SHALL WE DANCE?
Sen. Hillary Clinton has really opened her mouth
only once since Sen. John Kerry grabbed hold of a
presidential nomination she and her husband Bill probably still
consider theirs in perpetuity.
So it’s no surprise that she is creating headaches for the Kerry
crew. Last week, after speaking before a think tank founded by her
husband’s out-of-work staffers, including former chief of staff,
John Podesta, Clinton told reporters that unlike
Kerry she and her husband had never considered removing the
chairman of the Democratic National Committee after Bill clinched
the party’s nomination.
Her comments were viewed as a slap at Kerry, reminding him of
who is really running the party, and an endorsement of current DNC
chair and puppet to the Clintons, Terry McAuliffe,
who independent of any push by Kerry had announced he would most
likely step down in 2005 after the election.
“McAuliffe has been gracious toward Kerry and refused to buy
into the [pro-]Dean hysteria when he could have,” says a DNC
convention staffer. “He deserved better than having the Kerry
people trying to push him out the door with a whispering
campaign.”
Generally, the party’s presidential nominee does have one of his
closer allies in place at party headquarters after the nominating
convention. Usually that person takes the title of treasurer or
somesuch designation that conveys control of the purse strings.
Rumors inside the Kerry camp are that the candidate would like
to place inside the DNC one of the leaders of the AFL-CIO unions
that are backing him.
“It would be a controversial move, but given the amount of
coordination that is going on between labor and the campaign, it
would be smart tactically,” says a DNC fundraiser. “It’s the kind
of thing Gerald McEntee would be perfect for.”
McEntee is head of the state, county and municipal government
employees union and has backed Kerry.
AS FOR CLINTON, HER APPEARANCE on Wednesday at the Mayflower Hotel
was hastily pulled together so that she could make her endorsement
of Kerry official. She had declined numerous other opportunities to
endorse her Senate colleague, instead taking the safe path by
waiting for him to clinch the nomination. According to a Kerry
source, the two had a brief conversation prior to the speech.
“That’s the first time the two have spoken in a while,” says the
Kerry source.
In the meantime, the Kerry campaign is trying to get Clinton to
agree to some fundraising appearances on behalf of the would-be
presidential hopeful. They are doing this while trying to integrate
a number of fundraisers from the Dean, Edwards, and Gephardt
campaigns. The Kerry camp has set a goal of raising $80 million by
convention time, a figure they can achieve only if donors from
other camps, and new donors, step up and max out their
contributions.
In the immediate time frame, Kerry intends to spend at least a
week in California after next Tuesday’s round of primaries. There
he will courting the entertainment community with party after party
for cash. Barbra Streisand has already committed
to hosting a fundraiser, as have the usual entertainment suspects
in bed with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
TENSIONS BETWEEN THE KERRY camp and the DNC were exacerbated on
Wednesday and Thursday last week when the DNC was attacking the
Bush campaign for including four seconds of scenes from the World
Trade Center terrorist attacks in the President’s first campaign
ads.
“The DNC is yapping about this and the Bush ads are running on
every news station and on every nightly newscast around the country
for two days straight. The Bush guys basically got full saturation
from an ad that perhaps one million people might have seen on one
of those cable channels had no attention been given,” says a Kerry
campaign staffer. “Then they put these spokespeople out there to
talk about the ads who were just embarrassingly bad. The party guys
did us no good.”
It isn’t as though the Kerry people weren’t looking to attack
the ads themselves. Despite denials that the Kerry campaign
criticized the Bush ads, the Kerry camp did reach out family
members of people killed on 9/11 whom they knew were supporters of
Kerry and asked if they’d be willing to denounce the ads publicly.
Those people were given the names of assignment editors at cable
news channels and network news outlets, as well as talking points
for them to use if they were interviewed.
ROOM SERVICE
The Service Employees International Union in New York has senior
union leaders looking for ways to complicate the Republican
National Convention in New York later this summer. SEIU members
work in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and other establishments,
and are one of the largest unions in Manhattan. There are no
contracts expiring for the SEIU in New York this year, but that
hasn’t stopped the union, which has already committed more than $30
million to prevent the re-election of President Bush, from looking
for ways to embarrass the Republican Party and make its stay in New
York unpleasant.
“Maybe some hotels make the mistake of unfair work conditions,
and the union has to pull out and strike city wide for a couple of
days to protest their brothers and sisters being treated unfairly,”
says a member of another AFL-CIO union. “It can happen, and we are
already hearing the talk. These folks will do anything to ruin the
convention. It’s one convention they did not want to come to New
York.”
