FRED THOMPSON, D.A.
Sen. Fred Thompson didn’t waste time finding work.
You’ll be seeing him a lot on NBC, as the new district attorney on
the “Law and Order” shows produced by sometimes
conservative-leaning Dick Wolf (he’s been a huge
proponent of cleaning up the sex and violence on television).
Thompson, who had been mulling several opportunities to become a
high powered, rainmaking lawyer in Washington, will play a high
powered, politically savvy DA. “He said he wasn’t that happy in
Washington, so why would he stay?” asks one of Thompson’s staffers.
“He’ll be happier working in New York.”
The “Law and Order” series (there are actually three of them,
“L&O,” “L&O: Special Victims Unit”, “L&O Criminal
Intent”) is shot in New York. Thompson is expected to appear in
character in all three shows. No word on whether he will commute
from Washington or his home in Tennessee or move to New York
itself. Thompson has thus far cut back his political appearances,
and has done little campaigning in Tennessee for his fellow
Republicans.
At least that’s what leaders of the Tennessee Republican Party
think. “He should have been doing more,” says one staffer from
Memphis. “His retirement has really put us in an awkward position,
scrambling for a candidate, fundraising. The least he could do is
work hard to make sure his seat is held by the party.”
Former Tennessee governor, Lamar Alexander, is
the Republican nominee seeking to fill Thompson’s Senate shoes.
Rep. Bob Clement is the Democratic nominee.
Alexander is being given a slight edge in the race.
BROKE ON ALL FRONTS
A week ago, senior aides to California gubernatorial candidate
Bill Simon spoke with opposite numbers at the
California Republican Party in Sacramento. According to a Simon
fundraiser in Los Angeles, the conversation went something like
this:
Simon campaign: “We’re running out of money, can the party
help?”
Party: “No.”
“That’s about what happened,” says the fundraiser. “The state
party just told them to make due with what they could.”
Simon earlier this week laid off 30 full-time, salaried staffers
in an effort to save cash. It won’t help him in the short-term,
since he still doesn’t have the cash to purchase any major media
buys for the next month at least. Instead, he’s saving what he can
for a big push in the fall.
You all know the enmity that exists between Simon and state
party honcho Gerry Parsky. Simon isn’t Parsky’s
boy, so state party minions have done what they can to make life on
the campaign trail difficult for the Republican nominee. One senior
party official is said to have even allowed a spouse to start up an
anti-Simon website with the couple’s own money.
But compounding Simon’s problems with the state party are
lingering stories that the state GOP is essentially flat broke.
“They keep saying they don’t have any money to give,” says the
Simon fundraiser. “How can that be?”
Leading into the final months of a campaign season, it’s not
that common. In fact, Elizabeth Dole is no longer
running TV ads in North Carolina a week after she sent out a
fundraising letter saying her campaign is running critically low on
cash.
Both the Simon and Dole campaigns say they do have the money to
take on their opponents in the fall. They are simply conserving
what they have in the hope that more cash pours in after the August
doldrums.
One Republican National Committee fundraiser says that the cash
flow problems are occurring mostly in races where there was either
a heated primary race that required extra cash, or in a state which
had an inordinately long campaign season. For example, in
Massachusetts Mitt Romney, who is running for
governor, is flush with cash for his fall campaign. He faced no
challenge to his party nomination and has not had to purchase much
media so far while Democrats fight it out to see which will win
their party’s nomination in the September 17 primary. Simon, on the
other hand, has had to compete since March against Gray
Davis, who has been spending his $30 million campaign war
chest on TV and radio ads almost nonstop.
“Simon just hasn’t been able to keep up,” says the RNC
fundraiser. “But the state party should be ashamed of itself for
leaving him in that kind of situation.”
