CALLING DAVE KRANZ
With poll numbers showing that Sen. Tom Daschle is
in the fight of his political career, his campaign apparently
turned to an old friend for help. And a longtime and respected
political reporter for the in-state-influential Sioux Falls
Argus Leader finds himself in the center of growing and
embarrassing scandal.
For months, the Senate halls have been awash in rumors that
Democrats were looking to dump Daschle as their leader, replaced,
most likely by either Sen. Chris Dodd or Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton. Those rumors were strong
enough to resonate all the way back to South Dakota, where voters
— and, more importantly, campaign donors — were expressing doubts
about supporting a sitting senator who would be losing influence
instead of gaining it.
Such talk is probably one of the reasons Daschle can’t seem to
gain a simple majority of support among likely voters in just every
poll being taken in the state. In fact, after spending more than $5
million in media buys and campaigning, Daschle saw his five percent
lead (48-43 percent) over Republican John Thune
remain unchanged.
“It was discouraging,” says a Democratic leadership staffer in
the Senate. “Those numbers didn’t move an inch, and for the first
time in a while, even his most loyal supporters up here were
thinking Daschle wasn’t going to make it.”
According to a Washington-based Daschle staffer, fundraising at
home was becoming an issue: “We’re not pulling in what we should be
at this stage of the race. It’s troubling.”
So on Easter Sunday the Argus Leader and its
longtime political reporter, Dave Kranz, the
David Broder of the upper Midwest, ran a piece that opened, in part, with:
“There have been recent inferences that Daschle may not win back
his Senate leadership position if he is re-elected. If that idea
gets traction, it could have an effect, but three national
political analysts who pay close attention to Washington politics
don’t see any evidence of it.” Kranz quotes pollster Stu
Rothenberg, journalist Michael Barone,
and academic Larry Sabato to that effect.
This article was then used by the Daschle campaign in a
fundraising appeal to longtime in-state donors, to show that all
the rumors they might have been hearing were untrue.
The only problem is, there have been plenty of Daschle rumors
going around for months, mostly fueled by pro-Hillary Clinton
Senators and by Daschle’s own indecision about running for
re-election.
Kranz is known to have carried his share of water for the
Democrats in his career. Enough that several South Dakota bloggers
have pursued Kranz’s connections and ties to the Democratic Party
and to Daschle. And apparently they found it.
In a 1976 memo dug up in the papers of former Sen. Jim
Abourezk, Kranz is identified as a then-young reporter with deep
affection for Democratic Party activities, and also with ties to an
Abourezk staffer, Tom Daschle, and Daschle’s
then-brother-in-law.
Now, Kranz’s connections to the Daschle political machine, and
the Argus Leader’s seeming lack of interest in pursuing
them, are fueling anti-Daschle sentiments across the state.
THE THREE PUPPETEERS
Never let it be said the Sen. John Kerry doesn’t
appreciate a good pollster. He’s paying three of them to tell him
what to think.
Over the past month, according to a Kerry campaign staffer, the
Kerry camp has been polling and focus-grouping the hell out of the
country to determine how best to mold their malleable
candidate.
In fact, both of Kerry’s big policy announcements of the last
few weeks: his fiscal plan and what passes for an Iraq policy, were
shaped by the focus groups and polling performed by Mark
Mellman and Kerry’s longtime personal pollster,
Tom Kiley.
Now Kerry’s folks have brought in yet another pollster to keep
things humming along: Diane Feldman, who performed
similar polling for Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000
presidential run.
“This past month has really been about finding out what
Americans want to hear from Senator Kerry,” the Kerry insider says,
with little to no irony. “By the end of the month they should start
to see image ads and position ads that do just that.”
