with casino gambling interests violated federal laws and illegally benefited DeLay's political operations. Abramoff is also under scrutiny for having raised money for a lavish trip DeLay, DeLay's wife, and others took to England and Scotland in 2000, in violation of House rules.

Ralph Reed, political heavyweight

NOT CHARGED. The former head of the Christian Coalition, Reed received at least $4 million from gambling interests represented by Abramoff and Scanlon hoping to thwart competition.

John Colyandro, political operative

CHARGED with money laundering. The former head of Texans for a Republican Majority, he is accused of diverting donations to the RNC to Texas state candidates.

Will the hammer fall?

It takes a lot to work off a bad handle. So it says something about Tom DeLay that the scrappy Texas legislator once known as "Hot Tub Tom" has become "the Hammer," one of the most powerful Republicans to come down the pike in a long time.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. It took years, but as he accumulated more and more power, DeLay also made more than his share of enemies, and some began looking for him to slip, wondering if there would finally be a payback time for his cozy relationships with lobbyists, his fundraising schemes, and his ham-handed politics.

These days, Washington is on the edge of its seat as the Hammer faces a maelstrom of legal and ethical troubles, caught up in scandals involving former aides, eight-figure lobbyists, and political action committees. Among his woes:

Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle has charged three leaders of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee, with money laundering and accepting illegal campaign contributions during a successful bid to fund Republican legislative candidates in the state. Jim Ellis, a former DeLay aide and the director of his national fundraising vehicle, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), is among those indicted. Earle has refused to rule out DeLay, a founder of and adviser to TRMPAC, as a possible target.

Documents in one of two civil lawsuits show that ARMPAC funneled money through TRMPAC to Republican candidates in Texas, a possible violation of state election laws. DeLay is the chairman of ARMPAC, which has also employed his wife, Christine.

Jack Abramoff, a longtime DeLay associate, and Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, are being investigated by both the Senate and the Justice Department for allegedly defrauding several Indian tribes of millions of dollars. U.S. News has learned that the FBI has more than three dozen agents working on the case. One area under review is how tribal money funneled through Abramoff may have illegally benefited DeLay's political operations.

DeLay may have violated House ethics rules by taking a 2000 junket to Scotland's fabled St. Andrews golf course that appears to have been paid for by Abramoff and financed by the Indian tribes who hired him.

DeLay also faces questions about a 2001 trip to South Korea paid for by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, a registered foreign agent.

Sharks. Last week DeLay came out fighting, saying he would happily appear before the House ethics committee, asserting that the trips were handled properly and calling other allegations against him "fiction and innuendo" planted by mean-spirited Democrats. That may be, but in Washington, political scandals have a momentum all their own, and right now DeLay is reaping the whirlwind. "What happens in these things," says a former top Democrat who has seen his share of Washington feeding frenzies, "is that once there's blood in the water, the sharks come out in droves."

This isn't the first time DeLay, 57, has been in hot water. In the late 1970s, when he was still drinking, smoking, and having a good old time as Hot Tub Tom, he ran afoul of the IRS, which placed several liens against his exterminator business. By 1985, DeLay had risen to the U.S. House of Representatives, taking his championship of laissez-faire economics to the national stage. By the next year he was wooing the Conservative Christian vote, having become born again. The Texan railed against environmental regulation and attacked federal funding of the arts. He won his new name, the Hammer, for his ability to push through close legislation on the backs of moderate Republicans he'd either threatened or wooed.

Not everyone got to see the softer side of the Christian spirit, however, and the Hammer continued to rack up personal and political troubles. He was sued in 1994. A business partner, Bob Blankenship, charged DeLay with using company funds to pay off old debts.

In defending himself, DeLay said in a sworn deposition that he didn't believe he was an officer in the company. The problem was that DeLay had been filing financial-disclosure reports listing himself as "chairman of the board." Pressed to explain, DeLay blamed a Democratic cabal and said he really wasn't sure of his role in the company. He later amended his financial-disclosure forms and added a clarification for the court.

DeLay has denied taking retribution after settling with Blankenship for an undisclosed sum. But both the plaintiff and many others in the Fort Bend County GOP establishment disagree, saying what occurred was a warning to would-be opponents. Calling it "quite a coincidence," Blankenship's lawyer, Gerald DeNisco, said he and several others associated with the case were audited by the IRS the next year. Blankenship's wife, Jacqueline, a prominent GOP organizer, was stripped of her party posts. DeLay then ordered Sheriff Milton Wright to remove her from his campaign. When Wright refused, DeLay tried unsuccessfully to unseat him. Asked why he didn't fold, the sheriff said in an interview that, as a former Texas Ranger, he "wasn't accustomed to being shoved around." But he added that after the primary, DeLay made peace. "Tom is driven by a pretty strong propulsion system that makes him go in the direction he wants to go," Wright says. "And he doesn't like to lose." After the campaign, Wright recalled, "DeLay said that 'it's politics and it's over, I support you now.' And he has."

His desire to win, possibly at any cost, may be DeLay's Achilles heel. During his 11 terms in Congress, DeLay's drive to enforce party loyalty and build a well-oiled fundraising machine has bumped up repeatedly against ethical and legal guidelines. According to a 1998 affidavit filed by Peter Cloeren, a Texas businessman and political novice, he flew DeLay to his factory for a fundraiser for a local Republican candidate. DeLay and his staff, Cloeren said, encouraged him to help fund the local candidate using means that turned out to be illegal. Cloeren then poured tens of thousands of dollars into the candidate's campaign through intermediaries, to get around campaign limits. In the end, Cloeren and his company paid $400,000 to settle illegal fundraising charges. DeLay, who was never charged, told CNN he didn't know Cloeren "from Adam."

DeLay's troubles didn't end there. Last year the House ethics committee rebuked him three times, once for inviting executives of several large electricity companies to a TRMPAC fundraiser just days before a conference committee he served on was going to discuss a new comprehensive energy bill. The panel noted that the bill "was of critical importance to the attendees" and that DeLay was "in a position to significantly influence" it. DeLay called the rebuke politically motivated.

Despite DeLay's assertion last week that he's ready to face new questions about his ethics, it's unlikely he will hear from the committee anytime soon. Following his knuckle-rapping by the committee last year, House Speaker Dennis Hastert replaced the three Republican members who voted to admonish DeLay. Two of the new Republicans on the panel, Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, are DeLay backers who have contributed to his legal-defense fund. DeLay did not respond to U.S. News questions regarding the current and past allegations.

He may be tough on his enemies, but DeLay certainly has some loyal friends. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, a possible candidate for DeLay's post should he fall, says the Texan "continues to have the strong support of our conference."

Back in his hometown of Sugar Land, DeLay's base appears almost emboldened by the charges. "He has always been there for me, whether it's the Barber Board or coon hunting," says A. D. Eversole, 65, who first met DeLay in the early 1970s, right after he was elected to the Legislature. At Eversole's barber shop, an autographed photo of DeLay hangs on a wall, flanked by two cutouts of John Wayne.

For all his support, there are also some signs of trouble. DeLay, running against a virtual unknown last year, took just 53 percent of the vote in Fort Bend County, his longtime stronghold. Some say he might do worse next time. "He got elected at a time when all you had to do around here was put Republican in front of your name," says Republican Beverly Carter, a longtime DeLay critic. But, Carter adds, people are getting tired of voting for DeLay just because "he's our son of a bitch."

Meantime, the pressure is building. In Washington, Democrats say they'll keep the heat on DeLay when they return next month and attempt to flush some moderate Republican colleagues from the blind. Then there's the criminal case back in Texas. Buck Wood, an attorney in one of the civil suits related to TRMPAC, says there's something about the prospect of doing prison time in Texas that tends to loosen lips. "At that point, you stop worrying about politics and start worrying about your liberty," he says. "You stop thinking about Tom DeLay's interests."

SUCH VERY GOOD FRIENDS

Much of the controversy surrounding the House majority leader stems from legal troubles of former aides and associates.

Michael Scanlon, political consultant

UNDER INVESTIGATION for influence peddling. "I want all their money!!!" wrote Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, to his partner, Jack Abramoff.

Warren Robold, fundraiser

CHARGED with making and accepting illegal contributions. DeLay's Washington-based moneyman, he worked alongside a top aide to the Texas congressman.

Jim Ellis, political operative

CHARGED with money laundering. A Texas prosecutor says fundraising efforts there are "an effort to use corporate contributions to control representative democracy in Texas."

Jack Abramoff, lobbyist

UNDER INVESTIGATION for influence peddling. The Justice Department and the Senate are trying to determine whether lobbying work that he and partner Michael Scanlon did on behalf of Indian tribes with casino gambling interests violated federal laws and illegally benefited DeLay's political operations. Abramoff is also under scrutiny for having raised money for a lavish trip DeLay, DeLay's wife, and others took to England and Scotland in 2000, in violation of House rules.

Ralph Reed, political heavyweight

NOT CHARGED. The former head of the Christian Coalition, Reed received at least $4 million from gambling interests represented by Abramoff and Scanlon hoping to thwart competition.

John Colyandro, political operative

CHARGED with money laundering. The former head of Texans for a Republican Majority, he is accused of diverting donations to the RNC to Texas state candidates.

With Edward T. Pound

This story appears in the March 28, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Everyone Loves Eliot
Even people who might be investigated by him want to give to New York's top cop
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 2/20/05

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, famous for protecting America's millions of small investors with uncommon regulatory zeal, is finding out just how strange. Meet J. Morton Davis, one of Wall Street's most controversial penny-stock mavens and, as of last December, a proud contributor to Spitzer's political coffers.

