The GOP had recruited Terrell, among others, to enter the race in order to deny Landrieu 50 percent of the vote. Under Louisiana law, that forced her into a runoff. The strategy worked, and the Dec. 7 election could add another seat to the Republicans’ single-seat majority in the Senate.
It doesn’t seem enough of a gain to warrant such a fierce battle, but in the almost evenly divided Senate every seat counts towards the leverage each party needs for important committee assignments. With a change in power, Democrats will lose seats and junior members are the first casualties. In an effort to boost Landrieu, whose campaign is lagging, Democratic leader Tom Daschle promises to keep her on the plum Appropriations Committee even though, as a relative newcomer to the Senate, she should be among the first to get a pink slip.
Republicans have ridiculed Daschle’s attempt to bolster Landrieu. If their candidate is elected, they say, she’ll have a direct pipeline to the Senate leadership and the White House. How can the Democrats compete with that?
The Louisiana race is a microcosm of the November election, with the Republicans bringing in all of their heavy artillery. Vice President Dick Cheney, former President George Bush, and communications guru Karen Hughes all are campaigning for Terrell. President George W. Bush will also barnstorm the state. “This is a base versus base election, and he energizes the party faithful in a way that nobody else can,” says a White House aide.
Who can Landrieu recruit to rally the Democratic faithful? Not Al Gore, not Bill Clinton and not Jesse Jackson. The party has no stars that it can deploy without fear of doing more harm than good. During the Reagan years, Jackson was credited with registering enough minority voters in the South to return the Senate to Democratic hands, but white Southern Democrats today tiptoe around the race issue for fear of alienating white rural voters. Clinton will record phone messages urging Democrats to vote, but he won’t appear in the state. And it’s not clear anybody wants to see poor Gore.
So Landrieu is pretty much on her own. She’s relying on Donna Brazile, Gore’s former campaign manager, to produce a miracle with her mastery of the ground game. But the job is a tough one even for Brazile, a Democratic loyalist and an African-American with roots in the South. Landrieu is not strong in the black community. She has spent most of her six years in the Senate making sure she doesn’t come across as too liberal. She votes with Bush three-quarters of the time and supported his tax cut, which mostly rewards upper-income voters. Her one major break with the White House was over John Ashcroft’s confirmation as attorney general; she opposed him for the job.
She is enough of a Bush loyalist to cause Rep. Cleo Fields, a black state represenative in Lousianna, to joke that “one Republican Party is enough; two is almost unconstitutional.” Yet Landrieu has little maneuvering room in a state where the opposition circulates flyers picturing her hugging Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, derided as a liberal in an area where that description is an epithet. If Landrieu moves right, she alienates her African-American base; if she moves left, she loses white suburban voters.
For all the concessions Landrieu has made to Bush, he hasn’t cut her any slack. The Republicans are pouring so many resources into the state to defeat her that Democrat John Breaux, the senior senator, calls it “the second Louisiana Purchase.” One Republican campaign aide likened the race to Bush versus Gore, with Landrieu as Gore, the career politician who can’t imagine why the voters don’t appreciate her. After one debate, Landrieu was so angered by Terrell’s attacks that she blurted out, “This will be your last campaign.” What Landrieu meant, a spokesman later explained, was that after waging such a negative campaign, Terrell could no longer be a viable candidate.
That was a huge mistake on Landrieu’s part. It’s too late to revert to polite, southern belle politics. Landrieu has a tendency to take partisan attacks personally. She looked so pained during much of the debate that a Republican onlooker was reminded of former President Bush looking at his watch during a debate with Clinton, hoping the misery would soon end. The New Orleans Times Picayune headlined its Web story on the debate, “Catfight.”
Terrell has little experience and is less qualified, but that seems to suit voters skeptical about government. They love the fact that she’s been working to abolish her job as state elections commissioner. She projects the same quality Bush did as a candidate, that there are more important things in life than getting elected. One measure of the GOP’s confidence about the race is they’ve stopped bashing Landrieu for living in a “mansion” on Capitol Hill, which in reality is one of the city’s overpriced row houses and nowhere near as posh as Terrell’s home in a gated New Orleans community.
