The American Spectator

several months ago about having it use Toyota’s hybrid-fueled cars. But the campaign turned down the offer. /p>

“We thought given the candidate’s environmental position he would want to use them,” says a Washington-based public relations staffer who handles issues for Toyota. “We knew the senator couldn’t ride in one for security reasons, but that there might be other opportunities.”

Toyota’s approach is really only interesting now because it turns out Sen. Enviro Kerry, who wants to impose tougher and higher fuel standards that would gut the American auto industry, owns at least one gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle, and regularly used one on the campaign trail by choice, until the Secret Service required him to ride in one for protective reasons. Kerry claimed that technically his personal SUV was not even his, but his “family’s.”

When Kerry was called on the SUV last Thursday, Kerry said that, in fact, he had been thinking for a long time about having his campaign use a hybrid as a “campaign car.” But his choice would be a Ford model, which is an American-made automobile.

“It just goes to show that it’s all about being an opportunist and using double-speak,” says a Bush campaign staffer.

p> MISERY INDEX br> The Democratic National Committee has been laughing off the stories about budget problems for its national convention in Boston. But increasingly too much information about the planning and the problems has been leaking out for the DNC to avoid the embarrassing fact that the convention is going to be pretty low-rent. /p>

Word is that money is so tight for various state Democratic organizations and for the DNC that their requests for bids for parties and receptions are being turned down by a number of big-time party planners and caterers in Beantown.

“All of the money is being funneled into the campaign against Bush and the Republicans, there is no money for pyramids of shrimp or open bars with small batch bourbon,” says a DNC fundraiser. “We’ll leave those kinds of things to our corporate sponsors.”

The lack of big-time money for big-time partying is coming at a critical time for Boston’s Democratic Mayor Tom Menino, who had been promising the city a huge windfall from having the Democrats in town for a week. Over the past month, it has become apparent that any cash coming in will be more of the “light breeze” variety. Union shops — from construction to video production — are complaining that they aren’t being given work. That instead, the DNC and the convention planners are going out of state — a kind of state to state out-sourcing for cheaper labor.

p>Most embarrassing, from the Kerry campaign perspective, is that many of the decisions are now being approved by the campaign’s own people who were placed on the convention committee to ensure their man’s vision for his coronation go according to plan. br> /p>