On the Prowl
ION THE PROWL 0 0 O Money Talks Since early October, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt has been meeting with Washington lobbyists for corporations and business groups. While the lobbyists...
...John Chafee, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, was the opportunity New Hampshire's prodigal Sen...
...I Am Somebody In the aftermath of the October 27 New Hampshire debate between Al Gore and Bill Bradley, there was a bit of unreported ugliness...
...I guess they assumed we'd be seeing some drug use and other behavior we generally frown upon," said a Secret Service source...
...While Helms won't take up the nomination, Clinton is expected to give her the appointment when Congress recesses in early December...
...Free Fall Hillary Clinton campaign adviser Harold Ickes has been huddling with his New York and Democratic National Committee pollsters and going over the results of several surveys taken in the aftermath of a Zogby poll that showed Mrs...
...We were cutting jobs left and right, and then we hire her for way more than Sioo,000...
...It didn't work, and we were counting on stuff like that to help us," the aide said...
...Unfortunately, when Smith quit the party he lost his number-two slot on the committee to Oklahoma Sen...
...Some onlookers thought the timing odd, given that the drug company coalition had been attacking the plan in TV, radio, and newspaper spots for more than four months prior to the recent White House offensive...
...Her huge salary was supposed to be confidential, but Gore insiders, angry that such big bucks were going to a relative neophyte, leaked it to the press...
...According to this representative of a business association, Gephardt and a staffer provided meeting attendees with the names of ten Democrats in line to be committee chairmen, including such luminaries as Charles Rangel, John Dingell, and Henry Waxman...
...But before the advance person could leave the Gore holding area, Gore campaign chief Tony Coelho managed to pull her back and thus kept an ant hill from becoming a mole hill in the Washington Post's Style section...
...On welcoming Smith back, Lott coyly told reporters that no back room deal was cut to bring him back into the fold...
...First, through a book deal that Gore will soon announce...
...Vice President...
...Trent has always been a stickler for Senate protocol...
...James Inhofe...
...The DNC poll numbers are just as bad, and they've slid big time since the summer, when Hillary was neck and neck with Rudy," said a member of the first lady's White House staff...
...And hopefully raise another quarter million off the contacts...
...The advance is said to be in the high five figures...
...The invitation list was made up almost exclusively of corporate lobbyists and K Street lawyers...
...A day before the fundraiser was to take place, the first lady's office asked the Secret Service to take a "no harm, no foul" approach to whatever went on backstage before and during the show...
...Now that her earnings have been cut back to size, Wolf will recoup her losses in two new ways...
...On November 1 he announced his return to the GOP after an unsuccessful third-party presidential run, and said he wants what's rightfully his: the chairmanship of Chafee's committee...
...At least Nickles knows how to treat his friends...
...There is no question Jim deserves that seat," an insider told the Prowler...
...While the lobbyists want to talk legislation, Gephardt, according to several meeting attendees, prefers to talk money and the 2000 election...
...To boost Beltway fundraising, McCain in October hosted a reception at the power-lunch spot, The Palm...
...The goal was to raise about Sioo,000 off the event," said a McCain campaign adviser...
...Rudy is actually taking away Democratic and union votes in Manhattan, and he beats her outright in the Jewish vote across the state...
...Clinton trailing Rudy Giuliani by as many as 17 points in the Empire State Senate race...
...We were giving away seats out on the street about an hour before the show began," says a DNC source...
...One reason for that 12 December 1999/January 2000 • The American Spectator may be the parties he's throwing...
...The book, which is expected to carry a joint Gore-Wolf co-author-ship, will deal with America after the year 2000...
...The Palm serves great food, but on this evening McCain's planners were willing to plunk down only about $500 for the entire affair...
...When You're Number Two The death of beloved Rhode Island Sen...
...Wolf was hired by Al and his daughter Karenna to serve as a campaign adviser and to develop policy for a new Website the Gore campaign is launching to attract young people...
