On the Prowl
ON THE PROWL Failure to Communicate New RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson may believe his first major task is wiping out the party's $3o million-plus debt following the 1996 campaign season. But it's...
...Not surprisingly, the sell-off came just as damaging stories about Clinton's ties to Riady were appearing in the press...
...Minding His Business When Ohio Rep...
...Blair has a "Little George" of his own: 26-year-old Tim Allen, who calls Stephanopoulos his hero...
...One reporter who covered the British election for a financial wire service says Allen's "a punk, just like his American counterpart was in the 1992 race...
...In his notes, Gore thanked the newsmen for understanding the trip's "delicate nature"—an apparently superfluous touch, since none ever bothered to report on these latest efforts by Gore to save his (and his boss's) political skin...
...If the Jenkins charges stick, the GOP hopes to oust two for the price of one...
...Since it was Boehner's cellphone that was recorded, only he can file the complaint, and Republicans want it to be ready once the current moratorium on the filing of new ethics complaints is lifted...
...Allen has been confiding that he's ready for the big leagues now, and is looking for public-relations work in New York, Washington, and Hollywood...
...By George...
...The American Spectator • June 1997 15...
...New British PM Tony Blair didn't need former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos during the final stages of the recent campaign...
...Since DeFrancis is also a talking head on GOP-TV, another Barbour project, there's spec! ulation within the organization that Nicholson is more pre-occupied with carving out his own legacy within the RNC than with getting the k Republican message out...
...But White House press aides nixed the plan, afraid that, without the sympathetic Mrs...
...If their leader can't face down the likes of Jeffords, how's he ever going to get the upper hand with Bill Clinton and Dick Morris...
...Here's to You, Mrs...
...Even with the prospect of Bill Clinton in attendance, the Mets sold fewer than 35,000 tickets to the game—and distributed another 20,000 free in a futile attempt to fill the stands...
...It also received a federal loan guarantee of $138 million to build new ships at a Mobile, Alabama shipyard...
...That would mean dismanfling the successful communications structure Barbour built—a prospect that scares RNC insiders because Nicholson doesn't project the warm fuzzy feeling that Haley did...
...Jenkins maintains that the fraud was orchestrated by New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, a close ally of the state's other Democratic senator, John Breaux, who's up for re-election next year...
...But it's probably even more important that Nicholson maintain the atmosphere of free and easy communication established by his genial predecessor, Haley Barbour...
...League officials had originally wanted the president and Selig to walk out first, and then have Clinton introduce Rachel Robinson and her family separately...
...Insiders point to his poor performance recently on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," in which Nicholson came off badly when paired against new DNC chief Roy Romer...
...As prosecutor for Miami's Dade County, she was so unwilling to tackle south Florida's endemic corruption that the local New Times—in a 1990 cover storyentitled "Janet Reno's Greatest Hits"—wrote that when it came to her "record on public corruption, don't even think about naming a Top 10...
...Hold That Call Republican Conference Committee chairman John Boehner continues to miff the GOP leadership: He refuses to prepare an ethics complaint against Washington Rep...
...Instead, Jeffords promised NEA chairman Jane Alexander "a fully funded arts program into the next century...
...Professional Courtesy Vice President Al Gore is said to have sent personal notes of apology to diplomatic and White House correspondents at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other news organizations over what the veep called a "number of misunderstandings" during his March trip to China...
...In the hands of independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr, this "lost referral" led to the indictment and conviction of Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker and Clinton business partners Jim and Susan McDougal...
...Robinson by his side, Clinton's appearance on the diamond might have provoked a more hostile reception...
...Reno's reputation of being soft goes back farther still...
...Overheard at a Democratic caucus meeting, Bonior told an easily impressed colleague that over spring recess he'd read William Greider's latest book, E. Annie Proulx's new novel, and a novel by the late Wallace Stegner...
...Not long after, COSCO was awarded the lease at a former Long Beach, California naval station, along with a promise of $200 million from the city of Long Beach...
...He's said to be in favor of killing the party magazine that was a pet project of Barbour's...
