Mon, May 12, 2008 - 3:26 PM

Sen. Jim Webb still hasn’t endorsed Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but Webb’s GI bill was front and center on the stump with Obama today in West Virginia.

In Charleston, W. Va., Obama hammered Republican presidential nominee John McCain for opposing Webb’s bill:

“I have great respect for John McCain’s service to this country and I know he loves it dearly and honors those who serve. But he is one of the few Senators of either party who oppose this bill because he thinks it’s too generous. I couldn’t disagree more. At a time when the skyrocketing cost of tuition is pricing thousands of Americans out of a college education, we should be doing everything we can to give the men and women who have risked their lives for this country the chance to pursue the American Dream.”

Clinton has sponsored Webb’s bill as well. McCain supports a different bill introduced by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which aims to expand educational benefits for armed service personnel who stay in the military.

--Neil H. Simon

Republicans are bringing in the big guns in Mississippi today.

Vice President Dick Cheney is going to be at a rally in Southaven to campaign for Republican Greg Davis.

Davis faces Democrat Travis Childers in a special election Tuesday for the congressional seat. The seat was vacated by Roger Wicker, who was appointed to Trent Lott’s post in the Senate.

The seat is important as Republicans struggle to keep House seats. In a radio interview last week, Cheney said the District One seat is a “very important one.”

“It's been in conservative hands for a long time and we'd hate to see the liberals gain control,” he said.

On their end, Democrats took the opportunity to take a swipe at Davis as well as Cheney’s connections to oil companies.

The state party sent a press release this morning, in which Childers criticizes Davis for bringing “Big Oil’s best friend, Dick Cheney, to North Mississippi.”

-- Amy Dominello

Mon, May 12, 2008 - 1:30 PM

In case you missed it over the weekend, a funny parody of Hillary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live.”

It’s a little long, but the send-up is pretty good.



-- Amy Dominello

WASHINGTON – GOP Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite of Brooksville went on the offensive this morning with an op-ed articled to promote her bill to give returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans greater access to college aide.

Brown-Waite’s legislation is a companion to the the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, sponsored in the Senate by Virginia Democrat James Webb, a Marine and former Reagan administration Navy secretary.

Her column entitled “Helping the next Greatest Generation,” and was written with Arizona Democrat Harry Mitchell. Here’s how it appears in today’s editions of The Washington Times;
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080512/EDITORIAL/110368091/1013

At issue is a bill that would pay the tuition costs of the most expensive state school for returning vets, as well as a housing and books stipend. Current education benefits are much less — about $1,100 a month.

But the Pentagon argues the improved benefits would make military retention difficult, as service members will seize on the opportunities to go to the public universities of their choice.

And presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, the sponsor of a competing Senate GI bill, agrees, as does GOP Rep. Adam Putnam of Bartow, sponsor of McCain’s competing bill in the House. They depict their competing bill as being structures to kick in additional rewards for longer service.

And the Webb-Brown-Waite bill last week hit another snag. A group of fiscally conservative Democrats, say the proposal that would cost too much and should be funded under Democrats pay-as-you-go rules.

-- Billy House

Fri, May 09, 2008 - 2:14 PM

WASHINGTON – What’s delegates got to do with it?

Hillary Clinton's camp has come up with yet another reason she should top the Democrat ticket this fall.

They argue her candidacy would be far more competitive in some key U.S. House districts than would Barack Obama's, and thus far more beneficial to Democrats running for Congress.

Her campaign team made that case to reporters gathered at a breakfast her today. Essentially, they said 20 freshmen Democratic members of the House are in districts that voted for President Bush in 2004 need her.

“These freshmen need a nominee who can compete in their tough districts,” says a handout given to the reporters.

Here’s their logic. (Warning! It’s headache producing, perhaps even outright dubious in parts.)

1) Of those 20 districts, they say, Clinton has outpolled Obama in 16 of them. The Clinton team includes Rep. Heath Shuler’s district in North Carolina in that group. But then, they also included Tim Mahoney’s district in Florida, a state where the Democratic primary was not supposed to count and where the candidates did not really campaign.

2) Thirteen of those 20 districts, they say, have more than the national average of seniors over the age of 65. (The Shuler and Mahoney districts are among them.) And nationally, they note Clinton has won seniors by 24 points.