...Backstage and the White House "We're going to kick Rudy's ass," proclaimed actor Alec Baldwin during the Broadway fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in honor of her birthday...
...Jesse Helms's Foreign Relations Committee staff was under pressure to let the nomination sail through...
...It's common courtesy and respect for the office," Gore is said to have sputtered, and then ordered one of his advance people to convey that message to Bradley's crew...
...Bradley, meanwhile, was irked by the lengths to which the veep went to stack the house with Gore backers...
...They met with Pfizer and some others, and it became obvious the drug companies weren't going to be big Gore boosters...
...But it now appears that Moseley-Braun is indeed headed down under, after Helms was unable to wrangle enough material from the IRS and Justice Department to open hearings on Moseley-Braun's alleged ethics and campaign irregularities...
...The American Spectator December 1999/January 2000 13...
...We'd come to talk about a bill, and instead we got a shakedown...
...If he abandons it now, I think that if we hold on to the Senate in z000, many Republicans will abandon him as leader and look at someone like Don Nickles...
...Pill Poopers Returning to a favorite theme of his first months in the White House, Bill Clinton in late October made a series of speeches demonizing drug companies...
...Afterward, Helms's people called the item nonsense...
...Moseley on Down Six months ago the Prowler reported that the White House was nominating former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun ambassador to New Zealand, and that Sen...
...Gephardt told us the Democrats were going to win back the House, and if we wanted to be heard, we'd better get on the bandwagon," says one lobbyist...
...Majority Leader Trent Lott doesn't necessarily agree, however...
...It makes you wonder...
...While Bradley distributed a few hundred tickets to New Hampshire backers, Gore bused in more than zoo people from Tennessee for the event...
...Crying Wolf While newly discovered Gore confidant Naomi Wolf may no longer be making $15,000 a month sprucing up the vice president's image, she'll make up her losses working on other projects for the Gore family...
...No Frills Sen...
...Buses carrying the Nashville contingent—all expenses covered by the Gore campaign—made a number of stops along the way in New Jersey, New York, and Boston, not to mention the visit to a Connecticut casino run by an Indian tribe that gave generously to Clinton-Gore in the past...
...Hey, it's not like Charles Keating is still in the picture...
...So Gore's people called the White House and told them to release the hounds...
...But the event took in about $10,000, after only 40 people showed up in a room that had only a cheesy centerpiece of a pumpkin overflowing with flowers and orange chili peppers (to honor McCain's Arizona roots...
...More troubling, some of the polls were taken after Hillary returned from an early fall overseas junket that was supposed to make her appear senatorial...
...And the fare...
...But Senate colleagues believe that Inhofe, a strong conservative voice, was hung out to dry...
...Bob Smith was looking for...
...According to aides and advance people, Gore left the stage at Dartmouth University livid that Bradley had not referred to him throughout the debate as Vice President Gore or Mr...
...John McCain's presidential campaign may be getting great press, but it's no secret it's not raising big bucks...
...Baldwin and his band of washed-up cohorts, which included the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, may talk big, but they can't put their money where their mouths are...
...They wanted to make sure we knew we were dealing with 'talent...
...Unscreened guests weren't the only headache that the Secret Service had to deal with that evening...
...Wolf will also be paid extra to write four stump speeches for Gore to use over the next eight months before college students and women's groups...
...The evening raised only $300,000, not the announced amount of $500,000...
...He claims they're bad-mouthing his prescription drug plan for Medicare patients...
...By Senate rules, the chairmanship should now be Inhofe's...
...Gore's fundraisers asked him to hold off until after they could gauge how successful they could be fundraising the companies," says a White House aide who works on health-care policy...
...We were to donate the maximum Si,000 to each of the names on the list, and they in turn were going to give the money through their PACs to other candidates more in need than they were," says the lobbyist...
...She hadn't earned her keep with this campaign," says one Gore insider...
Vol. 32 • December 1999 • No. 12
