PLANE SPEAKING
Secretary of State Colin Powell peacemaking will
bring him to Israel later this week, and he’ll be carrying at least
one big carrot: F-16s. According to a Washington-based defense
lobbyist, Lockheed Martin last week reached a tentative deal to
build and sell more than forty F-16s to the Israeli military. The
deal for Lockheed’s Fort Worth plant could be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars for the company and its subcontractors.
“The Israelis want these jets badly,” says the lobbyist. “If
they want them, they’ll have to at least sit down and make an
effort at the negotiating table. Otherwise, those fighter jets
never get built.”
CORNED IN
On March 20 The Prowler reported
on Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen.
John Kerry’s jockeying over who would lead the
possible filibuster over pending legislation to allow oil drilling
in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Now it turns out each may
have to swallow hard and actually vote for the bill. All because
pro-ethanol Republicans and Democrats on the Energy Committee
inserted an amendment in the bill renewing the sweetheart subsidy
for the fuel alternative. And ethanol is the hot political issue
every election cycle in Iowa, home of corn, ethanol producers and
… the first presidential caucus in the country.
“It’s almost always the first question a presidential candidate
has to answer in Iowa, ‘Do you support ethanol subsidies?’” says an
Energy and Natural Resources Committee staffer. “And it’s always an
issue for us. I don’t know how either Kerry or Daschle avoid it,
unless they can successfully remove the amendment, and that could
come back to haunt them too.”
“Kerry and Daschle can’t afford to waffle on this,” says a
Democratic leadership staffer, pointing out that other potential
Democratic candidates are positioned to pounce. “Dick
Gephardt has had great grassroots operations in Iowa in
the past and that can be key to a caucus. The ethanol issue is one
he could make hay with.”
SAVING GOV. RYAN
The White House would like current Illinois Gov. George
Ryan to resign before the November election cycle really
kicks in, and is putting pressure on the RNC — namely current
chairman Marc Racicot — to do its dirty work.
“They want Ryan out as soon as possible,” says a senior RNC
staffer.
Ryan, a longtime Illinois politician, was elected governor in
1998 but chose not to run for re-election after his administration
became tainted by a federal investigation into graft during Ryan’s
previous tenure as Illinois secretary of state.
State Attorney General Jim Ryan (no relation)
is the Republican nominee, facing off against Democrat Rep.
Rod Blagojevich, in one of the critical
gubernatorial races in 2002. “We can’t afford to lose Illinois, and
having a scandalized Ryan in the governor’s mansion isn’t going to
help a guy with the same name and from the same party. Best to get
him out so he doesn’t do any damage,” says the RNC staffer.
But why the RNC? Why not let the state party handle it?
“Governor Ryan has a lot of pull in the state party, they don’t
want to push him out,” says the RNC source. “And [House Speaker]
Dennis Hastert doesn’t want to push an old friend
out, either. That leaves the national party.”
And it leaves chairman Racicot, according to the RNC source,
bucking the White House request. But the clock is ticking, and
Blagojevich is given better odds than any Democrat in years.
Republicans have controlled the Illinois governorship since
1976.