3) Half of these districts are more than 40 percent rural, and Hillary has won rural voters nationally by 8 points. (But then, wouldn’t a Devil’s Advocate point out that means they are 60 percent non-rural?)

4.) Hispanics make up more than 10 percent of the voters in 6 of the districts (count Mahoney’s district again.) And nationally, Clinton has won Hispanic voters by 30 percentage points over Obama.

5) But then – the Clinton team's argument suddenly diverges from focusing on districts being held by freshmen Democrats. The note she has won 10 of the 15 districts rated as “toss-up” races this fall by one non-partisan political newsletter, The Cook Political Report, while Obama has just one 4. Many of those districts are toss-ups because the incumbent has retired or will at the end of this year, not because an incumbent Democrat is in trouble. They include Alabama’s fifth congressional district and Mississippi’s first congressional district in that mix.

Put all of this information together and the Clinton team says it paints a clear picture -- she is the candidate best suited to help Democrats increase their majority in the U.S. House.

“Hillary is the candidate who will win in tough districts,” they say.

Even, their argument must add, if she has apparently lost the tough battle for delegates.

-- Billy House

Everybody says it’s over – except that Hillary Clinton keeps campaigning, running ads and raising money.

This rainy morning, her chief strategist and communications director told reporters that she can -- and will -- win the Democratic nomination, thanks to Florida, Michigan, the states yet to vote and the superdelegates.

“We move forward with a sense of continuing enthusiasm,” Geoff Garin, the strategist and pollster, said. Really.

The news media have been chastised in the past for calling elections too soon, he said, arguing that's happening now.

He and Howard Wolfson, the communications director, laid out the campaign’s rosy scenario for an hour at a breakfast with more than 50 journalists sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

They reiterated that all Florida and Michigan delegates should be seated at the national convention in August, and they should be allocated by the way they were voted on primary day, even though Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan. The campaign would consider ceding the “uncommitted” vote in Michigan to Obama.

They also reasserted that:
 The superdelegates’s function is to consider the long sweep of the primaries and then decide who’s the better nominee for the party and the better president;
 Clinton has a better chance of beating John McCain than does Barack Obama;
 Clinton is clearly the stronger candidate among seniors, Latinos and blue-collar women who don’t have a college education – voters who will be important in the general election.

Garin’s analysis, based on the most-recent state polls, shows Clinton beating McCain in the Electoral College by 42 electoral votes. Obama lags McCain by eight.

He repeatedly said it’s hard to imagine winning the 270 votes needed to win in the Electoral College without Ohio or Florida or both, and Clinton can win those states and Missouri in the fall, he said.

But the pair also struck a conciliatory tone, saying that they believe Obama also could beat McCain.

And while the Clinton-Obama fight may seem like warfare, Garin likened it to a tennis match.

“We are not oblivious to the environment in which we are operating. But this is very much like a tennis match. When you watch them on TV and somebody is in a men’s match down a few games in the third set, I think you would be disappointed if a person walked off the court, and you ought to be disappointed if a person walked off the court.

“That is not the way the game is played and sometimes even when people are down two sets to love, and down a couple of games in the third set, they end up winning by the fifth set. So Senator Clinton goes on with the same energy and commitment she has throughout the process,” he said.

And, if Obama does win the nomination, “We will do everything we can to see him elected,” Wolfson declared.

-- Marsha Mercer

Thu, May 08, 2008 - 1:07 PM

John McCain’s campaign just sent around a message that tactfully combines a fundraising plea with a Mother’s Day message.

Along with the message, signed by his wife Cindy, is a link to a Web video with McCain and his 96-year-old mother, Roberta.

In the short video set to “Leave it to Beaver” type music, Roberta McCain talks about the day her son was born and says he was the “sweetest, nicest child I’ve ever known.”

That may come as a shock to some who have been victims of McCain’s infamous temper, although Roberta McCain concedes her son is “not perfect.”

Also interesting are the labels that pop up identifying John McCain as the son and Roberta McCain as the mother. Given the concerns that the 71-year-old McCain is too old to be president, was the McCain camp nervous that viewers may think Roberta McCain is his wife?

-- Amy Dominello

Can you say acronym overkill?

The Republican Party of Virginia can.