Spitzer, who recently announced his candidacy for New York governor, accepted a $10,000 campaign donation from Davis, a former supporter of Spitzer's likely opponent, current Republican Gov. George Pataki. The donation was all the more unusual because regulators like Spitzer have not been kind to the Davis clan. Davis, his family, and his investment firms have been the subject of numerous investigations, lawsuits, and fines over the past four decades.

For most politicians, such a donation wouldn't even be noticed. But Spitzer's political capital rests on his reputation as a crusader. And that is a problem for his fundraisers. As one of the most aggressive law enforcement officials in the country, Spitzer can barely swing a stick without hitting someone whose business, like Davis's, might fall under his legal purview. Since winning election as New York's attorney general in 1998, Spitzer has investigated brokerage firms, mutual funds, insurance companies, drug companies, real-estate developers, Internet spammers, and private utilities, just to name a few.

Ponying up. Meanwhile, his campaign has received donations from members of nearly all these groups. And, on occasion, conflicts have arisen. Last year, the campaign returned two $5,000 donations--one from KPMG, the other from American International Group--because each company became the subject of an investigation by Spitzer's office.

Declining donations from people who are under investigation by the attorney general's office is the Spitzer campaign's only hard and fast rule. But sticking to even this has proved tricky. Because campaign fundraisers don't know about investigations before they are announced, they have set up an Internet-alert system that flags every mention of Spitzer's office in the press. "Last week we saw he went after Simon [Property Group]," a campaign official says, adding that the campaign was just about to dial for dollars there.

Plenty of folks with good intentions want to give to Spitzer, who has raised nearly $8 million so far. Former Washington Capitals co-owner Jonathan Ledecky, who was the victim of a bank swindle, donated $25,000. But Spitzer's campaign is also attracting money from business interests whose motives seem a bit more calculating. James Featherstonhaugh and his lobbying firm, for example, gave Spitzer a campaign contribution two months after Spitzer and the state lobbying commission proposed prohibiting most forms of lobbying on government contracts. This is a lucrative area for top-shelf lobbyists like Featherstonhaugh, who has vowed to fight any new regulation.

Then there's Davis. In 2002, both his sons-in-law were convicted of securities fraud and collusion to fix the prices of several small-cap companies brought public by the Davis-controlled D. H. Blair Investment Banking Corp. As part of the scheme, brokers in a separate retail operation would pay a premium to buy back stock in the companies from important investors, usually celebrities or other wealthy individuals, then resell the stock to ordinary clients at artificially high prices. This retail arm, which Davis had sold to the two men, other family members, and some longtime employees, was shuttered after reaching a $4.3 million settlement with regulators. More recently, the New York Stock Exchange censured and fined Davis's firm $13,500 for violations. Although it remains unclear why Davis sent the attorney general's campaign the money, a Spitzer spokesman says that because of new information brought to his attention by U.S. News, "the contribution will be reconsidered."

This story appears in the February 28, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The Service Question
A review of President Bush's Guard years raises issues about the time he served
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 9/12/04

Last February, White House spokesman Scott McClellan held aloft sections of President Bush's military record, declaring to the waiting press that the files "clearly document the president fulfilling his duties in the National Guard." Case closed, he said.

But last week the controversy reared up once again, as several news outlets, including U.S. News, disclosed new information casting doubt on White House claims.

A review of the regulations governing Bush's Guard service during the Vietnam War shows that the White House used an inappropriate--and less stringent--Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled his duty. Because Bush signed a six-year "military service obligation," he was required to attend at least 44 inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year beginning July 1. But Bush's own records show that he fell short of that requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12 in the 1973-74 period. The White House has said that Bush's service should be calculated using 12-month periods beginning on his induction date in May 1968. Using this time frame, however, Bush still fails the Air Force obligation standard.

Moreover, White House officials say, Bush should be judged on whether he attended enough drills to count toward retirement. They say he accumulated sufficient points under this grading system. Yet, even using their method, which some military experts say is incorrect, U.S. News 's analysis shows that Bush once again fell short. His military records reveal that he failed to attend enough active-duty training and weekend drills to gain the 50 points necessary to count his final year toward retirement.

The U.S. News analysis also showed that during the final two years of his obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force regulations that impose a time limit on making up missed drills. What's more, he apparently never made up five months of drills he missed in 1972, contrary to assertions by the administration. White House officials did not respond to the analysis last week but emphasized that Bush had "served honorably."

Some experts say they remain mystified as to how Bush obtained an honorable discharge. Lawrence Korb, a former top Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, says the military records clearly show that Bush "had not fulfilled his obligation" and "should have been called to active duty."

Bush signed his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968, shortly after becoming eligible for the draft. In his "statement of understanding," he acknowledged that "satisfactory participation" included attending "48 scheduled inactive-duty training periods" each year. He also acknowledged that he could be ordered to active duty if he failed to meet these requirements.

Slump. Bush's records show that he did his duty for much of the first four years of his commitment. But as the Vietnam War wound down, his performance slumped, and his attendance at required drills fell off markedly. He did no drills for one five-month period in 1972. He also missed his flight physical. By May 2, 1973, his superiors said they could not evaluate his performance because he "has not been observed."

Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a retired Air Force colonel who originally certified the White House position that Bush had completed his military obligation, stood by his analysis. After a reporter cited pertinent Air Force regulations from the period, he complained that if the entire unit were judged by such standards, "90 percent of the people in the Guard would not have made satisfactory participation."

Some other experts disagree. "There is no 'sometimes we have compliance and sometimes we don't,' " says Scott Silliman, a retired Air Force colonel and Duke University law professor. "That is a nonsensical statement and an insult to the Guard to suggest it."

The regulations must be followed, adds James Currie, a retired colonel and author of an official history of the Army Reserve. "Clearly, if you were the average poor boy who got drafted and sent into the active force," he says, "they weren't going to let you out before you had completed your obligation."

With Edward T. Pound

This story appears in the September 20, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

All in the Family
Connecting the dots between an Alaska senator, his kin, and some fat U.S. contracts
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 11/28/04

Senate staffers meet with constituents all the time. But in some cases, maybe they shouldn't. Last month, staffers for Alaska Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski summoned officials from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to a meeting in Murkowski's Senate office to discuss awarding a multimillion-dollar, sole-source contract to Chenega Corp., an Alaska Native firm that is represented by Stevens's brother-in-law.

The contract is to provide logistics support for about 13,000 baggage and checkpoint scanners at 450 of the nation's airports. The contract's exact value has been classified by the TSA, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security. The TSA had been preparing to put the contract out for competitive bids next month, government officials say, but about two weeks after the October 19 meeting in Murkowski's office, homeland security officials put that process on hold. A homeland security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the department had instructed TSA contract officials to consider "other alternatives" to an open bidding process.

Department officials told U.S. News that the only alternative now being considered is to award the contract to a Chenega subsidiary, Chenega Technology Services Corp. Stevens's brother-in-law, William Bittner, a partner in the lobbying and law firm of Birch, Horton, Bittner & Cherot, has acted as a financial adviser to Stevens. He also represents a number of Alaska Native corporations, including Chenega. The company, which has paid Bittner $40,000 so far this year, said it did not use him in this case. Bittner did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Stevens, in an interview, acknowledged talking to Bittner about some of the lobbyist's Alaskan clients. But he said he had no knowledge of the meeting in Murkowski's office until a week ago and added that he believes it was set up by her staff. "I want you to know that I never had any involvement at all," the senator said. "One member of my staff attended the meeting without my knowledge. . . . I'm happy to take an oath."

Stevens, who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, said his staff has been instructed not to advocate for specific constituents in gaining sole-source contracts, but he added that he did not believe the staff member involved did anything improper by attending the October 19 meeting. Chuck Kleeschulte, a spokesman for Murkowski, says the meeting was of the sort his office conducts all the time on behalf of constituents who are having trouble navigating the Washington bureaucracy. Kleeschulte later listed several Alaska Native firms that had gotten Murkowski's office to hold "informational meetings" with agencies to discuss each firm's interest in specific contracts. Jeff Hueners, the CEO of Chenega, said his company first sought help from the two Alaska senators after "getting the impression that [TSA] was going to go down their own procurement path." Hueners added that it is sometimes difficult to "get the attention" of contracting officials without bringing them to "such a forum." "We thought they should look at Chenega Technology's option to sole-source it [because] we had just stood up an operation that was analogous in scope for Customs and Border Protection, a sister department," Hueners said. "We thought there were clearly some synergies, both in terms of cost savings and operations efficiencies."
TSA officials declined to provide details of the meeting in Murkowski's office. Amy von Walter, a TSA spokeswoman, said: "The senators wanted to ensure Chenega's proposal would be evaluated during the procurement process. We advised that we will follow applicable procurement procedures." She then referred all other questions to Stevens's office, which she said made the original request for TSA contracting and legislative affairs officials to attend the meeting.

$15,000 an acre. The TSA contract sought by Chenega wouldn't be the first awarded to the firm on a sole-source basis by Washington. Hueners estimated that of the 60 or so federal contracts that Chenega is the prime contractor on, only about six have been competitively bid. The Customs and Border Protection contract cited by Hueners is valued at $500 million. Several other firms that had planned to compete were unhappy about the sole-source award to Chenega.