...As it was, when Clinton took the field for a brief mid-game ceremony with acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig and Robinson's widow, Rachel, he was met by plenty of boos and catcalls and just a smattering of applause...
...You Jane Senate conservatives are starting to lose faith in the leadership of Majority Leader Trent Lott...
...Republicans think she'll be an easy target in 1998—as long as her opponent isn't Dornan...
...But at least Stepho hung around for a while after the big win...
...The defiant McDermott, who has yet to apologize, faces no other possible sanction for his actions...
...John Lovett & Co., which oversees the ATRS fund, added the COSCO stock at about the same time it sold off the fund's Indonesian holdings—including almost a million dollars worth of shares of a bank owned by Mochtar Riady's brother-in-law—at a net loss of roughly $300,000...
...He also wrote an essay for the American Prospect's fall issue, and met with Michigan union leaders to plot 1998 strategies...
...As for Attorney General Janet Reno's claims that there's no "credible evidence" of criminal behavior to justify appointing an independent counsel into Clinton's fundraising, that's the same excuse Justice used in February 1993 to ignore the first criminal referral on the shenanigans in the now infamous Madison Guaranty...
...It could have been worse...
...The veep's staffers even withheld the texts of the speeches for as long as twelve hours after the speeches had been delivered...
...Loretta Sanchez, the Californian who unseated Robert Dornan, is quickly earning a reputation as a political blockhead...
...Jim McDermott, the then–Ethics Committee member who tried to destroy Newt Gingrich by leaking to the New York Times a tape of GOP leaders discussing Newt's defense in a conference call...
...In April Loft ordered Jim Jeffords, chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee, to cut funding for the National Endowment of the Arts at least 25 percent...
...That's why Republicans aren't strongly backing Doman's strong claim he was done in by voter fraud last fall...
...And though she promised to support a ban on partial-birth abortions, a position that her own polling numbers show is shared by more than 54 percent of her constituents, Sanchez voted against the ban in what she called her "congressional coming-out vote...
...At a conference organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Sanchez stunned the audience with a speech bemoaning the effect terrorism was having on tourism—in Egypt...
...Last fall, managers of the Arkansas Teachers Retirement System (AIRS) — a fund that has been extraordinarily helpful to Clinton in the past—added 14 June 1997 • The American Spectator half a million dollars of stock in the China Ocean Shipping Co...
...And on that count, RNC staffers are whispering, Nicholson's been a bust...
...COSCO) to the teachers' pension portfolio...
...Another "misunderstanding" came in Peking, where White House and Chinese officials barred the press from at least three "public" addresses by Gore...
...And when Suzy DeFrancis —the RNC's deputy communication director—asked to meet with o Nicholson, he refused...
...against any other Republican she loses 54-44...
...State GOP polls show her beating B-1 Bob, 64-32...
...Robinson Don't believe the New York Times report that Shea Stadium was sold out for the April 15 Mets-Dodgers game that honored the 5oth anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking major-league baseball's color barrier...
...To paraphrase a great Republican, what a waste it is to use one's mind...
...Show Me the Money Here are some tips for those investigating Clinton's shady campaign fundraising: Not only are federal benefits showering on the foreign companies associated with Bill Clinton's money men, these companies are drawing substantial investments from the Arkansas public employee pension fund still dominated by the Clinton-Tucker machine...
...David Hobson told David Bonior to "get a life" for whining about Bob Dole's loan to Newt Gingrich, little did he know that the Democratic whip already had one, thank you...
...But sources tell the Prowler that the GOP is putting energy into the voter-fraud allegations brought forward by Louisiana Republican Woody Jenkins, who lost his Senate bid to Mary Landrieu by less than 6,000 votes...
...It's tough enough to come up with a Top 3." Little Egypt Freshman Rep...
...For the first time in a decade, the White House travel office failed to charter a press plane for a major diplomatic trip, causing a last-minute scramble for commercial flights —and limiting the number of American reporters who could make the trip...
...Instead, Boehner declined to cooperate with House Republican attorneys on putting the paper work together...
Vol. 30 • June 1997 • No. 6