The GOP launched the AG-LG-RPV challenge today. Don’t know what that stands for? Well, duh, the letters stand for Attorney General-Lieutenant Governor-Republican Party of Virginia.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell, Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, and Virginia Republican Party Chairman John Hager are leading the effort to build up the party’s grassroots organization. The challenge calls for doubling the size of every local Republican committee before Labor Day. And there is a cash reward.

The party said in a statement that committees that meet the challenge will get more funding for this fall’s get-out-the-vote efforts.

“The goal of the AG-LG-RPV challenge is to help our local Republican committees recruit a new generation of volunteers,” said Bolling, who is seeking the governor’s mansion in 2009. “If we do this effectively, it will improve our chances of victory in 2008 and 2009.”

To win the cash prize, committees will also be tested on the letters in the acronym. Kidding, of course.

Wed, May 07, 2008 - 5:58 PM

Tuesday’s big Obama victory in North Carolina still hasn’t moved superdelegate Muriel K. Offerman of Cary, N.C., into making a choice.

“I’m still uncommitted at this point, though I’m certainly paying attention to yesterday’s results,” said Offerman, 72, a deputy chairman of the state employment security commission.

Offerman, who initially was a backer of favorite-son candidate John Edwards, says she’s still not even leaning one way or the other.

Offerman said she did receive a telephone call Wednesday from the Obama campaign, which said “they would very much like me to no longer be uncommitted.”

But “my understanding is as of today it is not over – that there are a number of things happening. I’m hearing rumors,” says Offerman.

For instance, she said there is talk that top Clinton campaign advisor Terry McAuliffe was working hard to try to sway some declared Obama super delegates into switching their allegiances, which Offerman said is “a tough sell right now.”

There also is talk that something will be done with regard to some how counting Florida and Michigan, and she added, “we can’t write off Florida and Michigan.”

“I don’t think that will get her enough delegates, but it would help her with the popular vote (count),” said Offerman.

As for herself, Offerman says she does not particularly feel any pressure to do anything but to exercise her best judgment, despite the Obama’s resounding victory in her home state.

She still holds to what she’s been saying – that she will wait until the primaries are over.

“And there are a few more to come,” she says.

-- Billy House

State Del. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond, has turned on the woman she said "inspired her political career."

McClellan who sat with Hillary Clinton at a 1992 presidential debate at the University of Richmond and stood behind the former first lady through numerous primary losses, is now backing Barack Obama.

McClellan announced the flip in a conference call with another politician to whom she is indebted -- Gov. Tim Kaine.

The Virginia governor is a national co-chair for Obama's campaign. Two years ago he appointed McClellan, then a freshman state delegate, to a state commission on sexual violence.

The campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are aggressively lobbying uncommitted superdelegates today, cherry picking the most favorable trends from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries to argue for their candidate.

Several superdelegates from North Carolina remain unaligned with either candidate this morning, but at least one, Rep. Heath Shuler, said he's backing Clinton.

The deciding factor: though Obama won the state, his Western North Carolina district voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. Not much of a surprise there. Shuler’s district is populated with the sort of rural, blue-collar workers that Clinton courted so heavily this year.

At least two other uncommitted superdelegates are remaining mum, at least for now.

A spokesman for Rep. Bob Etheridge said he has no plans to endorse today.

Nor does Rep. Brad Miller. In interview, he seemed to suggest that his odds of ultimately backing Obama are higher than they were before Tuesday, given that Obama stretched his delegate lead last night.

“I’m going to let it settle out for a couple of days, look closely at the results in North Carolina and my district, see where the candidates are, and then make a decision on whether I should indicate my support,” he said.

Miller said his district -- with its mix of country, small towns and urban areas -- is generally representative of the state as a whole, which Obama won handily.

An overriding concern driving his decision, he said, was the future health of the party. Supporters of both candidates need to be convinced that the superdelegates selected the nominee fairly, he said.

At the end of the final primary June 3, if Clinton has whittled down Obama’s delegate lead to under 100 or so, Miller said he could envision voting for Clinton, if voters in his district showed a preference for her in last night’s election. But unless Clinton wins overwhelming victories – far out of line with previous Democratic primaries – that’s unlikely to happen.

“In four weeks, if Sen. Obama ends the contest with a 150- or 160-delegate lead and Sen. Clinton ends up as the nominee, Sen. Obama’s supporters will not think that it ended fairly. I think that will be a hard breach to heal,” he said.