Stevens has been the subject of criticism for his advocacy of these Alaska Native corporations (whose shareholders must be Native Alaskans but whose employees need not be) because he and his family have business relationships with some of them. The Los Angeles Times reported in December that one large Alaska Native corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corp., pays $6 million a year for a 20-year lease at an office tower in Anchorage that is owned by Stevens and a few other partners. Stevens was also instrumental in Chenega Corp. and Arctic Slope's jointly receiving a $2.2 billion sole-source contract from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in 2001. The companies used $2 million stuck into the omnibus spending bill to prepare their proposal. According to published reports quoting agency officials, the money had been inserted after agency officials discussed with Stevens their interest in contracting with an Alaska Native firm. More recently, Stevens was criticized for inserting up to $2.5 million into the Defense Department spending bill, with the money earmarked to pay the family of Jacob Adams, the president of Arctic Slope, $15,000 an acre for one 160-acre tract contaminated by the Air Force. Asked by U.S. News of the status of this payment, Stevens's spokeswoman, Courtney Schikora, said that another appraisal had been sought and that the wording of the bill had been changed. Stevens's son, Ben Stevens, is a state senator in Alaska. But he also runs a consulting firm that is employed by Alaska Native firms, such as Cook Inlet Region Inc. That company, which has benefited financially from legislation backed by his father in Washington, paid Ben Stevens $145,854 in 2002, according to financial disclosure filings with the Alaska Public Offices Commission.

Sometimes called "Stevens Act" corporations, the Alaska Native firms, as a result of Stevens-sponsored legislation, have an important edge in winning federal contracts because they do not have to bid on them competitively. Chenega, as a result, is now ranked as one of the fastest-growing government contractors in the United States. Its revenues have increased 10-fold since 2001.

Asked if his relationship to both Alaska Native corporations and to those representing them before the Appropriations Committee might be of concern, Stevens said absolutely not. "There is hardly anyone in Alaska that does not intersect with me," he says, "because I am a senior senator in Alaska. One is my brother-in-law; one is my son. What are they supposed to do, drop anything I have business with? I have talked to people that Bill Bittner has brought to my office on various matters. There is nothing illegal about that."

With Edward T. Pound

The Mayor and The Mob
New book says Giuliani has thuggish family ties
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 7/9/00

Rudolph Giuliani probably thought the scandalmongers had moved on. No one seemed to care much anymore about those candlelit dinners with his "good friend" Judith Nathan or that messy brawl of a separation from his actor wife. He was out of the Senate race, out of the spotlight, curing his prostate cancer in about as much obscurity as any New York City mayor had ever known.

But the latest skeleton has come out of his closet like a banshee from hell. The headlines tell it all: "Rudy Book Bombshell: HIS MOB KIN," "Rudy's Dad A Sing Sing Con? . . . ," "Thug Life." That's right, the former mob prosecutor now famous for cleaning up New York's streets comes from felon stock. According to a new book, Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudy Giuliani, the mayor's deceased father was a stickup artist who robbed a milkman at gunpoint, then took over as muscle for a relative's loan-sharking business once he was sprung from prison. Other news: Giuliani's cousin, Steve the Blond, was a mobster shot dead by the feds.

No comment. The usually talkative mayor has refused to discuss his family past in any detail, noting only that he loved his father very much. And no one thinks that the revelations cast any shadow on Giuliani's law-and-order legacy. Some have noted that if Giuliani's wish to abolish most parole had come true in his father's time, Harold Giuliani would have done a substantially longer prison term.

However, many are finding a bit of hypocrisy in the mayor's view that his relatives' bad deeds should die with them. After all, it was Giuliani and his police commissioner, Howard Safir, who released the details of Patrick Dorismond's sealed juvenile record after he was killed in a questionable police shooting earlier this year. And how does the latest installment of Giuliani family lore jibe with the idyllic childhood he has long laid out for the public? The book's author, Wayne Barrett, says, "The greatest revelation here is that a man with so much reason to have understanding and empathy has been so intolerant of the weakness of others."

One of his most persistent critics, defense lawyer Ronald Kuby, connected the personal to the political, saying that Giuliani may be working out his familial tensions on the backs of Gotham's citizens. "Those of us who have been Rudy watchers have tried to understand his reflexive support of the police even when their conduct was really indefensible," he says. "It would be a shame to think that the city is in the grip of a brutal police force merely because the mayor is attempting to exorcise the demons of his childhood." With America's most entertaining mayor, anything seems possible.

This story appears in the July 17, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

What Next? for Some, It's Back to Bush
The McCainanites
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 3/12/00

WARSAW, N.Y.--Up in rural Wyoming County, 40 miles from the Canadian border, Tom Moran tells the story of hunting a big old bear that got away. He took his shot, drew blood, but brought nothing home. The vision of that bear was clear last Tuesday night as Moran sat at Smitty's Amber Lantern --his temporary McCain 2000 headquarters up here--sipping on a Coors Light with other supporters and watching the dream of a presidency slip away.

It was one of those pivotal moments in American politics where a big disappointment was quickly overtaken by a big question: What will Moran, and the millions of McCain supporters like him, do next? This had also been Ross Perot country, but Moran said they wouldn't spoil George W. Bush's party. All Perot got them was a Democrat in the White House.

The former head of the Wyoming County Board of Supervisors and a nearly lifelong Republican, Moran fought hard for McCain and his Straight Talk Express. He walked and talked his way throughout this heavily Republican area of dairy farms, small towns, and blanketing forest.

The crusaders. A 51-year-old retired railroad worker, Moran had done it for "the honorable man" from Arizona. Moran and his volunteers set out to call nearly 58,000 people. They didn't have phone banks or even a headquarters, unless you counted the saloons. There were genuine tears when the results came in.

"There goes the last American hero," said Duane White, 57, of candidate McCain. A retired hospital maintenance worker whose son had just finished his second tour in Bosnia, White shook his head, his voice cracking: "This night has been really hard."

These were the supporters who braved the cold at Rochester's Vietnam memorial to see McCain standing almost alone as he railed against the system of big-government pork. They spoke of him like family, and they understood when he termed the race his "last mission." McCain had captured not just their minds but their hearts.

Upstate Bush supporters didn't always reflect the same passion. Asked why she supported Bush, Alexia Machelor, treasurer of the Erie County Young Republicans, shot back: "Because Governor [George] Pataki said we should."

Bob Seger was wailing on the Amber Lantern's jukebox as Moran watched the hand-painted McCain 2000 signs coming down around the bar. Moran took another sip from his beer and made the announcement. "We fought a good fight," he said. "Now we got to make some `Bush for President' signs and get them up. George W.'s gonna have to be our man."

The next day he was back at his computer, sending out E-mails. The troops would have to be rallied one more time. They would try for an imperfect victory to stave off a perfect defeat.

This story appears in the March 20, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The First Lady Finishes in a Historic First
Senator Clinton
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 11/12/00

NEW YORK--Several years ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton called an old friend in Arkansas to express her condolences over the death of the woman's father. But the conversation soon turned to the first lady's own trials and tribulations. How, pal Ann Henry asked, had she dealt with the constant criticism? "I soldier on," Henry recalls her saying.

It's this attitude, friends say, that kept Hillary Clinton afloat and moving through Whitewater, Travelgate, l'affaire Lewinsky, and the other Clinton travails. It's what kept her Teflon smile in place during the sniping about her hairstyles, and it accounts for her loyalty to her husband. It's also what enabled her to move beyond all that and endure a grueling 16-month campaign to become the only first lady ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Friends and enemies. "I am profoundly grateful to all of you for giving me the chance to serve you," Clinton told supporters after her GOP opponent, Long Island Rep. Rick Lazio, conceded the New York race to her. "I am determined to make a difference for all of you," she added, husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, beaming proudly by her side. Unspoken was the fact that, once again, the Clintons were fortunate in their enemies.

Hillary's friends, and even some of her enemies, were amazed that the first lady ever decided to run for Daniel Patrick Moynihan's storied Senate seat. It wasn't that she didn't have the drive, but why continue to subject herself to the scrutiny of public life? When she was forced to the forefront, it had rarely been a pretty sight. Who could forget the trouncing she got when leading the Clinton administration's bid at healthcare reform? And her 1992 appearance beside Bill on 60 Minutes to discuss Gennifer Flowers. "I never thought about her running," says David Leopoulos, a longtime Clinton friend, "not because she wasn't capable but because she was always so supportive of, well, Bill."

From the beginning the race had been about her. Feisty New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, 56, ran what often seemed more a holy war against the Clinton legacy than a Senate contest. When he dropped out nine months later, Lazio picked up the mantle. But the boyish-looking Lazio, 42, couldn't stop stumbling--literally: He began the race by falling on his face during a Brooklyn parade and ended it stepping into dog droppings on his way to vote. Lazio campaigned so badly, says pollster John Zogby, that "people began to see him as the carpetbagger."

The Republican spent most of the campaign slamming Clinton; she mostly stuck to the issues. Her patience paid off: During the last lap, Lazio's campaign seemed to simply run out of steam. But as his campaign petered out, Clinton blithely avoided the political potshots and catcalls as she roamed the Empire State trolling for votes. No town seemed too small or too hostile. "I don't give up," she told New Yorkers. "That's not my way. When I tell you I'll stick by you, then I'll stick by you." In the end, the voters in her adopted state repaid her with a decisive 55 to 43 percent victory.

And now, amazingly, the freshman senator has a chance to be a significant force in what will be an unpredictably fractious Senate. Had she been facing Republican dominance, she might have been a backbencher who couldn't get her phone calls returned. But one more time, the Clintons' opponents have accommodated them.

