Washington Prowler
Mario the Magician
Guess who’s helping Michael Moore? Plus: Kerry goes veeping — big time (Updated: 10:26 a.m.).
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In between meetings with his union overlords and other supporters,
presumptive so and so
John Kerry
has been spending
time in Washington going over the vetting reports on several of his
advisers’ nominees for vice president. According to a Kerry
campaign staffer, Kerry met late Wednesday with Iowa Gov.
Tom Vilsack
, who was in Washington for a press
conference at the National Press Club and meetings with fellow
Democratic governors. Other campaign sources contacted Wednesday
evening could not confirm the meeting, but said it appeared Kerry
had been keeping his schedule open for private meetings on
Wednesday, Thursday, and possibly Friday.
/p>
Gen. Wesley Clark was believed to be in Washington late Wednesday and possibly Thursday, while Sen. John Edwards was to be in New York and Washington for fundraising events on those days. Both men have been vetted, but neither is thought to have met extensively with Kerry one on one.
“We hear that Kerry and Edwards talk on occasion,” says a Kerry campaign staffer. “But we don’t hear very much beyond that. Kerry has former Edwards people here, and at the least they seem to be hearing things.”
The buzz on Edwards, at least in Washington, has been noticeably higher in the last two weeks, although that appears to be more the result of his own supporters’ efforts on his behalf and less a clear indication that Kerry is any closer to making a final decision.
For several days it had appeared that Kerry had moved away from Rep. Dick Gephardt as a veep choice. That illusion was shattered Wednesday when the two were spotted meeting in Kerry’s small private office space on Capitol Hill for almost two hours.
“You hear all the union guys saying it’s a slam dunk, but the people who worked for him and who are now in the field working for Kerry don’t seem hopeful,” says the Kerry staffer.
Edwards, though, continues to act like a man campaigning for the bottom of the ticket. In New York on Wednesday, at a fundraiser held by a liberal think tank called the Drum Major Institute, Edwards was glad-handing and acting very much like a man running for re-election. Given that he’s not running for the Senate again, he must be running for something else.
(This item was updated at 10:23 a.m on 6/17/04)