--Sean Mussenden

A day after suffering a major drubbing in North Carolina and a narrower than expected victory in Indiana, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s staff revealed today that the candidate has loaned her campaign $6.4 million over the last month, including about a $1.5 million in the last few days.

Including the $5 million she loaned the campaign in January, Clinton has now dumped $11.4 million of her own money into her increasingly unlikely bid to overtake Barack Obama’s lead in the Democratic nomination fight.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Howard Wolfson, the campaign’s communications director, said that the loans should be seen as sign of Clinton’s commitment to her campaign. When things looked down for Clinton in January, the $5 million loan helped spark a wave of new donations that helped her close the fundraising gap with Obama a bit. Her staff hopes for a repeat this time, to help rack up wins in the next six primaries.

But surely, the necessity of pumping even more of her own money into the campaign – at this point, more than the $10.5 million she made for her book “Living History” -- will also be seen as a sign of desperation.

There’s one irony worth noting. Clinton has emerged as the preferred candidate of low-to-middle income voters on the strength of her populist economic message. Her campaign likes to portray Obama as an elite candidate preferred by college-educated types – “eggheads” in the words of an anonymous Clinton advisor quoted in The Washington Post this morning.

But, of course, wealth is an important measure of the amorphous concept of eliteness, perhaps the most important measure. The Clintons and the Obamas are both millionaires, but the Clintons are worth far more than the Obamas, largely because of paid speeches Bill Clinton has given since leaving office. He has made nearly $52 million from speeches.

The loans she has made to her campaign represent a small fraction of the $109 million the couple has earned in the eight years since Bill Clinton left office. In fact, the money she has loaned her campaign dwarfs the Obamas’ income. The Obamas reported income of $4.2 million last year, up from just under $1 milllion in 2006.

--Sean Mussenden

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Chris Dodd has just lost his temper on the U.S. Senate floor amid anticipated efforts today by Florida senators and other Gulf Coast lawmakers to tack amendments concerning hurricane protection onto his national flood insurance program bill.

Florida Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, and other lawmakers plan today and Thursday to seek to amend the bill today to add wind coverage or even a national catastrophic insurance fund.

But according to Hill sources, Dodd may have had a different target in mind with his floor remarks. Those sources said Republicans with energy industry ties are planning to try to amend the bill to allow drilling off Florida and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ease refinery permitting and take other coal- and oil-friendly measures.

“An awful lot of people are going to get hurt, and costs are going to go up!” bellowed Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, “because we can’t spend 24 hours here doing one thing – and that is deal with flood insurance!”

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee – which drafted the flood insurance renewal bill.

-- Billy House

So this is how the day after goes for those superdelegates. Every Wednesday it seems affords a new week of recalculating, but the numbers still aren’t there for either Clinton or Obama, which means, barring a drop-out, superdelegates are still the key to the Democratic nomination.

Virginia Del. Lionell Spruill of Chesapeake, an announced Clinton supporter, on his way to Washington to meet with the Clinton campaign said Tuesday’s results were “very interesting.”

He said he’s waiting until Montana and South Dakota primary elections June 3 before he makes any further decisions in the race. Still, “everybody and their momma’s” calling him, he said.

“The more I’m out of the press, the more they leave me alone,” Spruill said. “They see me in the press, they start calling and pressuring me.”

For now, Spruill said he’s waiting on Clinton to call the shots. “I don’t know what’s on her mind,” he said. “I guess we have to wait and see what will happen.”

-Neil H. Simon

WASHINGTON - Malfunctions on a state plane to Washington carrying Florida GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, often mentioned as a potential vice presidential running mate for John McCain, on Tuesday prompted the two pilots to turn the craft around and return to Tallahassee

The plane also was carrying three Crist staffers and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement officer to Washington, D.C..

"The pilots informed us during a middle of a briefing, and the governor kept us all working to keep our minds occupied," said Crist's spokeswoman, Erin Isaac.

About 45 minutes into the flight somewhere over Georgia, she said, pilots David Young and Jan Neilson detected three separate malfunctions, with mechanisms that control the tail and the steering, as well as the autopilot. The plane then returned to Tallahassee safely.

The governor turned to alternative transportation and is to appear today for several apppointments, including a lunch with NBC political analyst Timm Russert, and attend a dinner of a group of Florida business executives.

-- Billy House