This story appears in the November 20, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Face-Off in Buffalo: and the Winner Is . . .
Two stumbling campaigns pick up steam
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 9/17/00

BUFFALO, N.Y.--Rick Lazio's smile is bright, his banter quick after striding from the podium. He has the rakish look of someone who thinks he's a winner. What he has done is swap chinos for a blue suit, youthful cockiness for senatorial confidence, and weathered a 60-minute televised debate against his Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton with only a minor gaffe. And considering that he's not the one cast as a "carpetbagger," it's unlikely New Yorkers will care much that he capped his performance by misquoting a legend of Yankees baseball. Most important, the 42-year-old candidate survived to campaign another day in New York's tight Senate race, something even members of his own party were beginning to doubt he could do after more than a month of slow starts, missed opportunities, and embarrassing flubs.

Most analysts are calling the debate a draw, noting that each candidate scored points during the showdown. Clinton came off as confident and strong, refusing to buckle even in the face of embarrassing questions about her husband's affair . The Lewinsky scandal was a "very painful time for me, my family, and the whole country," she said, adding "obviously I didn't mislead anyone; I didn't know the truth. And there's a great deal of pain associated with that."

Bully pulpit. Lazio, meanwhile, aggressively beat back Clinton's charges that he's a pawn of the Republican right--most notably former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And, in perhaps the debate's most memorable--if staged--moment, he managed to temporarily knock his well-rehearsed foe off her political pedestal when he strode over and challenged her to sign a pledge swearing off "soft money" campaign contributions. The first lady said she wouldn't until outside conservative groups also pledged to stay out of the race. The stunt got mixed reviews. A second grader at a Lazio campaign stop the following day asked why he was "fighting with" Mrs. Clinton. The move also didn't sit well with Kathy Olander, 48, an undecided voter in Niagara Falls, who said he came off as "too demanding." But try telling that to Lazio staffers, who proudly gushed to reporters that undecided and Democratic voters were calling in droves to join up when the debate wrapped.

And not a moment too soon. After an early lead in the polls, Lazio was trailing Clinton just before the face-off. Not exactly what GOP-ers had envisioned when grouchy New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani dropped out of the race in May. Unlike Guiliani, who often sparred with upstate conservatives and Big Apple liberals, Lazio seemed to get along with everybody. But he ran into trouble as the race dragged on. Presidential hopeful George W. Bush's yawning gap in New York polls hasn't helped. But many of the problems have been Lazio's own doing. It didn't seem very senatorial, for instance, to whoosh down an amusement-park slide for the TV cameras or to critique the sausage at the state fair. Not to mention attacking his opponent for hugging Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, when he had given the PLO leader an enthusiastic handshake just two years before (a greeting captured on film and released by the White House).

Fellow Republicans began grumbling. Lazio was lazy, they grumped, and wasted time prattling on about taxes and campaign reform when New Yorkers were clamoring for better schools and health care. "Whatever advantage he came with has evaporated and it's been giving me agita because I've got 10 Republicans running under him," said political consultant Norman Adler just days before the debate. "He's gone negative without building [his own] image, even though I doubt there is anything he could say about Clinton that those who don't like her don't already know." A well-placed upstate Republican put it more bluntly: "He's tanking and if Hillary hadn't had such high negatives, this race would have been over a long time ago."

Pols say the key for both candidates now is their ability to tap into New York's dwindling pool of undecided voters. The way to do that? Lose the "finger pointing," "slamming" and "he said, she said," says Olander, part owner of Three Sisters Trading Post in Niagara Falls. "What matters is what they will do for the state. I just wish they would get to the point."

This story appears in the September 25, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Lazio: a Fast Start for a Fresh Face
He brings more than meets the eye to N.Y. race
By Roger Simon and Kit R. Roane
Posted 5/28/00

Last week hardly anybody knew his name. "Rick Lazio," David Letterman mused, "one day you're a busboy at Olive Garden and the next you're running for the Senate against Hillary Clinton." But today? Today Lazio is in a virtual dead heat with Clinton, according to one poll. "Can you believe it has only been a week?" Lazio says into a cell phone aboard the Staten Island ferry. He then explains why voters will overlook Hillary's star power for a four-term congressman from untrendy Suffolk County: "What has she done in the last eight years for New York? Can anyone remember one instance when she used her considerable influence with the administration to stand up for New York? I can't."

The fresh-faced Lazio has been called a "42-year-old Cub Scout" and a "soccer dad." But beneath the surface, some say, there may be more surface. Lazio has built a career on being inoffensive, on placing constituent needs above ideological crusades, and by courting the favor of the House leadership. And Hillary quickly went to work on Lazio for the last. "The facts are that he was closely allied those years with the leadership in Congress, and, I think, New Yorkers need to know that," she said. Or, as former White House aide Paul Begala put it, Lazio "was a total butt boy for [Newt] Gingrich the whole time he was in the Congress."

Lazio sees it as a matter of get-along, go-along politics. "I had and have a very good working relationship with the leaders," he told U.S. News. "If you want to deliver for New York and protect New York's interests, you don't have a relationship that alienates people who determine whether your voice is heard or your bills get to the floor." And Lazio knows how to use his boyish charm. "He cajoles, he'll grab your arm, he'll make a joke," says Ed Gillespie, a former aide to the Republican leadership and now a party strategist. "He is not confrontational, but not overly deferential either. He knew he was in a position of strength because when he got to Congress he was kind of a star because he picked off Tom Downey."

Downey was serving his ninth term in 1992, had raised $1.4 million to Lazio's $276,000, and was 22 points up in the polls. Lazio chewed him up. "They were just starting push polls," says Howard DeMartini, chairman of the Suffolk County Republicans at the time, "and we asked, 'If the election were held today and you knew Downey had bounced 150 checks at the House bank, that his wife was the auditor of the bank, that he had taken junkets to Barbados and voted to raise taxes, who would you vote for?' " Lazio won by 6 percentage points. So for all the chatter about how the New York Senate campaign will now be about issues instead of personalities, the Democrats are girding for a personal and negative bout. "Unlike [New York Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani, Lazio wants the job," says a senior adviser to Hillary. "Giuliani was lethargic; Lazio is not. He is an energetic, slippery guy who knows how to throw mud. We are taking him very, very seriously."

Mostly moderate. While Lazio has worked hard to assemble a middle-of-the-road voting record--pro-abortion rights, but against "partial-birth" abortions, for example--some insist that the only thing you find in the middle of the road is a yellow stripe. "He is ambitious and cautious," says Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank. "I call him the kind of guy who will bring you ice in winter: When supporting you doesn't count, he'll support you. I have never seen Rick defy the [GOP] leadership, but you can work with him. He's a reasonable man."

"I dislike shorthand labels," Lazio says in his defense. "On fiscal issues, on national security, I'm right of center. On other issues like the environment, the homeless, the disabled, and support for the arts, I'm mainstream."

Those commentators who quickly decided he would be a stronger candidate than Giuliani because he lacks Giuliani's negatives, forgot that he also lacks Giuliani's positives, most importantly Giuliani's support in New York City. Giuliani would have taken votes away from Hillary Clinton in the city, forcing her to make up those votes elsewhere. Lazio cannot expect to draw the same city support, leaving Hillary with a more traditional race. "Now, all she has to do is what Democrats usually do to win the state," one Democratic adviser says. "Win big in New York City and hold her own elsewhere."

Still, Lazio is not the lightning rod that either Giuliani was or Hillary still is. It could well turn out that after several years of political tumult, voters decide that bland is beautiful.

A New Foe for Hillary
Rudy's out. Enter cast of wannabes
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 5/21/00

NEW YORK--Will he or won't he? For weeks, that was the question. Everything else--the separation from his wife, the dinners with his "very good friend," the diagnosis of prostate cancer--was framed by the same query. Then on a rainy afternoon last Friday, the mayor of New York finally gave his answer. Rudy Giuliani, the tough former prosecutor and tenacious pol, was bowing out of the United States Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Before it had ever really begun, the death match was over. The mantle had been dropped. The mayor needed to concentrate on getting well, on putting his complicated family life back in order. Politics would simply have to wait. And Giuliani couldn't even say for how long. "I've decided that what I should do is to put my health first, and that I should devote my focus and attention to being able to figure out the best treatment and not running for office," he said at an emotional press conference. "This is not the right time for me." His illness had made him realize, he said, that "politics . . . isn't as important as I thought it was."

But in leaving the contest, the mayor raises a bunch of fascinating questions. How will this change the way Hillary runs? Clearly, his departure changes the odds, but how, and by how much? And what will Rudy do now with his $9 million war chest? For Republicans, of course, the most important question is who's left on the bench who can beat the first lady this late in the game?

The anointed? There's no shortage of eager wannabes. The state's Republican convention is on May 30, and there'll be plenty of frantic scrambling between now and then. Rep. Peter King of Long Island didn't even wait for Giuliani's press conference before announcing his interest. Rep. Jack Quinn of Buffalo had been nosing around for GOP backers for at least a week. Rep. Rick Lazio--the front-runner, at least for now--has been waiting in the wings for months. Right after the mayor's announcement, he confirmed his entry into the fray.

Publicly, Republican leaders say they haven't made up their minds, that there are a lot of strong candidates. "The main objective is to beat Hillary, and we definitely can still do that," says Dan Allen, a spokesman for the state's Republican committee. But privately, GOP strategists say the party leadership is already uniting behind Lazio. And he certainly seems to think he's the annointed one. Not long after Giuliani's announcement, Lazio issued a statement saying he "will be a candidate for the United States Senate," adding that he is "the strongest Republican candidate, and the Republican who is best able to unite our party and defeat Hillary Clinton in November."