A new ad spot features Terrell’s three teenage daughters talking about how much their mother has done for them, and what she will now do for the voters. GOP media consultant Alex Castellanos can hardly believe it himself. “I’m doing a working mom spot, and I’m an old Latin chauvinist,” he chuckles. “The world has changed.” Women, once they enter the ring, bring as much ferocity to the fight as men. Landrieu seems surprised. She shouldn’t be.
title: “Capitol Letter Turning Up The Heat” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Molly Hutchinson”
They all had their set speeches and nobody managed to break out of the pack. With nine candidates–Florida Sen. Bob Graham left the race earlier this week–and 90 minutes, there is limited opportunity to do a star turn. Each of the major contenders came in with two goals: one, to not make a mistake, and two, to take down the front runner. Gen. Wesley Clark, who is leading in the national polls, took the brunt of the criticism and complained it was “really embarrassing” for Democrats to attack each other when the real target is President George W. Bush. “Welcome to the Democratic presidential campaign … None of us are above questioning,” Sen. Joe Lieberman amiably chided Clark.
The former NATO commander entered the race claiming to be an antiwar candidate, but there were times when he expressed support for the war. He said it was his fellow Democrats who “can’t get their own story straight” when they accused him of inconsistency. Clark told reporters the day after he announced his candidacy that he “probably” would have voted for the congressional resolution that gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq. He reversed himself the next day, saying he would never have voted to go to war. While he recognized the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Clark said, “The war was an unnecessary war. It was an elective war, and it’s been a huge strategic mistake for this country.”
Clark handled the attacks on his Iraq position well enough, but he was on the defensive for most of the evening and has clearly lost stature simply by being one of nine, instead of the fantasy candidate floating above the fray.
Clark should have demanded equal time to express his views on domestic issues, where he is a blank slate. The last half hour of the debate was reserved for questions from undecided Democrats in the audience. It turned into a pandering session as the candidates tried to outdo each other in proposing health care, prescription drugs and better benefits for veterans.
None of the jabs Clark suffered at the hands of his rivals have hurt him as much as the perception that he and his campaign are not ready for prime time. Clark’s campaign manager, Donnie Fowler, quit in protest over too many Washington hands running the campaign, and after the Washington Post revealed Clark had accepted speaking fees from colleges after he had become a candidate, a possible violation of election law, Clark said he would return the money.
One moment of impromptu theater occurred when moderator Judy Woodruff was handed a piece of paper that John Kerry’s campaign was circulating in the press room. It said that Howard Dean as governor wanted to “kick seniors off” health care in Vermont. Dean was given a chance to defend himself, and said that he had proposed a hike in the cigarette tax to cover the costs. When the Republicans in the state legislature balked at passing the tax increase, he told them that he would end the program. “And they passed the cigarette tax, as I knew they would,” he said. Kerry seemed taken by surprise by his aides’ note, but lost no time in rebutting Dean’s response that the charge was “silly.” Next to Clark, Dean is everybody’s target of choice. Dean has more money and more traction in the early states than any of his rivals. Reporters inside the debate hall noted that Kerry and Dick Gephardt conferred with each other during breaks and seemed especially cozy. The buzz is that their campaigns have informally teamed up to slow the former Vermont governor since a Dean win in Iowa or New Hampshire could end the presidential hopes of Kerry and Gephardt.
Gephardt kept up the pressure on Dean, pointing out his support for cuts in Medicare first proposed by Newt Gingrich. Dean is a hawk when it comes to fiscal matters. He went to great lengths as governor to balance the budget, and some of the cuts he made in programs favored by Democrats are coming back to haunt him. Exposing Dean’s green eyeshades is also a way to undercut his image as a liberal, which he earned for his antiwar stance. In reality, he is a centrist and even a conservative when it comes to managing government money.
Dean is struggling to maintain his early momentum, but because of the following he has generated over the Internet, he is almost certainly to be a finalist for the nomination. The question is who will be the other finalist. Gephardt is staking everything on coming out of Iowa a winner; Kerry is camping out in New Hampshire; John Edwards is banking on the wave of Southern primaries to show he’s viable. Clark is counting on New Hampshire and, later, Wisconsin, where open primaries will draw in Independents and Republicans who like the fact that he hasn’t been an ardent Democrat.
Because of the way he burst from the starting gate, Dean can’t pick and choose. He has to compete everywhere. No one-night stands on the Jay Leno show for the Democrats.
