Last Call: A Negative Campaigner
York, Byron
"Last Call: A Negative Campaigner" by Byron York A Negative Campaigner yOU NEVER KNOW WHERE YOU MIGHT come across somebody from the Clinton campaign. My most recent encounter happened not at the White House, or campaign...
...Pratt—a gun enthusiast whose speeches were about guns—said he did not share those groups' beliefs, and there is no evidence he made any racist pronouncements...
...Blood was smeared on the hallway wall opposite the door...
...But he had to go, in part because he seemed to represent the perceived intolerance of his boss...
...She kicked him in the groin...
...A slim white woman, she walked up to the officers to find out what was going on...
...Rather, it was in my own apartment building, at 2:30 a.m...
...The building shook...
...He opened the glass door and pushed her to the other side...
...She is charged with two counts of simple assault and one count of destruction of property...
...Some of our neighbors were there...
...Then my neighbor sprayed her with Mace...
...WHEN MY WIFE AND I GOT DOWNSTAIRS and began talking to the neighbors, we could hear police questioning the woman around the corner...
...Then we heard a woman scream...
...And then the woman punched the manager squarely in the nose...
...The man and woman who live in the apartment were standing in the hall as the police talked to someone around the corner...
...the manager walked to us, blood dripping from her nose, and I heard the officers say "That's it...
...By the time the woman retreated, police had arrived...
...LATER, WE LEARNED HER NAME IS HOLLY WILSON, and she does indeed work for the Clinton campaign...
...They asked her if she needed anything...
...Then, when they suggested she stop making noise, she exploded...
...I was surprised to learn later that none of the people involved had ever seen her before...
...LAST CALL by Byron York A Negative Campaigner yOU NEVER KNOW WHERE YOU MIGHT come across somebody from the Clinton campaign...
...After she had managed to smash through the wooden panels, the man inside opened what was left of the door and tried to talk to her...
...and place the assailant under arrest...
...The police took her away...
...They struggled...
...What does that say about Clinton campaign values...
...I heard more accusations of racism from the suspect, this time directed at the manager (who also had never seen the woman before...
...Wilson, Harvard '91, helps the campaign track delegates...
...There was more struggle...
...My neighbor—who has done humanitarian work in Haiti and Africa —stood by, astonished...
...86 July 19 9 6 The American Spectator...
...it sounded as if someone had taken a 16-pound sledgehammer to the heavy plaster walls...
...Does Bill Clinton feel my neighbors' pain...
...She said, 'Why don't you go f---yourself, you white racist c---,"' the neighbor remembers...
...They offered to let her use their phone...
...A fire extinguisher lay on the hall floor...
...She did not return calls asking for comment...
...About compassion...
...She was agitated, complaining of a history of unspecified racism on the part of her victims...
...A number of times I heard her refer to the neighbors as "racists" and then as "white motherf---ers...
...a trial is set for July...
...The wooden door of the apaitment below ours was splintered—as if someone had attacked it with an axe...
...Then the woman told police they were messing with the wrong person: she worked for the Clinton campaign, she said, and her fiance was an assistant U.S...
...My most recent encounter happened not at the White House, or campaign headquarters, or out at some rally...
...attorney...
...The clear implication was that her Clinton credentials and Justice Department connection meant the officers should back off...
...She screamed, which is the noise my wife and I mistook for the scream of a victim...
...I heard more screaming...
...A noise woke me up...
...I had fallen asleep watching the Whitewater hearings on C-Span...
...Then the woman apparently grabbed the fire extinguisher and used it as a battering ram on their door...
...My wife woke up, too, and as we went into the living room we discovered the racket was coming from the apartment directly below us...
...The woman then went after the man...
...Going out to check, they found a tall, well-dressed black woman pounding on a door two apartments down the hall...
...nobody had any idea what was going on...
...I called 911...
...The operator said she had already received a call from the apartment downstairs and that police were on the way...
...MY NEIGHBORS TOLD ME WHAT HAPPENED: They were up talking in their apartment when they heard screaming and banging in the hall...
...She smashed it in...
...Still groggy, I was mad at myself for not hearing more of Dan Lasater's long-awaited testimony...
...After more struggle, the neighbors managed to retreat into their apai intent...
...And tolerance...
...When we got down the stairs, two District of Columbia police officers were there...
...The door from the stairwell into the hallway—an old-fashioned heavy glass door—was shattered...
...So how does one deal with a Clinton campaign worker who actually does spit out racial epithets—and beats up on people and property as well...
...About putting people first...
...That was the pounding that woke me up...
...AT THAT POINT THE RESIDENT MANAGER of the building walked in...
...Then I realized the noise was coming not from my television but rather from some sort of pounding outside my apartment...
...on a chilly spring night...
...WE WENT OUT IN THE HALL...
...BACK IN FEBRUARY, PAT BUCHANAN had to fire campaign official Larry Pratt when it was reported that Pratt had spoken before two white supremacist groups...
Vol. 29 • July 1996 • No. 7