For what it's worth, many of the political cognoscenti agree. Italian-American and Catholic in a state where Catholics make up more than 40 percent of the voter turnout in general elections, Lazio starts with a strong base. The 42-year-old congressman is socially conservative and supports tax cuts, making him a favorite of the state's influential Conservative Party. And while he's against "partial-birth" abortion, he's otherwise an abortion-rights supporter and backs gun control, giving many Democrats--especially those reluctant to support Clinton--something to like as well. In many ways, Lazio is the best of Giuliani without the baggage, says Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who once made television commercials for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. "The hot-button negatives just don't exist with this guy, and it's hard to put him in the right-wing box," Sheinkopf explains. "This is not the best day Hillary Clinton ever had."
Rudy's money. But Lazio still has a tough road ahead. He's not nearly as well known in the state as the explosive and colorful Giuliani, although he has made inroads over the past year. And so far, he has only $3.5 million to bankroll his run against the well-funded, highflying Clinton campaign. That's about $12 million short of what it will take to win, GOP analysts say. Lazio will probably receive a fair amount of contributions from out-of-state conservatives, just as Giuliani did. But the quickest source of funds--from Giuliani's campaign coffers--may never materialize. That's because federal law prohibits Giuliani from directly giving Lazio more than $2,000 of the $9 million in campaign funds he has left over. The law could be skirted by giving the money to the Republican Party, which could then spend it on Lazio's behalf. But while the mayor said Friday that he would support his party and its candidate in any way possible, he has made no mention of turning over all or part of the money he has piled up. Giuliani could keep most of it for a future run at the governor's seat in 2002, a political position he has always coveted.

For all Lazio's pluses, the combination of no money and not much money could be fatal. "Rudy Giuliani was a star, the way Mrs. Clinton is," says Norman Adler, president of the political consulting firm of Bolton St. Johns Inc. "But Rick Lazio is, well, a light bulb."

Maybe. But it's unclear how brightly he will shine with voters. Even as Clinton was wishing the mayor well with his cancer treatment, her advisers were noting that Lazio had been in their sights for weeks and that they had even conducted private polls to see how the two would stack up. Lazio, they say, lags far behind the first lady, and she is generally pleased that he'll likely be the mayor's replacement. Clinton will no longer have to battle the mayor's long record of achievement and strong poll numbers in New York City, and she won't have to deal with the sympathy that the news he had cancer was sure to generate for his candidacy. After all, she failed to improve her poll numbers even after the mayor said he was separating from his wife and was photographed having dinner with another woman, his "very good friend," Judith Nathan.

In any case, Giuliani's absence from the race does sort of simplify things for the first lady. Some of Mrs. Clinton's friends say she was unhappy with the prospect of having to deal with his messy marital situation, which would remind voters of Mrs. Clinton's troubled relationship with her husband and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Talking points. While a senior strategist for the first lady concedes that Lazio is "a fresh face" who can shape his own image with the state's voters, that also means the Clinton campaign has a chance to shape his image as well. Claiming that Lazio voted with Newt Gingrich 83 percent of the time, Clinton's advisers say they will try to make a convincing case that he is a right-wing extremist, a Gingrich clone.
Hillary's talking points for the attack include this riff: Lazio voted for big GOP tax cuts in education; against the patient's bill of rights, and for shutting down the government in Gingrich's showdown with President Clinton several years ago. "It will be easy to nationalize the election now," says one senior adviser.

None of this is much of a concern now for Giuliani, whom voters have watched morph from a pit bull to a compassionate conservative over the past three weeks. It would have been out of character for the pre-cancer Giuliani to apologize, to say he had been too hard or not evenhanded. This was the mayor who arrested the homeless, sued a museum, and bulldozed community gardens--a tough guy whose sharp edges sometimes turned off voters. But last week, at a nationally televised town hall meeting, Giuliani was talking about the "old me and the new me," and apologizing for his handling of a recent police shooting. If he could do it over again, he "would have tried to have balanced it more," the mayor said. But "you don't get to do things over." A day later, announcing his withdrawal, he was at it again, talking about his "deep passion" and "love" for the people of New York City. Amazingly, the new Rudy sounded precisely like the kind of Republican who could melt the hearts of voters. The odd thing, of course, was that he wasn't running anymore.

With Kenneth T. Walsh and Marianne Lavelle

Lovesick in New York
Are Rudy Giuliani's marriage--and his campaign--over?
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 5/14/00

NEW YORK--The days just keep getting longer for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. His poll numbers have dropped because people think he's too mean. He's been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Journalists have exposed his cozy brunches with a mysterious divorcee on the Upper East Side. And now, with the state Republican primary only weeks away, the mayor has officially--and very publicly--told the world that he wants to legally separate from his wife of 16 years, actress Donna Hanover.

"We've grown independent; we've grown more separate over the years," Giuliani, looking pale and gaunt, explained to reporters last week. "Who knows why those things happen."

The mayor, 55, said he was discussing his troubled marriage and its latest wrinkle because of the media's suddenly intense scrutiny of his relationship with Judith Nathan, a 45-year-old pharmaceutical executive he has described only as "a very good friend." The news came as a surprise to New Yorkers, among them his wife, who, all being fair in love and war, tearfully dropped a bombshell of her own a few hours later. Nathan had not been the first woman to disrupt her home life, Hanover said, her quavering voice a mix of anger and frustration. Long before there was "his relationship with one staff member."

The mayor had attempted to frame his familial difficulties within a context that would be easily understandable and perhaps sympathetically accepted by voters. This was a relationship that, despite good intentions and hard work, had frayed too much at the seams, and now he wanted to deal with its end "honestly and directly" for the good of his two children and "Donna." He wanted to contain the damage to their lives. But Hanover, 50, didn't follow the script. This was Rudy's midlife crisis, she said, and she was the one who "made the major effort" despite his philandering, the one who until the mayor's press conference "had hoped that we could keep this marriage together." Giuliani was the one, she said, who inexplicably "chose another path."

"Great actress." The mayor's campaign staff, many of whom had been kept in the dark about his announcement, knew something had gone awfully wrong. The news of Giuliani's battle with prostate cancer already had pundits speculating that he would drop out of New York's U.S. Senate race, leaving a lesser known Republican knight to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton and the "new Democrat" empire. Now some Republican strategists were saying he might have to bow out after his wife's performance, which was "wonderfully done but certainly not designed to help him," in the eyes of one GOP insider. "She's certainly a great actress," he added.

Staffers say Hanover should have seen it coming, that the mayor's new relationship wasn't just a fling. They offered to help reporters find top Republicans who supported the mayor and they talked up a small-survey telephone poll that showed the news was a dud with voters. Some constituents like Caroline Flugel, a 29-year-old home health aide from upstate, agreed. "Who he sleeps with isn't any of my business," she insisted. A New York City cop sniped, "Even a dead rat would get my vote over Hillary." (And he was still fuming about the mayor's refusal to accept his union's pay demands.)
But the pros, pollsters like Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute, say the revelations of Giuliani's affair and his wife's response hurt his chances in the Senate race. The question is, how much?

Carroll and others note that one of Giuliani's strong points as a candidate had been his ability to successfully court the usually Democratic-leaning white female vote and at the same time beat Clinton with traditionally conservative groups, such as Catholics, who account for more than 40 percent of statewide voter turnout. Now both groups are up in the air. As Republican consultant Jay Severin put it: "This was a manageable problem, something everyone could relate to. But she went negative, went public and went into sobs, and turned this into a soap opera that cast Rudy as the villain. Now he's every suburban soccer mom's nightmare."

And Big Apple scribes showed no interest in letting that nightmare end prematurely. What had always been a minor tittering on the gossip pages of the city's tabloids exploded into national news. Hanover had provided just enough powder with her thinly veiled reference to Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas, the mayor's 35-year-old former communications director. When reporters had questioned their close friendship three years ago, both of them had denied any impropriety. The mayor dismissed the charges as "malicious trash." And when Lategano-Nicholas, now married to a sportswriter, was asked anew at her new job as head of the city's Convention and Visitor's Bureau, she again pooh-poohed the rumors. She had, she said, "no desire to speculate on why Donna Hanover issued the statement that she did."

But the media was dug in. The New York Post headlined the saga, "Bitter Tears," adding "Donna's pals: She struggled to save marriage to cheating Rudy." The Daily News ran an interview with Gail Sheehy, author of the Clinton biography Hillary's Choice, in which she psychologically deconstructed the mayor's behavior, and called him "very conflicted and emotionally detached."

Looking for skeletons. Some reporters began fishing around for other skeletons in the mayor's past; pundits good-naturedly grumped at having to field telephone calls from print reporters during commercial breaks in radio and television shows. About the only one not yapping about the affair was Clinton (box), although her husband, President Bill Clinton--no stranger to such matters--did send his regards from the White House Rose Garden, wishing Giuliani and his family well "on the health front and on the domestic front."

Nobody at the mayor's daily press conferences seemed to care much about the candidate's health anymore. Reporters were only interested in his relationship with Lategano-Nicholas. Why would the mayor's wife have said such a thing? And, wasn't it curious that his former press secretary now headed the city's tourism bureau, despite having little experience for such a job. "I've said everything I was going to say about that long ago," the mayor snapped in an attempt to cut off the media drilling. But the battering went on and on, sending the newly sensitive Giuliani back into attack mode.
"Get out of here; get lost," he barked, his face screwed tight as a spring. "Don't you guys have the slightest bit of decency? Do you realize that you embarrass yourself doing this . . . in the eyes of just about everybody."

But the questions kept coming, while possible Republican upstarts seemed to multiply daily in the wings. Gov. George Pataki seems unlikely to run, but Long Island Congressman Rick Lazio has been eager to enter for some time--"foaming at the mouth" as one Republican insider put it. Now there is also Theodore J. Forstmann, a dark horse Wall Street billionaire whose greatest asset is his ability to foot the bill for his own campaign, and there's talk of congressmen Peter King of Long Island and Jack Quinn of Buffalo testing the waters.

They all say they won't jump into the race while the mayor is still in pursuit of the crown. But all are jockeying for position. It didn't seem to matter that few voters have the vaguest idea of who they are and that most of their campaign coffers are bare compared with those of the first lady and the mayor.

As one aide explained privately, raising money would not be a problem for any candidate running against the Clinton name. Democratic consultants tend to agree: "The nation's Republican right wing won't give up trying to beat Hillary," says Hank Sheinkopf, who once produced campaign commercials for Bill Clinton. "She's their bogeyperson and they can't let her win."

So, will he or won't he? Republican insiders say the decision is coming this week. As for those who believe he's already (politically) dead--don't count on it, says Giuliani: "Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated."

Giuliani's Tough Choices
Cancer therapy and a campaign launch
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 4/30/00

NEW YORK--No one has ever accused New York City's mayor of being soft, vulnerable, or even nice. Rudolph W. Giuliani is combative. And most of all he's in control. So it was a shock last Thursday when he announced that he was being attacked by something so worrisome that it could possibly end his run for the United States Senate.

The culprit wasn't his Democratic challenger, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Or his recent drop in polls after the way he reacted to a questionable police shooting. Or even the sudden news from his wife, television personality Donna Hanover, that she would star in an off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues--a feminist rumination often attacked by the conservatives now funding his campaign. Giuliani appeared at a hurriedly called press conference to reveal he had prostate cancer. The news interrupted television broadcasts across the country, with one stunned commentator exclaiming "the bombshell just dropped."

The initial reaction--just before the political speculation became rampant--was an outpouring of sympathy, sometimes from surprising quarters. One usually antagonistic reporter told Giuliani that he was a cancer survivor and knew the mayor would lick the disease. The Rev. Al Sharpton said he wished the mayor luck, and Hillary Clinton maintained a moratorium on political attacks.

Early stages. Never one to groan, the mayor flatly told reporters at city hall that the disease had been caught in the very early stages and that he was otherwise in "completely perfect health." He added that his father had also been diagnosed with prostate cancer 30 years ago, "when the treatments didn't exist," and he lived until the age of 73. In a grasp at levity, he even answered a question as to whether he'd become more congenial with a gruff "no way." However, the big question was whether the cancer could spell an end to his Senate run. His initial reaction was genuine doubt: "I have no idea."

Even prior to the announcement, Giuliani sometimes seemed ambivalent about the race, canceling one upstate appearance to attend the Yankees home opener. And there has always been speculation that he would rather be New York's governor than its senator. After last Thursday, the whispers took on the volume of tabloid headlines: "Cancer Clouds Rudy Run." Pundits wrote him off, and his campaign office, despite desperate attempts, couldn't stop the hemorrhaging. As one Republican insider put it, the announcement was like "a gas leak" and nobody knew what to do.

Two deadlines. Whether or not Giuliani wants to run, it is clear that his diagnosis has complicated that decision. He now faces substantial medical and political choices--and little time to make up his mind. Giuliani said that it could take up to three weeks to determine what treatment option--radiation, hormones, or surgery--would give him the best chance at full recovery (box) and he made it clear this decision would come first.

That's not good news for the Republican Party, which will pick its Senate candidate--presumably Giuliani--on May 30 and would have to scramble to find a suitable replacement. Congressman Rick Lazio, from Long Island, is eager and well-funded, but has a lower statewide profile. If Giuliani is planning on running, he better speak up fast, chided Republican political analyst Jay Severin: "Everyone's looking at the sky to see how many vultures are circling. . . . He needs to put the firestorm out quickly if he wants to win."

Giuliani began to do that on Friday, saying that further tests found that the cancer had not spread past the prostate. Quashing the rumors he had fanned the day before, Giuliani said that he would only lighten his schedule for a couple of weeks in order to see his doctors. As far as the Senate race: "We're going full steam ahead," said Kim Serafin, a campaign spokeswoman. To prove it, she said Giuliani had just sent out a 2 million-piece campaign mailer and made a big purchase of television and radio ads. There was even evidence that his disease could work to his advantage by humanizing a frosty figure. Since the announcement, aides say he has sold out an upstate dinner while Internet fund-raising had gone from about $2,000 a day to $10,000.

But anyone who thought the mayor could hold a pose of vulnerability was soon disappointed. By week's end, he was back in attack mode, calling the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which recently released a draft report critical of the city's police department, "a joke" and accusing the chairwoman of being a political operative. "She's made campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton and every Democrat she could find," he said. "So excuse me if I don't take this commission seriously."

Giuliani, it seemed, was still to be taken quite seriously.

Strategic, or Stupid?
Another New York shooting, another political shoutfest
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 3/26/00

NEW YORK--There's never anything simple about New York politics. So when the mayor of the city steps up to the podium to defend his beleaguered police department, the only natural question is why? Is he playing to the right, the center? Upstate or down? Or is it just Rudy being Rudy? And is Hillary smarter just letting him be Rudy, or should she whack him in full public view?

The recent fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by undercover policemen has become the latest test case in the testiest and most contorted political race in America, the one with the candidates with no last names. It's prompting ferocious accusations by the candidates and their supporters--and quiet head scratching by their strategists as they try to assess a winner in the fracas. Left to make up their minds as to what it all means is the surprisingly small slice of New York voters who haven't picked sides yet.

It's doubtful the bickering mattered much to the family of Patrick Dorismond, a 26-year-old security guard who died March 16 after a confrontation with police outside a cocktail lounge. Apparently mistaking him for a drug dealer, an undercover officer approached Dorismond to buy drugs. The security guard was shot by another officer in an ensuing struggle. Who provoked the incident is under investigation.

At a Harlem church full of reporters, Hillary Clinton accused Mayor Rudy Giuliani of polarizing the city by implying that the Hispanic officer who killed Dorismond was an upstanding member of the force, while the dead security guard was perhaps a hotheaded criminal. The mayor, who had ordered the release of Dorismond's juvenile arrest record, swung into an unequivocal defense of the police. Clinton, the mayor charged, appeared to be "reading from a script provided by Al Sharpton." Neither she nor the press, he added, seemed able to accept that Dorismond had "spent a good deal of his adult life punching people."

Initially, Clinton seemed to get the better of the exchanges as even Republicans cringed at the mayor's purple rage. "His conduct is giving flesh to the unflattering and unjust caricature [some] wish to draw of the greatest mayor in this city's history as a heartless, thoughtless, and cruel man," wrote John Podhoretz in the New York Post. "The mayor is angry at Dorismond for getting himself killed instead of arrested," said Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer. The ubiquitous Jesse Jackson offered that Giuliani's reaction was "not just meanness; it's mental." But Clinton, who had been critical of New York's cops before, needed to be careful not to overplay her hand.

Standoff. There was calculation, of sorts, behind the outbursts. Giuliani was inflating his image as the mayor who beat crime into a corner, while Clinton hoped to reveal that she was the compassionate conciliator, the antithesis of the insensitive bully in City Hall. So it went, day after day, as both candidates attempted to wrest the upper hand in a superheated Senate race neither one of them seems to be winning. The tack each took in this fight was instructive: Even though polls show that only about 10 percent of voters are undecided at this early juncture, both candidates are having trouble where they shouldn't--among core constituencies. "Giuliani is not doing as well as a Republican should be doing upstate, and she is not doing nearly as well as a Democrat should be doing in the city," explains Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac College poll. "We're left with one of the damndest, most congealed, knotted-up races anyone has ever seen."
That was evident earlier this month as Giuliani, whose day job as mayor has limited his ability to campaign, made a foray north. As he unveiled a new commercial and pressed the flesh with upstate Republican leaders in Buffalo, Alice Hilary Sullivan laid into him with several friends. "What has he ever done for upstate?" she asked. "Mayor Giuliani is no more part of upstate than Hillary Clinton. He might as well be from New Jersey or New Zealand."

That's bad news for Giuliani, who despite spending millions on national fundraising letters that present him as an archconservative, is still having a hard time with votes in the conservative upstate region. There is just too much lingering distrust of anything that comes out of liberal Gotham, even a Republican mayor.

The shift of these voters into the enemy camp has led to surprising results on the campaign trail, where Democrats have pledged support for Giuliani and lifelong Republicans, such as 60-year-old Ben Snyder, are coming out for Clinton. Like many of his friends, Snyder said he was having a hard time resisting the woman with the terminal smile. "I came out because I thought it would be exciting to see the first lady and all the Secret Service," he said at one stop in Syracuse. "But I'm going to vote for her, too, because she's paying attention to upstate."

But it gets more complicated. The balance of power in New York often rests with an amalgam of third parties who have now been given some real power over the fates of these two candidates. "The tail wags the dog here," says independent pollster John Zogby.

How serious of a threat are some of these parties? Serious. Just consider that Grandpa Munster could be the deciding factor. That's Al Lewis, who played the part in the old television sitcom and is now running as the Green Party candidate for Senate. A recent poll by Zogby found him getting about 4 percent of the vote. "And they all appear to be coming off of Clinton's back," says Zogby. It's an indication of voter malaise, Zogby says. And he thinks the damage to Clinton could be even greater "if Lewis legally changes his name to Grandpa, which he says will happen before Election Day." Zogby is not joking.

While there has been much speculation about how independent-minded voters might sway the presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, it seems certain these voters will be an awesome force in New York, where state campaign laws allow candidates to run on several tickets at a time and where more than 20 percent of the state's 4.7 million voters have recently cast ballots on third-party lines. In a close race, some of New York's third parties can be kingmakers when they support a candidate and serious spoilers when they run their own. And this is a close race, says Democratic consultant Jerry Skurnick, adding that a win might hinge on "about 250,000 votes."
Among the power brokers are Mike Long, a Brooklyn liquor store owner, and Raymond Harding, a Manhattan lawyer. They lead New York's Conservative and Liberal parties, which have yet to endorse either candidate and together control about twice that winning margin. Traditionally, their preferences are pretty predictable. The Conservatives endorse the Republican, and the Liberals endorse the Democrat. But this year, these usual alliances have broken down because of Giuliani's peculiar political past. Seeking to beat incumbent Democratic mayor David Dinkins in 1993, Giuliani sought and won an endorsement from the Liberal Party by embracing abortion rights, gay rights, and other socially liberal causes. The party brought the Republican candidate more than 62,000 votes; he won by under 54,000.

Giuliani and the Liberal Party have been a pair ever since, even campaigning for Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo in his failed bid to vanquish Republican rival George Pataki in 1994. But Giuliani's relationship with the Liberal Party has irritated many conservatives, among them Governor Pataki, and his ally in that Brooklyn liquor store, Long. "In the end, Long will do what Pataki wants him to do," says a Republican insider. "The thing is, Pataki isn't quite sure yet what that is."

Tick-tock. Long is now threatening to steer about 350,000 votes that come with a Conservative endorsement out of the mayor's grasp. "The clock is ticking," Long says, adding that the mayor ignores his call to renounce both partial-birth abortion and the Liberal Party at his peril. The Conservative Party plans to announce a "truly conservative" candidate for U.S. Senate within the next three weeks, he says, noting that he is also talking with the state's Right to Life Party, which routinely gets over 50,000 votes on its ticket.

Meanwhile, Giuliani's ties to the Liberal Party have made it unlikely that its members will support Clinton, although the door, they say, "is still open." The Liberals typically draw about 100,000 voters to their line, and many of them come from the New York City area, where the first lady is having much of her trouble. At this month's St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan, she was greeted by a chorus of boos. Signs saying, "England get out of Ireland. Hillary get out of New York," and "Hillary: She doesn't bake cookies, she manufactures lies," punctuated some of the problems she is having in the Big Apple. Most disturbingly for her, they were being hoisted often by white women, a group usually seen as the first lady's biggest boosters.

Seeking endorsements. Faced with this dangerous terrain, both candidates are said to have felt out the possibility of an endorsement from the state's Independence Party--New York's version of the Reform Party--which has been riven by infighting but accounted for more than 364,000 votes in the 1998 gubernatorial election. The question is, however, which candidate would be more comfortable running on the same ticket as Pat Buchanan, the party's likely presidential candidate.

After a series of meetings that commenced last August, Clinton has pulled the new Working Families Party to her side. That party, which plans on endorsing her by this Monday, received just over 51,000 votes on its line in the 1998 gubernatorial election but is seen as a strong contender in the future due to its connection to many powerful labor unions in the state.
Will the shooting break the voter deadlock? Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac College poll, thinks it's still a preliminary skirmish. "It could be if it were two weeks before the election. But my guess is it will just reinforce the candidates' images. At this stage of the game, I don't think that this alone will make a difference for two candidates whose images are already so firmly impressed on people. For anything to make a drastic difference it would not only have to be drastic but also timed so that it is still in people's minds when they go to vote."

In other words, this being New York, the mood could change plenty between now and November. "The Mets could win the World Series," says Carroll. "Things happen. It's just hard to put your finger on it."

Hillary Parries the New York Press
Feeding the beast
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 1/16/00

She was quick. And sure. And full of yuks. The big thaw after a months-long freeze. The TV audience loved her. Cranky funnyman David Letterman rolled over. Nothing like a joke to break the tension. But was it enough to get the rest of the Big Apple's tenacious press off her back? And New York voters on her side in the U.S. Senate race?

Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearance on the Late Show last week, scripted with the help of Letterman's writers, may have helped soothe mounting criticism that she lacks the stomach for rough-and-tumble New York politics. And she may have charmed TV's late-night grinch. (Actually, it was Letterman who had the bad week: On Friday, he went to the hospital for emergency heart bypass surgery.) But the first lady still has to tame the rest of New York's wild media horde--a motley assortment that ranges from tabloid headline writers to insult-spewing radio host Don Imus. But even Imus seemed to have his breaking point: After he insisted "she's not going to appear on this program," by week's end, his staff had offered an invitation to the Clinton camp. Imus may have been motivated by a term all New Yorkers understand: box office. Clinton doubled Letterman's ratings.

The campaign's reaction to the invite from Imus--who has been a nasty critic of both Clintons--was a cautious "We'll see." Either way, Howard Wolfson, the first lady's spokesman, says she will continue to be available to the press. But New York scribes and pundits are skeptical. Some speculate the Letterman cameo was designed to steal the thunder from her sometimes surly but more accessible opponent, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who gave his State of the City address the following day. It also closely followed a statewide poll showing Clinton's positive rating at 48 percent, 20 points lower than it was last February. Perhaps more disturbing, she held only 35 percent of the white female vote, a 16 percent drop in this core constituency. "Clearly it has been a bumpy transition for Hillary from first lady and celebrity Clinton to candidate Clinton," says Lee Miringoff of the Marist Institute, which conducted the poll.

The tabs, for one, aren't letting up. "There are no Boy Scouts there" in the New York press corps, and "nobody hands anybody a Kleenex when it comes to politics," says political analyst Norman Adler. So if Clinton wants to be a senator, she had better get used to it, says former New York Post Editor Jerry Nachman, adding he's "surprised" she has gotten away with cherry- picking her way through the campaign so far.

"When she emerged from her new house in Chappaqua, someone asked a political question and she said she wasn't there to talk about politics," he says. "This is going to have to end." Otherwise, Nachman warns, "this will become a serious campaign issue" with headlines screaming, "Where are you, Hillary?" In other words, she ain't seen nothin' yet.

This story appears in the January 24, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Playing It Straight
The vice presidential candidates try to keep things on the high road
By Kit R. Roane and Jeff Glasser
Posted 10/22/00

Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman let America's voters know early on that they would take the high road or no road to the White House. And, for the most part, while the big boys on the tickets have been sloppily trotting toward the finish line, the veep candidates have been consistently loping along. Their strategy: sticking with what they know--the military for Cheney and religion for Lieberman. And so far, it's working, even if they do go overboard at times.

The former defense secretary repeatedly stresses at campaign stops that picking a president also means picking a commander in chief. America's mighty military, he insists, has gone downhill during the Clinton-Gore years. Troops are poorly trained and overdeployed and there have been reductions in ships, planes, and soldiers, he says. But while soft-spoken, Cheney has the instincts of a tough political infighter. And sometimes even he goes too far. Like when he tried to link the military's slip to the Middle East violence and the apparent terrorist bombing of a Navy warship in Yemen during a speech last week at Evangel University, a private Christian school in Springfield, Mo. In doing so, he recalled the botched rescue attempt of 52 American hostages in Iran under President Jimmy Carter and their release on Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration day. "I always believed that part of that was that they knew that they were going to be dealing with a very different kind of president when we elected Ronald Reagan," Cheney said. The Gore campaign instantly accused him of trying "to take advantage of the Middle East situation for Bush's own selfish political benefit." Cheney denied it but dropped the comparisons from other speeches.

Lieberman, meanwhile, has been going positive. "Prosperity, prosperity, values, values, prosperity," is how a top campaign aide described the senator's tack, only half kidding. But Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate on a national ticket, may have overdosed on values when he suggested that people of faith are natural environmentalists. "If you believe in God, I think it's hard not to be an environmentalist because you see the environment as the work of God," he told a friendly audience of 1,200 in Wausau, Wis. He also invoked the biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. "It is said that God put Adam and Eve there to work the garden but also to guard it," he said. Lieberman, sometimes accused of wearing his faith on his sleeve, cast George W. Bush as an environmental infidel, noting Texas's dismal pollution record. His unabashed God talk makes some uneasy, but Lieberman defended it to U.S. News, saying one could believe in the separation of church and state and still talk about the importance of faith. "Government shouldn't intertwine itself . . . with religion," he said. "But that doesn't mean that people in public life can't reach to faith as a source of strength, a source of values, and, for me, ultimately, a source of unity in the country."

Different strokes. Cheney and Lieberman couldn't be more different from each other and their bosses on the stump. Though he commands the room from a podium, Cheney lacks Bush's down-home folksy manner and has a hard time personally connecting with people offstage. After a speech at St. Vincent College near Pittsburgh, the serious, laconic guy from Wyoming was clearly uncomfortable when students swarmed him outside. Lieberman, on the other hand, has a natural rapport with audiences, often sounding more like a borscht belt entertainer than a stiff politico. He told adoring Jewish seniors in West Palm Beach he once longed to be a comedian: "Where else would anybody say to me as I walk on stage, `We love you, Joe. You're gorgeous?' " he said.

Perhaps it's Lieberman's corny jokes. Or Cheney's reserve and aura of respect. Whatever it is, the crowds love it. "Honestly, I wish Lieberman and Cheney were running together on the same ticket instead of this thing between Gore and Bush," said Sandy McCusker, 58, an undecided voter at a Cheney rally in Lady Lake, Fla. Apparently, she's not the only one.

This story appears in the October 30, 2000 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

April 6, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

GOVERNMENT;
Legislation for Those With a Methadone Clinic Next Door

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 13NJ; Page 6; Column 2; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 896 words

DATELINE: UNION TOWNSHIP

As some states weigh plans to make it easier for drug addicts to get methadone treatment, two New Jersey Assemblymen have offered a bill that would give local communities the power to bar methadone clinics from their neighborhoods.
Studies have shown methadone to be highly successful in curbing addiction to heroin and other opiates. But increasingly, the communities where treatment centers are situated have complained that the decrease in crime and other social benefits credited to the drug nationally are offset by social costs locally. And they have pushed for greater say in decisions about the clinics.
If approved, the legislation would affect 21 clinics throughout New Jersey where more than 11,000 addicts receive treatment; there are an estimated 40,000 heroin users in the state. Opponents of the bill warn that restrictions on the methadone treatment centers could have dire implications, both for those now in the programs and for those who might seek help in the future. "This is just another way of saying 'Not here'," said Mark Parrino, president of the 720-member American Methadone Treatment Association. "It will make it harder for addicts to access treatment; it will increase crime, decrease health and contract the system at the very time we need greater access to such care."
The bill, sponsored by Assemblymen Joel Weingarten and Kevin O'Toole, Republicans who represent the 21st District in Essex and Union counties, would add local boards to the list of agencies that license methadone clinics. The clinics must already obtain yearly approval from several state and federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency and the state Department of Health. They must also meet local zoning requirements.
Should the bill pass, New Jersey would become the only state to require such local approval. Seven states -- Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Vermont -- have no such clinics, while New Hampshire bans them entirely.
Methadone is a synthetic drug developed as an alternative to morphine by Germany during World War II; it mimics opiates, stalling withdrawal symptoms without providing the euphoric effect that addicts crave.
Only long-term addicts who have a doctor's permission may receive the drug, which usually entails going to a clinic every morning to take a supervised dose that is and logged onto a computer. Some addicts are slowly weaned off it over a period of months, while others are maintained on a small dose for years.
A daily dose costs about as much as a pack of cigarettes but can rise to $75 a week when counseling and doctor's fees are included. In private, for-profit clinics, the cost is picked up by the users or by Medicaid. Taxpayers usually pick up half the cost in nonprofit clinics.
Assemblyman Weingarten decided to sponsor the bill after receiving complaints from constituents in Union Township, which is home to one of the state's oldest methadone clinics, Suburban Clinic Inc.
Thomas Kraemer, Union's police chief, said he did not know of any crimes directly linked to the clinic or its clients. Still, he describes the treatment center as a "nuisance," adding that in 15 months, his office has received more than 300 complaint calls from the eight-block area surrounding the site for violations ranging from loitering and vandalism to selling drugs.
The clinic's operator, Jerry Bass, said his patients were not a source of crime, a sentiment echoed by some merchants in the Vauxhall section of Union near the clinic.
And Terry O'Connor, the assistant commissioner for the state's Division of Addiction Services, said there were no statistics supporting links between crime and clients of any of the state's methadone clinics.
However, neighbors on the small residential street that butts up against the clinic believe that the methadone users are troublemakers, if not criminals.
"They park on our street, loiter and have fights all the time outside the clinic," said Thomas Glenn, a 22-year-old carpenter.
Other neighbors expressed concern that the clinic serves patients from communities other than Union -- "as far away as Pennsylvania," one woman said.
Mr. O'Connor is not surprised by statements like this.
"As you might expect," he said, "methadone is not something that some communities view favorably, even though study after study has shown that methadone treatment actually decreases crime and drug use, while increasing employment and improving health."
Among the many studies conducted after methadone was legalized as a treatment 22 years ago, one 1988 cost-benefit analysis conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse concluded that for every $1 spent on methadone treatment, communities received $4 in benefits through reductions in crime and incarceration. Other single-state studies have shown the benefit to be twice as great in urban areas.
But when it comes to local politics, the studies don't always count for much.
"Most people like their local governments to have autonomy and they don't like facilities that attract drug users to their community," said Stephen A. Salmore, a professor at the Eagleton Institute for Politics at Rutgers University. "There is very little political support for putting these clinics anywhere, so I think this legislation would look pretty popular to legislators."

N.J. LAW;
Small Parties Join in Lawsuit Against Stringent Ballot Rules

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 13NJ; Page 6; Column 2; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1038 words

DATELINE: NEWARK

They are candidates so divergent and fractious that they even bicker about how to set up a group photograph. But the Libertarians, Greens, Conservatives and other representatives of small independent political groups in New Jersey have found at least one thing in common: an enemy.
Last month, five of these parties joined in filing a Federal lawsuit against New Jersey's Secretary of State, hoping to overturn a section of the state election law that they say unfairly impinges on the ability of independent candidates to enter races and win. The small parties say that a pair of state rules act like pincers on non-traditional candidates. The first requires that candidates demonstrate support by gathering signatures from registered voters long before the election has heated up, and the second requires that a party receive 10 percent of the total state vote to gain a ballot line in the next election, and thus avoid having to collect signatures for the following two years.
A favorable outcome for the plaintiffs in the suit would help the strongest of the alternative parties gain a foothold in the electoral process, perhaps becoming legitimate alternatives in New Jersey or, at the least, swinging close elections. It would also add momentum to a nationwide movement that has overturned 20 restrictive state filing deadlines since 1980, although a pair of recent decisions have gone the other way.
"This would be one more nudge toward reversing some really harmful election laws at a time when things have stalled," said Richard Winger, who monitors the issue in his newsletter, Ballot Access News. "There are some really crazy and confusing laws out there."
The litigation in New Jersey was introduced by the American Civil Liberties Union and relies on arguments used by John B. Anderson in 1980 when he successfully sued to have onerous state filing deadlines overturned throughout the country during his independent Presidential campaign. A district court ruling was later upheld by the Supreme Court, which agreed that early filing deadlines discriminated against independent candidates for President and Vice President and placed an unjustifiable burden on their supporters' right to vote.
Consequently, in New Jersey, both independent Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are now free to file their petitions after the official primaries.
But early filing requirements are alive and well for all other elective offices in the state, acting as a curb on third-party efforts.
Not since 1913 has an independent candidate received even a tenth of the vote in the Governor's race, while the last third-party legislator slipped into state office in 1906.
The deadline for third-party candidates to submit their petitions in New Jersey is currently 54 days before the state primaries in June. Independent candidates need to collect only 800 signatures to run for state-wide office and 100 to run for legislative seats. Though the signature count is small, a party hoping to be recognized by the state must field a candidate in almost every Assembly race. Otherwise a party would have little chance of reaping 10 percent of the total ballots cast for the Assembly -- the requirement for gaining a line on the ballot the next two years. (In New York, by contrast, anyone who garners 50,000 votes for any statewide office can file the following year as a party.)
Gaining such recognition is much the point of running candidates under a third-party banner, bringing with it a host of benefits that help sustain the Democratic and Republican party apparatus. Besides being placed prominently on the ballot, recognized political parties receive lists of registered voters for fundraising and may hold state-sponsored primaries, increasing the party's visibility.
They also qualify for political action committee funds and are invited to enter debates sponsored by groups like New Jersey's League of Women Voters, which only allow the nominees of state-recognized parties.
While this potential competition alone is enough to cause New Jersey's major parties to balk at a deadline change, there is an even bigger threat hidden in the mix. A later filing deadline would allow disgruntled Democratic and Republican candidates to split from their parties and run as independents after losing a primary race.
"This would give losers two bites of the same apple," said Rick T. Thigpen, director of the State Democratic Committee, adding that such an outcome works against the purpose of primaries.
"Primaries are meant to narrow the field of contenders," he said. "This would make them useless. I understand the reasoning behind this suit, but the bad far outweighs the good here. It would have a devastating effect on our political system."
As he stood with a smorgasbord of other independent-minded candidates and supporters outside the Newark courthouse where the lawsuit was filed, Tom Blomquist, the leader of the New Jersey Conservative Party, stopped a debate over whether the Green Party representative could wear political knickknacks for the group's photograph and laid into the two-party system he loathes. "These party bosses would just as soon do away with elections entirely if they could," said Mr. Blomquist, a Liberty Bell pin shining from his lapel. "We think competition is good and whoever has a constituency and a platform should be able to run. The Democrats and Republicans may have forgotten it, but this is still a democracy, not a horse race."
Unfortunately for Mr. Blomquist this is only partially true, said political experts, noting that even if all state deadlines were pushed forward a mountain of blocks remain stacked against third parties. In fact, these obstacles are the very heart of the American electoral system, explained David King, an associate professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
"The election system in this country is designed to keep the two parties in power and hinder third parties," he said. "All the tinkering around the edges is minor and trivial when held up against the inevitable weight of the system we use to elect people to office. This is winner takes all, a two-party system, and that's the way it always will be."

GRAPHIC: Photo: New Jersey's small parties, spanning the political spectrum, have joined forces to challenge the state's ballot-access requirements in Federal District Court in Newark. (James Estrin/The New York Times)